In Srinagar, businessmen count their losses

With waters receding, owners are returning to their shops to assess the damage

Shops being cleared of silt in the flood-hit Batmaloo area in Srinagar on Wednesday. Photo: Nissar Ahmad

The Maharaja Bazaar in Srinagar, one of the busiest markets in the city, would always smell of spices, dry fruits, freshly baked cakes and ripe vegetables. In September, Kashmir’s season for marriages, the market is usually packed, making it difficult to even walk through its streets.

Today, an unbearable stench of rotten goods hits you as you enter the market. With floodwaters receding from 8 feet to just about a foot-and-a-half, owners and salesmen in Maharaja Bazaar are returning to their shops to take stock of the damage.

“It is a massive loss. I can’t even tell you what is the loss in our shop, leave alone this market,” said Feroz Ahmad, a salesman at Abdul Aziz and Sons, a dry fruits shop.

Outside the shop, damp sacks of tea, apricots, cashews, almonds and turmeric — all rotten and stinking — indicate how suddenly the disaster struck.

Mr. Ahmad said he had been waiting since Tuesday for someone from the government to come and take stock of their losses, but now he just wants to get rid of the stink.

Pointing to two big shops, Master Spices, opposite his own, he said, “They can’t even open their shop. The stench is overwhelming. They have come twice since yesterday but returned without lifting the shutters. Their losses must be in crores.”

“This is an urban flood and needs to be distinguished from the rural floods. It has destroyed our prime business stores and caused a huge loss to Kashmir’s trade and industry,” said Shakeel Qalander, a member of Kashmir Centre for Social and Development Studies. “In our assessment, the losses run into several crores,” he told TheHindu .

As the government and volunteers are busy with relief work in hundreds of neighbourhoods that are still under water, the losses in business establishments have not yet been assessed.

But for the businessmen who have lost their source of income in the floods, returning to their wasted shops is more traumatic than being trapped in their flooded homes for days.

Srinagar’s business hub, Lal Chowk, saw floodwaters rising to 8 feet in most places and more than 12 feet in some places. “Who would have imagined such a disaster?” said Gulzar Ahmad, a salesperson at Parvez and Co. cloth shop.

“Announcements were made at 2.35 am on Sunday that water was coming. We shifted our stuff to the upper shelves thinking the water would be two to three feet at the most.”