Ha mya Prutche na darmeyaan’as, kour kun
Dachun, khowur. yerre be’h aab’as, kour kun

(I asked the transient ephemeral, where to?
right, left. I drift in the waters, where to?)

~Korkun, Mohammad Muneem, alif

The above lines by a contemporary poet and singer from Kashmir, Muneem, unveil the inevitable sense of loss, longing, and precarity of life in Kashmir due to incessant territorial contestation. Kashmir is geographically located to the north of India in the Himalayan region and has been a territorial dispute between two nuclear states, India and Pakistan, for more than seven decades. Further China, at times, also extends its claim over the region. The region has been subjected to military high-handedness, constant violence, and oppression. The above lines, while reflecting on precarity as an ineradicable part of human nature, don’t merely point it towards an existential condition. The repetitive emphasis remains on a continuous search and longing or perhaps a hope for a return to a place, of departure, of belonging, or a destination ‘unknown’.

Kashmir and its landscape are constantly projected as an exotic paradise and framed in the discourses of fantasy and desire. It results in a hyper affective relation with the place which is seen as an adjunct to the extensive apparatus of the control.

A performative hike in the upper western reaches of Pir Panjal range of Kashmir, a territory in which strolling in the pastures, meadows, orchards or even climbing some nearby hill, a common leisurely activity, is restricted through the code as AFSPA, PSA, etc. that control the movement in such places and promotes inactivity in these geographies. 

‘Where to?’ is a journey that collects stories, myths, and fables from these places and looks into these narratives as an entry point to reimagine the cartographies in a state of exception. It provokes to look for alternative ways to historicize a place, not necessarily anthropocentric. It becomes an inquiry into unknowns, silences, the echoes of such places, and inter-relations of lives, species, and ecologies in such spaces.

Select Narratives

Time: Unknown Date: Unknown

Place: Unknown

Title: Unknown

How long does it take for an eye to dissolve in the forgotten river? One faces this question at the beginning of this journey where one enters a territory of unknown. The only known markers in this space are the graves of the unknown. Very little is known about these graves and the bodies in them, of men, women, and children, their death, and even less is known about their lives. There are numbers etched on the epitaphs of each grave. 1, 2, 3,…, 1846,…,1930,… 2710, …, 2810,…. 6000,… The remains in these graves were never identified and it is unknown if anyone remembers them in life.

We know this land has eaten up thousands, and thousands more it will. We also know that none of these unknown people died a natural death. These graveyards are guarded by men in boots. We have no details about their families and what they used to do before their death. Nor do we know why they were killed. In all likelihood, they must have been arrested, detained, tortured, humiliated, and perhaps sodomized or raped. No documents of the confession or charges of their ‘crimes’ exist. Were they found ‘guilty’ of sedition, or treason? Or were they simply incarcerated for an association with someone charged with these ‘crimes’? It’s all unknown. It’s also unknown if they died here or if they were brought dead here?

But at several other places that are open fields, pastures, meadows, and rivers, it is also unknown who killed them? A date of burial and a number as a count is all that remains of these ‘undead’ in a timeless place where countless such graveyards exist. 

In this place, to be born is to be wrong; to be wrong is to be convicted, and to be convicted is to be liable for abandonment in life and death. And to be obscured in the voids between forgetfulness and memory.

My journey shall continue to seek…

1130 hrs, Monday, 31 August 2021

Yousmarg

The meadows of Jesus

The black tarmac road seems to follow a lake, and in their cryptic conversations, one arrives in Yusmarg. The lake, like a sardonic young soul, gets the water from a stream rooted in a black spring. The earthy scent in this water is nostalgia and memories. It is also history. Of Noah’s prayers touching the skies and falling as torrential rains. The first drops of rain, as they hit the flesh of the Earth and Noah sat sailing in his Ark.

There is another memory, which has travelled here. That reverberates with the meadows of this quaint beauty. It is Jesus. His footsteps are traced here. He must have lent his stories and pathos to this place. Perhaps a refugee of time. Or to deposit his words and meanings into this nothingness. Or to hope for something which only a wilderness can preach. The meadows, mountains, and dense forests carry his name to this day.

1727hrs Wednesday, 01 September 2021

Nakkad Pal, Danizab

In a legend, a deluge destroyed everything in Kashmir and spared the mountains. The whole of Kashmir was effaced and turned into a sea. As the roar of the waters settled, the ocean that formed came to be called Satisar. An old sage narrates this tale in the middle of a dense forest. He speaks of it, like it is happening. Time is a farce for him. That is how it ought to be narrated. Like it is happening.

Why does Kashayap break forth Himalayas, and drain the water from the lake? And kill Jalodbhava? Is that how the land becomes habitable?

1320 hrs Thursday, 02 September 2021

Mosa Masjid, Across the Ridge of Qatchagoel

The promised land.

When Moses freed the Slaves of the ancient civilisation, he wandered in the hot deserts of Egypt and the spear-like peaks of Khurasan for years. After 73 years, he crossed the mountains of Pir Panjal through Bufliaz. Alexander and  Mehmud of Gazni have all reached Kashmir through these routes. Moses set up the camp along with his followers in the valley, east of the mountain peak, in the shadow of a huge rock. His followers were tired. Their words were bitter and they questioned Moses’ decision to bring them to such wilderness. ‘Are we here to die’?, they said through suppressed emotions.

Moses raised his head and smiled at them. Perhaps with a smile that knows and cannot tell. Or with a smile, that does not know and cannot tell. Or perhaps, the smile that waited itself for an answer. Moses gathered them around the rock and placed his staff on the rock and commanded the rock to flow its water. The rock burst into a gurgling stream and this continues to flow across many rivers in the valley. 

Moses then climbed the ridge and viewed in the distance the land promised.

1540 hrs Thursday, 02 September 2021

Mukkirsar, The dirty lake

How does a lake which quenched the thirst of Alamdar of Kashmir turn dirty? Does disobeying contaminate the water of a lake, sweeter than all the springs and rivers known? Or does splitting itself into two rivers, Romeshe and Chatche kan Nad, on two sides away from Charar i Sharief resting place of Alamdar make it filthy?