Publish with us

Follow Penguin

Follow Penguinsters

Follow Hind Pocket Books

A Stream of Consciousness Odyssey to Kashmir

Step into the mesmerizing world of Rooh by Manav Kaul, and embark on a journey where past and present intertwine beautifully and memories come to life. Uncover the very soul of Kashmir, the author’s cherished friendship with Titli, and the echoes of a place that lingers in every word.

Read this excerpt to catch of glimpse of the nostalgia.

 

Rooh
Rooh || Manav Kaul

***

When pasts are so distinct, all the presents too have their own distinct expanses; it is difficult to be certain which memory would bring a smile to which face. Therefore, if you have picked up this book to understand the political, religious, economic, social and communal situation of Kashmir, you will be disappointed. I don’t know why I am writing this book. I don’t even know whether this writing will finally take the shape of a book. I just want to touch those images again that I had gathered in my childhood. Maybe that’s why even in the current situation in Kashmir I wasn’t reluctant to go there. I don’t know what might happen in the future at all.

 

In Baramulla, Khwaja Bagh, Titli lived right above our house. My brother, Titli and I . . . we played together all the time—all the games, games in the middle of a game, and our tired laughter after the games were exactly the same. My brother and I were not as sad to leave Kashmir as we were about getting separated from Titli. She was our first love. We could never find out whom she loved more between us. I knew precisely what was making me cry while leaving Khwaja Bagh, but I didn’t want to appear weak in front of Titli, and so I held myself together. While leaving, my brother had asked Titli for her photograph. I was surprised when my brother did this. Everything between us had always been divided into three. For the first time my brother had asked for something from Titli that was entirely his, and I had no claim on it. I was sure that Titli would refuse, but she took out a picture from her schoolbag and gave it to him. I kept thinking for a long time—I should have also asked for a memento or given her something for memory’s sake. But what could I have asked for and what could I have given? We left Baramulla for Srinagar.

 

This happened years ago. Now we had become two fair-skinned boys of a small district of Madhya Pradesh who didn’t like talking to each other much. Kashmir was in our stories still, but whenever there was mention of Kashmir, we could see Titli flying away. I had noticed that every time Kashmir was mentioned, my brother would immediately go to the other room. I was aware that in the other room, he would be staring at that black-and-white picture of Titli. Outside, I would be regretting the fact that I didn’t even cry in front of her. I had to really please my brother, run several errands for him, and then, on some afternoons, he would let me look at Titli. The only condition was I could not touch the picture, and staring was prohibited. Most probably, it was a photograph taken out from her school ID. She looked like a fairy in the photo—one who could step out any time and say, ‘Let’s fly!’

 

That picture didn’t stay for long in the pockets of my brother’s shorts. We had also begun to grow up, wandering in the bylanes of that village. Titli flew away from our lives gradually.

When Father was on his last trip to Kashmir some years ago, he had met Titli’s family on his way back to Jammu. He told us this, and we both blurted out together, ‘How is Titli?’ Father told us, ‘She was married off. During the delivery of her first baby her legs became paralysed. Her husband abandoned her. She passed away sometime ago due to depression.’

 

After speaking about Titli in brief sentences between sips of tea, Father got back to narrating his anecdotes about meeting Baby Aunty. But neither of us wanted to know about anyone else. After a long silence my brother got up and went inside. Now he didn’t even have the picture. What would Bhai be doing inside? For a long time I stood quietly outside his room. Then I took out the torn and faded black and-white photograph of Titli from my mathematics notebook. I had stolen the photo long ago from my brother’s pocket. I wanted to go to Bhai’s room and give the picture to him that very moment, but it was risky. So, I went to the courtyard and buried the picture under a broken wall.

 

I don’t know how many years ago I wrote about this incident. Now, in my preparation to return to Kashmir, all of this was coming back to me. How much of Kashmir lay scattered in my writings? In all my poems, where I mention a cloud, the cloud belongs to nowhere else but Khwaja Bagh. Every character that I have named Titli is the one whose picture I had buried under the broken wall of my home back then. Every time I say ‘tea’, the four o’clock tea made by my mother in Khwaja Bagh is what I remember. In the fragrance of home, a large part is Kashmir. Can all of this be buried?

***

 

Get your copy of Rooh by Manav Kaul wherever books are sold

 From the Writer’s Desk ft. Rahul Pandita

by Avleen Kaur

 

To write books that have political blood and bones, in a country like ours, is a brave job that requires hard work. And here’s someone who’s trying to do it right by talking about important issues through deep rooted investigative journalism. We sat down with the incredible Rahul Pandita and discussed both his books, Our Moon Has Blood Clots and Hello, Bastar; the different processes that went behind writing a memoir and an investigative book, and what inspires him to write. 

 

What prompted you to write Hello, Bastar and what are you trying to say through it?

