By Fiza Masoodi

When the light faded over Srinagar on Sunday evening, a familiar voice fell silent.

Faiyaz Dilbar, poet and playwright, died at Sheerin Bagh hospital after weeks of illness. He had been unwell with a lung condition, and a heart attack brought his life to a close. He was sixty-eight.

By morning, the road to Harwan filled with mourners carrying him to his final rest, beneath chinars burnished by autumn and memory.

In Srinagar, a city shaped by poetry and print, Faiyaz Dilbar’s name was spoken with respect.

He came from Maharaj Gunj, one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, where Urdu newspapers were once printed by hand and verse was part of daily life.

He began young, with the Srinagar Times, his pen guided by both curiosity and conviction.

In the early 1980s, he

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