MOUNTAIN SPIRIT

A growing cohort of Kashmiri creatives are forging new relationships with the valley by reviving lost art forms, making art out of their bodies and applying ingenious solutions to everyday items.

- ARMAN KHAN

What makes a good Kashmiri? It's a question that has often vexed my mother, who was born and raised in the valley. She can expertly perform the wanvun, a folk song recited by women on the eve of a celebration. Her gustabas, meatballs cooked in a yoghurt-based gravy, are second to none. When she hums Khusrau's couplets about Kashmir in Farsi, it's all the music I need on dreary mornings. But does that qualify her Kashmiriness? After her marriage in 1985, Mum moved to Mumbai from Pahalgam and never returned. Her home in Kashmir now lies fragmented. Most people in it have moved in search of other lives. Yet, she holds onto it, calling her relatives when she reads unsettling news and then realising how perfunctory it sounds coming from her. But who gets to decide how much of home still resides in them when they leave?

Young artists in Kashmir have found the answer by consolidating their fractured past with the hope of a bright future. "We always had a robust heritage of art and craft, but we went through a phase of not feeling proud of where we come from," says Farah Bashir, who penned her memoir, Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir, in 2021. "When I was growing up in the '90s, the pheran would frequently get banned. My school in Srinagar imposed a fine of 50 paise if they caught us speaking Kashmiri. Now, our people are boldly connecting to their cultureand not in a superficial way."