 

Hello, Bastar is a labour of many, many years of travel through central and eastern India, in what are widely known as left-wing, extremist-affected districts of India. Most of these travels happened at a time when the editors and intellectuals in Delhi and other bigger cities had very little idea about the movement and how large its future could be. Nobody anticipated how it would consume us in many ways in the following years until our former Prime Minister, Mr. Manmohan Singh called it the country’s biggest internal security threat.  

This book is basically about how a handful of young men and women believed in a certain idea of revolution and how they created the modern Naxal movement from the jungles of Bastar in the 1980s. Hello, Bastar is mostly meant for a non-academic reader, for someone who is a student of India and really wants to know what is happening in this part of the country.  

 

While your previous book, Our Moon Has Blood Clots was a memoir that rose out of personal and community experience, Hello, Bastar is more investigative in nature, made out of reportage and interviews. How different were both the processes? And was the latter more comfortable considering your journalistic background? 

 

I think Hello, Bastar was a relatively easier book to write because it was largely a part of what I do as a journalist. So, writing this did not feel as hard as the previous book which is part memoir-part reportage of the exodus and torture that happened to a minority community in the Kashmir Valley. That book was more difficult to write because of the personal history involved. And as my editor, Meru might recall that there were times when I had to wait through patches of darkness because of which the book became extremely difficult to write. But during those patches, Meru did handhold me quite a few times during the writing process for which I remain grateful to her.  

 

Both the books talk about conflicts. Is that something that particularly intrigues you?  

 

Well, I am a conflict writer. Early on in my career, when I came to Delhi, I made a pact with myself. I vowed that I will not report on things based out of New Delhi because most times when you care about an incident or event, you have a preconceived notion about it. And most times when you actually investigate on the ground level, you are surprised to realize that your preconceived notions about most things were absolutely false. So, the reportage part of Our Moon Has Blood Clots or the entirety of Hello, Bastar has been built out of investigative journeys made through the length and breadth of the country.  

 

Talking about preconceived notions, there must be a lot of things you would’ve learnt during Hello, Bastar. Was there one thing that particularly shocked you or was a wild revelation? 

 

Whenever I get a chance to interact with young people, I tell them, ‘I’ve learnt nothing in school or college. Whatever I have learnt of life, I have learnt from Bastar, really.’ I spent weeks and weeks embedded with the Maoist guerillas and Adivasis in the back of beyond and learnt years in days. So, every journey, every day has been replete with some learning. And many of those learnings have left me shocked, surprised and sometimes also thankful that I could travel to these parts and learn so much not only about these people but about life in general. 

 

And was it difficult reaching out to a community you don’t belong to? Were you apprehensive? Were they apprehensive in sharing their life and story with you?  

 

So again, I think this is a part of a larger problem which Indian journalism suffers from. Where journalists are just paradropped at some place because of a particular incident and they spend a couple of days there, piggybacking on the previous work of stringers or local resource persons and later on claim to understand everything about that area. In the past, I have typically called it ‘clean-bedsheet journalism’ where you leave for a small town in the morning and make sure that you come back to the small hotel by the evening. But that’s not how things work, at least in Bastar.  

You have to spend a lot of time in Bastar to understand its reality. When you’re travelling in the village during the day, you might come across an ordinary Adivasi at the roadside tea shop. Later, you find out that he is a Naxal Guerilla. But that is not something you will know if you just have tea there and proceed back to your station. Conflict zones are like snake pits, you don’t know who is who until you familiarize yourself to the place. 

Also, it takes a lot of time for people to open up about their story. There were times when we were embedded with Maoist groups of men and women, where young women especially would really shy away and not talk at all. But after spending some days with them and talking to them, telling them you mean well, that you’re there to know their story and make them comfortable – they open up. And that again, is unfortunately not possible when you’re there for a day or two.  

Once an author wrote that he spent a lot of time in Bastar but didn’t meet a single Naxal there. I remember joking about it and commenting that Naxals are not like Coca-Cola or Haldiram Bhujia. If you go inside villages, the penetration of Haldiram Bhujia is immense. But that’s not how Naxals are to be found. You have to spend a lot of time there before they let you in. 

 

Does the fear of backlash or controversy of writing about sensitive subjects govern your writing in some way? 

 

I think both my books with Penguin India prove the fact that I really don’t care about labels. In the past, I have been called a specialist of this and that and I refute those claims completely. I am just a student of India. Even my twitter bio says that. I came to journalism because I had jigyaasa, the intellectual curiosity about the things I saw around me and I wanted to explore their reality. So, my modus operandi is simple. If I’m intrigued about something and want to seek answers, I seek them for myself first before seeking them on behalf of anyone else. And that has pretty much guided my reporting from anywhere in India. So, I’m not really into what is fashionable to say and what isn’t. I say what I see and I try to write passionately about it.  

