Bear Gone Berserk: Kashmir’s Wild Crisis Comes to the City

By Dr. Rizwan Rumi

The bear arrived in Srinagar like a restless traveller who refused to read the season.

It should have curled into a den somewhere in the upper forests by now, locked inside the long winter sleep that makes the cold easier to bear.

Instead it roamed the city with a strange energy, slipping through campuses, brushing past boundary walls, leaving half-seen shadows on security cameras, and finishing its nights with a swim in the chilled waters of Nigeen.

People spoke of it with nervous jokes in daytime markets, then lay awake after sundown, listening for the scrape of claws on tin roofs.

Wildlife officers spent night after night tracing it through lanes that usually host students, shopkeepers and caretakers, instead of a hulking animal shaking droplets from its coat