Power cuts amid severe cold push Kashmiris to traditional ways

Kashmir residents revert to traditional heating methods due to frequent power cuts during harsh winter conditions.

The residents of Kashmir are going back to traditional ways of coping with the intense cold wave conditions as frequent and unscheduled power cuts have rendered modern heating gadgets useless.

Kashmir is experiencing Chilla-i-Kalan, a 40-day winter period notorious for being the harshest. Srinagar city witnessed the coldest night in 33 years as the minimum temperature dipped to a bone-chilling -8.5 degrees C on Saturday. Other places in the valley also experienced extreme sub-zero temperatures, which caused the water supply pipes in many areas to freeze.

Over the past couple decades, residents of urban Kashmir have done away with traditional heating arrangements -- including wood-based hamams, bukharis, and wicker-claypot kangris -- as the supply of electricity improved year on year

But now, with the region experiencing one of its toughest winters in recent memory, the power fupply in most parts of Kashmir has been erratic at best, rendering the electric heating solutions redundant.

“Over the past few years, we had become used to using electric gadgets to keep ourselves warm. With 12 hour cuts every day, we have now gone back to kangris,” Yasir Ahmad, a resident of the posh Gulbahar colony in Srinagar, said.

Ahmad also expressed belief his investment in installing an air conditioner at his home has “gone to waste”.

Abdul Ahad Wani, who lives in the old city’s Rainawari area, said he had recently converted his wood-fuelled hamam to an electricity powered one. “I thought using the wood hamam was cumbersome and an electric hamam would be better as it is available at the push of a switch,” Wani said.