A Girlhood under Siege and A Ledger of Unheard Voices

By Srilagna Majumdar

My finest read this year till now is Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir by Farah Bashir, published by Harper Collins in 2021, which has opened my eyes to interpretations of truth in a perpetual war zone, in more than one way.

The 1990s saw a homegrown militant movement in Kashmir, stemming from the failure of governance and democracy and the dispute over local autonomy. For those from the rest of India, who struggle to understand the surreptitious and often invisible damage that more than thirty years of violence and repression have wrought upon the common people in Kashmir, Rumours of Spring puts forward an aching and terrifying account. Primarily viewed through the lens of her own family, Farah Bashir speaks of the transformation and violation of the binary realms of the civilians’ lives. The book speaks of a time, very much like the one we live in, when death and war are normalised. Troops become an inherent part of one’s living, their activities creating a situation of extreme fear and anxiety, day and night. Often called the ‘lost generation, ’ the children growing up in these dark and traumatic decades know what being denied simple freedoms means.

The memoir is knit together into six distinct sections, addressing the periods of the author’s growing up. Bashir’s recollection emphasises that the experience of this tumultuous time was felt differently by different age groups and communities, her focus being on women, children, elderly women, and the disabled. The first two sections recount at length her relationship with her grandmother, her Bobeh: the elderly soul’s reaction to the brutality engulfing her existence in her last few years. One of her favourite pastimes was to peer out of the window and observe passers-by: a habit that had to be given up after 1989 when windows had to be tightly shut during the incessant spells of curfew.

An interesting chapter named ‘The Memory of the Scalp’ narrates the young author’s
relationship with the eerily silent curfew nights of 1990 and her thoughts, often fraught with
painful menstrual cramps and compulsive disorder, forcing her to tug at her hair all night long.

‘Curfew nights were different…they weren’t just silent, but full of fear. The gunshots sounded louder, the screams more vivid, and the engines of jeeps patrolling on the streets made frightening noises…Once, I had run out of anti-spasmodic medicine but the thought of fetching some paracetamol from the living room was unthinkable! The curfew had its own way of slipping indoors. It was impossible to move about anywhere in the house without causing alarm. Who knew which noise would travel outside and alarm the troops to barge inside the house?’

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) conducted surveys indicating that decades of oppression led to traumatic disorders, anxiety, and depression among 45 per cent of the Kashmiri population, mostly women suffering from depressive psychosis due to different forms of uncertainty. Today, mental health is not a point of focus in the Kashmiri hospitals. The lives of young girls worsen after the disappearance of their fathers. They are disinherited, have no stake in property, and their safety is not ensured. Years go by, filing multiple cases, in vain, being harassed in the presence of the military and walking miles, often while pregnant and sick, during lockdowns, to visit courts. Adding to all of this, the women need to work tirelessly at home. ‘We can’t get bread in our own house if we do not work, ’ says a 34-year-old woman
speaking to VICE Asia in a documentary: she was abandoned by her husband after a pellet gun blinded her in a conflict zone. Besides being a ledger of individual and collective traumas historicising the Kashmiri struggle from the very forsaken Kashmiri female perspective, Rumours of Spring also documents changes in rituals and customs, demography, neighbourhoods, and pop culture. The siege and gunfights kept the warmth around Eid at bay, burnt down neighbourhoods like Kawdoar and Raj Bagh and cut short teenage love affairs, leading the author to only find limited peace in old Urdu magazines and the tape Young Tarang by Nazia and Zoheb Hassan.

The narration of this book wholeheartedly and bravely refuses the colonizer’s gaze. The use of Kashmiri words blends seamlessly with English, bringing the storytelling even closer to the land’s lived reality. While there has been a plethora of biographies, accounts, and resources on the ‘dark decades’ in Kashmir, few are from the perspective of a young girl who is growing up in siege. ‘Braveries of “heroes” are only seen in relation to masculinity. It feels as if these stories, our stories, do not matter to the larger world,‘ says Bashir in an interview with Kashmir Life. Writing on such a touchy subject with such rawness invites inevitable controversies, does that bother her? ‘It wouldn’t have been an honest account if I wanted to dodge controversies, I do not think I would have been able to make any compromises while speaking about my lived experiences’, Bashir responded with a certain melancholy in her eyes and conviction in her voice. If it wasn’t for Rumours of Spring, the many Bobehs, Bajjis, Aunt Nelofars, Jaajis, Ammis, Abidas and Nuzhats would not have found their voices.

Also by Srilagna: 204B Block B, Lake Town, Kolkata: My Tête-à-Tête with Shanu Lahiri’s Creative Spirit