A Lyrical Journey

Understanding the subconscious connection between music and life in Kashmir

- Ali Saffudin

IN his book The Motorcycle Diaries, Che Guevara writes a beautiful sentence describing the elements of a journey—it is certain that every journey will have a departure and an arrival and the part in the middle is where the story lies.

I was born in Kashmir in the nineties and that was the beginning of my journey as a Kashmiri. By the time I was a teenager, Kashmir had witnessed many episodes of mass uprisings—the notable ones were in 2010 and 2018. It is reflected in my art. I believe that deep inside, there’s a very strong subconscious connection between music and Kashmir. Hence, every bit of music I made in my life has had a reflection of Kashmir in it.

Like a palaeolithic man whose basic needs were either gathering food or finding shelter and nothing else, my teenage years were driven by the simple urge of either listening to a wide range of music or to gather as much knowledge about Kashmir as possible and make myself politically aware. Something triggered this. An incident in 2008.

I was in 10th standard and was returning home from tuition. A few men were protesting and there were security personnel. I, being very naïve, was convinced that because I had a student ID card hanging on my neck, I could be a bystander and would not face the wrath of the forces charging at the protesters.

Within minutes, I found the crowd had dispersed and a bunch of security personnel were charging towards me. They gave me a lesson in history that no book would have taught me. It was a lesson taught with batons and fierce kicks. Getting beaten up by men in uniform on the streets of Kashmir is like seeing paan masala spit stains on the walls of Delhi. They are ugly, but they are everywhere. You can’t even count them.