By Syed Sammar Mehdi
By midday, the hills above Harwan had begun to sound different.
People gathered along the town’s green slopes, officials moved between them, sweets passed from hand to hand, and an Independence Day celebration took off in a place where the occasion had once carried a far more muted presence.
Mohammad Muqsit Wani, a Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service officer, was among those moving through the gathering.
He greeted residents, spoke with officials and was seen distributing sweets as people assembled around the celebration.
The scene gave a glimpse into a changing public landscape in Kashmir. Harwan, a hill locality on Srinagar’s eastern edge, has long been associated with gardens, wooded slopes and the quieter margins of the city.
On Aug. 15, the hills became the setting for a public gathering that brought residents and officials into the same space.
Block officers joined the programme, along with former DDC members from Theed, Dara and Syedpora, local residents and the SHO Harwan. Their presence gave the gathering an institutional side, though the scene itself felt more local than ceremonial.
People stood in small groups, exchanged greetings and shared sweets. Wani moved through them rather than remaining at a distance, becoming one of the visible links between the administration and the gathering.
A day earlier, Wani had led a Har Ghar Tiranga rally in Khonmoh. Students, social workers, former PRI members, government officials and residents had marched with the Tricolour through the locality.
Harwan presented a different scene. There was no long procession moving through the town. The celebration gathered people in one place, allowing the day to unfold through greetings, meetings and shared food.
The contrast between the hills and the gathering gave the occasion its particular character. The slopes stood behind the crowd while voices, movement and the exchange of sweets filled the space below.
Such scenes can be easy to miss when Independence Day is viewed through official ceremonies and speeches.
In Harwan, the more revealing story lay in the people who showed up and in the way the gathering developed around them.
Wani’s role connected that local gathering with the wider public campaign unfolding in the area.
His presence also showed the changing role of local administration in bringing public celebrations into places where such occasions once had a smaller footprint.
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