Kashmir’s new year arrives with winter light, closed windows, slow mornings and recycled messages buzzing more from habit than hope. Heaters humming, elders layered against the cold and bodies adjusting. Health resolutions are made softly, with good intent, and by January 10, most have already faded back into routine.

As a doctor, and as someone who edits health narratives for public consumption, I have come to believe that January 1 is a clinical checkpoint. A moment when the body submits its annual, silent report card, and the mind pretends not to read it.

We greet the new year with ambition, but we carry into it the same arteries, the same joints, the same unresolved grief, the same neglected habits. The calendar changes. Physiology does not.

In clinics across Kashmir, January has a predictable pattern. Blood pressure readings inch higher. Blood sugars misbehave. Joint pains worsen. Chest discomfort is casually dismissed as “cold effect.” Sleep cycles are fractured. Medications are taken “when remembered.” Water intake drops because “piyaas nahi lagti.” Physical movement shrinks because “bahar thand hai.” Emotional stress, however, remains fully active. This is not coincidence. This is continuity.

The most........

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