By Fiza Masoodi

Srinagar- Long before he became one of Kashmir’s most respected journalists, Tariq Ahmad Bhat was a boy who studied under the yellow light of a lamppost in his birthplace Chhota Bazar. On winter evenings, when electricity flickered across Srinagar, neighbours would see him crouched beneath that streetlight, his books spread over his knees, lips moving as he memorized lessons. They still remember that glow.

“He would read for hours under that lamp,” said a neighbour who attended his funeral prayers on November 4. “People said he was too intense, that he had become mentally-strong from all that studying. He wanted something bigger from life.”

Tariq eventually found it. He rose from the narrow lanes of downtown Srinagar to become the Kashmir Bureau Chief of The Week, o

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