Private vehicles ply on roads in Srinagar . (PTI Photo)

SRINAGAR: The Sunday bazaar, which sells everything from colourful faux mink blankets and ladies handbags to sports shoes and stockings in the heart of the city, is now an everyday flea market. The small grocery, fresh dairy and mutton shops and garment outlets open at 6 am and shut by 9 am and reopen at 6 pm and close by 9 pm. However, on Monday, the morning shopping hours are extended to 11 am and evening hours began at 4 pm, leading to traffic jams in the city.

On Tuesday morning, the hustle-bustle in the markets and loud honking was like in any other city of India. While upscale markets and businesses remain shut, vegetable and fruit hawkers, pharmacies, roadside vendors selling mutton seekh kebabs roasted on grills, fresh cucumber with salt and pepper, lotus seeds and river fish have stayed open all day from the very beginning.

In this new normal since August 5, when the Centre revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, the Kashmir valley has remained partially shut and partially open for a variety of reasons. Though the lockdown was a consequence of restrictions under CrPC Sec 144 and mobile and internet services were shut down by the government initially anticipating terror attacks, rioting and stone-pelting, all this is now voluntary.

"Part of it is because there is a strong threat from militants. We heard overground workers of militants are quietly going to neighbourhood markets and forcing shopkeepers to roll down their shutters. Just yesterday they threw car battery acid on a shopkeeper here, another shopkeeper was beaten black and blue for opening his shop," Ghulam Mohammad, who runs a shop in Jehangir Chowk, told TOI.

A 65-year-old shopkeeper, Ghulam Mohiuddin Mir, of Abu Bakr colony in Parimpora, was killed by terrorists on August 29. A businessman who owns a shop in the highend market of Residency Road told TOI that the flea bazaar concept has turned out to be a blessing. "We are giving our products to those who have put up stalls on carts and beds in the flea market. At least it is somehow letting us earn something," he said.

Many customers and vendors in the bazaar said that through this crisis the class divide in Kashmir has become clearer. "The rich can afford to keep their businesses shut. The affluent go to Delhi and Dubai to shop whenever there is trouble in Kashmir. But where will the poor go? That is why we are out here selling and buying," Adil Ahmed, who was selling kids’ clothes off a cart, told TOI.

But shopkeepers in Soura, the hotbed of separatism, told TOI that shops are shut because they are protesting against New Delhi’s nullification of Articles 370 and 35A. "India will have to take its decision back. Shops will remain shut for six months or even six years. Kashmir can manage," Maajid, a vegetable hawker in Eidgah, said.

Authorities believe most shops and markets will open in Kashmir after the UN General Assembly session where Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Imran Khan are scheduled to speak on September 27.

