Bridging a communication gap

Although the waves of unrest in Kashmir have been well-documented, the lived experiences of the people who went through those troubled times remain obscure.

- AREEB AHMAD

For Mehak Jamal, the seed for her first book was sown after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 36A in August 2019, when the valley was blanketed under a months-long communication clampdown. “In that stifling silence,” she writes, “I kept hearing stories of how Kashmiris reached out to each other in dire times and how they found ingenious ways to keep in touch.” She quickly realised that the best way to preserve the memories of the Kashmiri people was through the lens of love and set out to collect stories of love, longing, and loss.

Pronounced like whole and soul, “lõal” is the Kashmiri word for love and affection. In Lõal Kashmir, Ms Jamal brings together 16 stories based on real narratives of actual people. As she explains in the introduction: “I wished to understand how living in a place of conflict had shaped these lovers’ lives for better or for worse.” When she put out a call for the project, the response was overwhelming: “Since the Kashmir conflict dominates all talk around the Valley, the participants were eager to say—this is not all we are. They wanted the world at large to remember how bravely they had fought, but equally how fiercely they had loved.” Born to a Kashmiri Muslim father and a Maharashtrian Hindu mother in Srinagar, the book also reaffirmed Ms Jamal’s connection to her homeland.