 

Do you have a particular target audience in mind when you write a book? Do you think Our Moon Has Blood Clots reached the right audience, considering the current political climate of the country? 

 

I think I am glad that Our Moon Has Blood Clots came out when our country’s politics was slightly simpler than this. My understanding of writing is very simple. I am a firm believer of the fact that your writing should be accessible to the last man down. So, there are many people who write to me saying that we have very scant understanding of English but they were able to read my book and I consider that my strength. I also think Indian journalists often miss out on the element of storytelling. So, when I write my books, I consider them an extension of my journalism. What I really want to do is to give the feel, colour and sound of the place and people I am talking about and that comes only when you have a basic understanding of storytelling. So I think these two parameters are personally very important to me.  

 

Politics shape every individual, especially a writer. And you, quite directly, write about overtly political issues. Considering that pen is mightier than the sword and books have the power to shape individuals, do you feel a heavy responsibility while writing?  

 

Yes, there’s a responsibility about what you’re writing.  

But again, like I said, you should not worry about labels. What you see, you see to the best of your ability. We’ve just come to this terrible and ugly situation where everything is reduced to the binary of left and right. Everyone has this pressing need to put everyone in a basket. I would not like to be in any basket. I hate this basket system. Personally, I give a lot of leeway to people. Most things around our universe are not black and white. They are shades of grey. There is a subtle nuance about everything. Who are we at the end of the day? We are the sum total of our experiences. Our politics is also shaped by what we have gone through as individuals. So, you should always keep that in mind before you accuse someone of being an urban Naxal or a closet Sanghi or any other such labels.  

 

Lastly, do you think there is a possibility of an endeavor where Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims could come together to share their respective points of view regarding the 1990s in the shape of a book or an art piece together?  

 

That’s an ideal situation. But for that to happen, the Kashmiri society from both sides has to meet somewhere. Unfortunately, we are not there right now. To begin with, the idea of reconciliation has to come from the majority in many ways. There has to be an acknowledgement about what happened in the 1990s. To the best of my knowledge, there is very little collective acknowledgement. In a private space, what a Kashmiri Pandit says to a Kashmiri Muslim doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things. What you say collectively as a debate matters, which will then find expression in writing, art and theatre. I think some work here and there gets done. My friend, M.K. Raina is an eminent theatre personality and he tries to perform initiatives like these. There are plays in which both Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims have participated. And you will find a microcosm of this in things such as weddings sometimes. There’ll be a Kashmiri Pandit wedding and a Kashmiri Muslim singer will be performing there and everyone will be nostalgic about olden times. But these events are far and few and come from a personal space. But in terms of society at a larger level, these efforts are largely missing.  

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re intrigued to read Rahul Pandita’s works, you can get your copy of Our Moon Has Blood Clots and Hello, Bastar at your nearest bookstore or through Amazon.  

 

 

 

7 must-read books on Kashmir

To understand Kashmir’s timeline, its people, and the continuing dilemmas and conflicts, it’s imperative for us to navigate through the pages of history and learn about the often untold and lesser-heard stories. So, we’ve compiled a list for you to dive into Kashmir’s saga and understand in depth the experiences of the natives, the ever-evolving landscape of the region, and the crisis that exists in this paradise.

*

Rooh by Manav Kaul
Rooh
Rooh || Manav Kaul

When Rooh tells Manav in a bar in New York that he ought to go to back home to the hills in Kashmir, he’s suddenly thrown into the loop of his past-a blue door, white walls and a house at the end of a lane. Soon, the seemingly small worlds in which his memories reside coalesce into a giant mass and envelop both his past and present, like dark clouds covering a brilliant blue sky.

Two young boys on the cusp of growing up, the cruelty of being a refugee in their own country, a father who is unable to come to terms with this confusing reality-an undercurrent of pain sweeps through his life. In this stream-of-consciousness novel, the protagonist, Manav, makes a physical and metaphorical journey back to Kashmir and relives the past as a part of the present. Rooh emerges as a deeply touching story of tender but broken people he meets along this journey.

Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer
Curfewed Night
Curfewed Night || Basharat Peer

Basharat Peer was a teenager when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir in 1989. Over the following years countless young men, seduced by the romance of the militant, fuelled by feelings of injustice, crossed over the Line of Control to train in Pakistani army camps. Peer was sent off to boarding school in Aligarh to keep out of trouble. He finished college and became a journalist in Delhi. But Kashmir-angrier, more violent, more hopeless-was never far away.

In 2003, the young journalist left his job and returned to his homeland to search out the stories and the people which had haunted him. In Curfewed Night he draws a harrowing portrait of Kashmir and its people. Here are stories of a young man’s initiation into a Pakistani training camp; a mother who watches her son forced to hold an exploding bomb; a poet who finds religion when his entire family is killed. Of politicians living in refurbished torture chambers and former militants dreaming of discotheques; of idyllic villages rigged with landmines, temples which have become army bunkers, and ancient sufi shrines decapitated in bomb blasts. And here is finally the old story of the return home-and the discovery that there may not be any redemption in it.

