Crouching Kashmir

LAST time I was in Srinagar in May, a friend asked me to stop suddenly. We were by the Jhelum and he pointed to an epitaph, which was guarded by concertina wires.

- Chinki Sinha

"Srinagar hunches like a wild cat: lonely sentries, wretched in bunkers at the city's bridges, far from their homes in the plains, licensed to kill... while the Jhelum flows under them, sometimes with a dismembered body. On Zero Bridge the jeeps rush by. The candles go out as travellers, unable to light up the velvet Void.

What is the blessed word? Mandelstam gives no clue. One day the Kashmiris will pronounce that word truly for the first time."
-Agha Shahid Ali, The Country Without a Post Office

It was half-hidden by vines and wildflowers that had grown around it. He said, "Take a photo," before translating the inscription on it, which was in Urdu.

This was the grave of a young man. A very young man who had been killed in a clash. Nobody knew who he was, so they just said that he was a young boy and he was dead now. I have often thought about that one singular grave that doesn't even make itself visible. Cosmetic changes elsewhere are too in your face. It is a place that's being renewed again.

That's how Kashmir comes to someone from the mainland. In fragments. In little corners. In observations.

Elections are being held. The future is tense. Separatists and loyalists and others are all staking their claims to this place that's sold to all as paradise. Although never a tourist sold to the idea of this paradise, I was still an outsider who didn’t know how to react to concertina wires and bunkers and security personnel everywhere.

It was disorienting then. It is the same now. In May, I had gone to see