Outside a guarded government office in Indian Kashmir's main city, an interminable queue forms every day for a near-priceless opportunity: a two-minute phone call to the outside world.
Residents of Srinagar and the Kashmir Valley have been starved of phone and internet use for a week as
India snuffs out opposition to its military lockdown in the Himalayan region.
Only two mobile phones with an outside line are on offer in the deputy commissioner's office, but so desperate are people to contact families in the rest of India and overseas that they come from across Srinagar and beyond to wait in line.