 

The Country Without A Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali
The Country Without A Post Office
The Country Without A Post Office || Agha Shahid Ali

Amidst rain and fire and ruin, in a land of ‘doomed addresses’, a poet evokes the tragedy of his birthplace.
The Country Without a Post Office is a haunted and haunting volume that established Agha Shahid Ali as a seminal voice writing in English. In it are stunning poems of extraordinary formal precision and virtuosity, intensely musical, steeped in history, myth and politics, all merging into Agha Shahid Ali’s finest mode, that of longing.

 

The Lost Rebellion by Manoj Joshi
The Lost Rebellion
The Lost Rebellion || Manoj Joshi

The Lost Rebellion is an acclaimed classic on the rise of Kashmir militancy, which chronicles how a simple call for azadi by bands of disgruntled youth was transformed within a year into a full-scale jihad against India. It dwells at length on Pakistan’s proxy war against India, exposes the US position on Kashmir and unsparingly critiques the political bungling and bureaucratic ineptitude that hamstrung the fight against insurgency.

This updated edition includes an insightful foreword by Amitabh Mattoo, a new introduction and a detailed aftermath chapter on what has transpired in the new millennium. Manoj Joshi reveals that although violence has come down drastically, there has been no closure to the nearly three-decade-old conflict. The alienation of the Kashmiris has, if anything, grown and is now manifesting itself in violent civil protest.

Raw, compelling and meticulously researched, The Lost Rebellion is a riveting account of the human drama that lies at the heart of the crisis that is Kashmir.

 

Our Moon Has Blood Clots by Rahul Pandita
Our Moon Has Blood Clots
Our Moon Has Blood Clots || Rahul Pandita

Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old in 1990 when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family, who were Kashmiri Pandits: the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of ‘Azadi’ from India.

The heartbreaking story of Kashmir has so far been told through the prism of the brutality of the Indian state, and the pro-independence demands of separatists. But there is another part of the story that has remained unrecorded and buried.

Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the unspoken chapter in the story of Kashmir, in which it was purged of the Kashmiri Pandit community in a violent ethnic cleansing backed by Islamist militants. Hundreds of people were tortured and killed, and about 3,50,000 Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes and spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country.

Rahul Pandita has written a deeply personal, powerful and unforgettable story of history, home and loss.

 

This World Below Zero Fahrenheit by Suhas Munshi
This World Below Zero Fahrenheit
This World Below Zero Fahrenheit || Suhas Munshi

On 5 August 2019, Suhas Munshi was returning to Srinagar from a visit to legendary poet Habba Khatoon’s relic in Gurez, when an unprecedented curfew was imposed upon Jammu and Kashmir, and Article 370 was abrogated. Through his travels and conversations with people across the Valley, Munshi tries to give a sense of what that moment has meant to the common Kashmiri.
This insightful travelogue breaks away from the clichéd view of Kashmir, one that sees it either as an earthly paradise or a living hell. It takes you to unexpected places, into the homes of poets, playwrights and street performers; to a heartwarming Christmas service with the minuscule Christian community in Baramulla; and inside the barricaded city of Srinagar’s football stadium, which is a lively refuge for the elderly and their memories of a glorious past. Over three weeks, for fear of being abandoned in harsh terrain, Munshi struggles to keep up with a group of Bakarwal nomadic shepherds as they make their way from Srinagar to Jammu over the mighty Pir Panjal mountains. And he finds a lone Pandit family living in a decrepit ghost colony in Shopian, the hub of militancy in Kashmir.
This World below Zero Fahrenheit presents a portrait of a people who’ve been overshadowed by the place they live in, even as it ruminates on the idea of home and exile.

 

Postbox Kashmir by Divya Arya
Postbox Kashmir
Postbox Kashmir || Divya Arora

Do only Muslims live in Kashmir?

Why do girls in Kashmir do stone-pelting?

Whom do they want freedom from?

Can you imagine being confined to the four walls of your home with no internet, no social media?

Are Kashmiris really invisible to the rest of the country?

These are some of the questions two teenagers–Saumya in Delhi and Duaa in Kashmir–asked through letters they exchanged over almost three years.

Framing these letters is the detailed history and commentary provided by Divya Arya, a BBC journalist who asked them to be pen pals, which places their conversations against the backdrop of the political history and turbulent present of Kashmir and India. Postbox Kashmir takes on the challenging task of attempting to portray life in Kashmir from the perspective of the young minds growing inside it and providing a context of understanding for the young generation watching it from the outside.

error: Content is protected !!