Kashmir conflict is breeding artists; Pandit, Rather are latest progeny

Srinagar, Jun 28: Conflict and art have an abiding relationship, for the former evokes the need to express. Of late, Kashmir has seen this trend grow and as the valley descends into a period of turmoil, art has arisen to record the trauma of populism.
Both fiction and poetry are in demand, and two young writers have come up with their first books recently.
“We wouldn’t get Shahid back, but here’s a young man from the scorching land of Kashmir speaking to you about the taste of tumors, the scent of memory, the bite of drought with a ‘heart that is empty, quite empty’,” reads the blurb on Huzaifa Pandit’s debut collection of poems, ‘Green is the Colour of Memory’.
Huzaifa is pursuing his PhD in resistance poetry from University of Kashmir, focusing on Faiz (Pakistan), Agha Shahid Ali (Kashmiri origin) and Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine). His book is a collection of 36 poems. It has been published by Hawakal Publishers.
His poetry subtly describes “Kashmir as an expression of love, of hurt and a dream one chases for a life without violence and trauma”.
The book was the prizewinning entry of an international Chapbook competition held by Rhythm Divine Poets, Kolkata.
“I had submitted a short manuscript of about 20 poems in 2017 summer, and the results were declared in January 2018. They signed a deal then with Hawakal Publishers who were the publishers of one of the founding members Amit Shankar Saha. I later added about 10-12 poems to the manuscript, and it came out as a thin volume,” he says.
The book was written over a period of six years from 2012-18.
“The first draft of the poems was written when I was a Masters student at University of Pune, and studied creative writing in the first two semesters. However, most of the poems written during that period were eventually discarded. Most of the poems were written from 2014 to 2018 after I moved back (to Kashmir),” says Huzaifa.
Huzaifa treaded the path of writing in the summer of 2012.
“I started writing only in the summer of 2012. It came naturally as I struggled with a mental illness. Writing seemed to be a way to quiet the noise in my head. My doctors encouraged me to write, as it was thought to be a good catharsis,” he says.
After moving to Pune for his masters, the young poet struggled with the cultural difference, and loneliness.
“It was the first time I had been out of my home and away from my family. I turned to poetry to fill in the feelings of emptiness and loneliness. Since I also studied creative writing formally, I was required to produce poems as part of class assignments. That contributed too,” he says.
His book is comprised mainly of two kinds of poems – one which are deeply personal, written as a reaction to certain triggers and the political ones.
“For example, the title poem ‘Sketches of Memory’ was written at night in the first semester. I was returning from the hostel mess which was a ten-minute walk from our hostel after dinner. It was a dark path, and at a bend I noticed an electric lamp which threw greenish shadows on the ground. The first line of the poem: Green is the colour of memory, came floating in my mind, and thus the poem was conceived,” he recounts.
Huzaifa recalls that while pursuing his Masters, he also became more deeply aware of his Kashmiri Muslim identity.
“This happened primarily since I had excellent professors for three courses which deal with identity politics: Post-Colonial Literature, Feminism and LGBTQ literature. The LGBTQ professor, R Raj Rao, who was also our Head of Department, is an excellent poet in his own right, who writes about Queer identity. Drawing from the readings and responses, I started bringing more of Kashmir into my poetry,” he says.
With his love for Faiz Ahmed Faiz, he tried to express the experience of Kashmir in the poems.
“At the Cafes of your Memory, is an example that tries to express the survivor’s guilt after hearing news of civilian killings,” he says.
Commenting on the response received by the book so far, Huzaifa says, “Depends upon your definition of response. If you go by the numbers sold, then it may not be a raging success. But, if you judge it by the responses of those who have read it, it has been a decent success, atleast on social media. Recently, a friend Frency Manecksha wrote an essay on RAIOT dissecting the recent UN report on Kashmir. She started and ended with quotes from poems in the book. As it is poetry doesn’t sell a great deal, as compared to say, a novel, so that must be factored in too. Within its limitations, I think it has done alright.”
While explaining the myriad problems faced by budding writers, Huzaifa is especially critical of vanity publishing which has seen a spurt in recent years.
“Well the primary problem as with everything else is conflict. Conflict consumes the society with the anxiety of survival. It leaves no time for pursuits like establishment of any serious institution say a poetry collective that would encourage young people. The second problem is lack of access. Universities and schools still don’t encourage any serious pursuit of literature. It is all exam-oriented, and rarely develops a taste for literature that translates into lack of reading habits which thwarts growth,” he says.
He describes the explosion of “self-publishing” another major problem, as it allows you to bypass the traditional route where “you have to really slog and revise till some publisher accepts your work”.
The young poet has another book in the pipeline which will be translated mainly from Urdu, accompanied by essays elaborating contexts.
“I have a view that translation can be employed as a tool of production of resistance literature, and the book will demonstrate my theory.”
“The Night of Broken Glass is a work of terrifying and hypnotic beauty. Feroz Rather unsparingly sees through the horrors inflicted on the body and soul of Kashmir. I am reeling from the power and beauty of its sentences,” writes author, Basharat Peer.
Debutant author, Feroz Rather is currently a doctoral student of creative writing at Florida State University.
His novel ‘The night of Broken Glass’ is published by Harper Collins, India.
It is a fictional account of the sufferings of common people from the insurgency-torn ‘90s. It provides the readers a glimpse of the courage and daily life struggles of the people.
“In Kashmir we’ve experienced the worst. The spectacles of violence are jarring. The Night of Broken Glass is an attempt to capture that in the form of stories. There is a story called “The Stone Thrower” about this boy who witnesses another boy with a torn skull. The story measures the psychological impact of that experience on the protagonist and the battle to preserve his humanity and sanity,” says Feroz.
The author’s tryst with storytelling began at an early age. “I have been writing for many years now. When I started my MFA in 2010 at California State University, I wrote every morning for a couple of hours. But the Night of Broken Glass is something completely new and was written in Tallahassee during the last two years,” says Feroz.
Feroz believes that over the last three decades, Kashmir has been mired in violence and the effects of the violence on its inhabitants have rarely been rendered in fiction.
“It is one of the first fiction books in the market talking about Kashmir. The author’s writing style draws the reader in as it paints a violent image of the insurgency while also treating it with gentleness, peace and courage. It is one of our lead literary debuts,” says the young author.
His detailed imagery explores the psychological impact of the turmoil on its natives – Showkat who is made to wipe off graffiti on the wall of his shop with his tongue; Rosy, a progressive, jeans-wearing ‘upper-caste’ girl who is in love with ‘lower-caste’ Jamshid; Jamshid’s father Gulam, a cobbler by profession who never finds his son’s bullet-riddled body; the ineffectual Nadim ‘Pasture’ who proclaims himself a full-fledged rebel; even the barbaric and tyrannical Major S who has to contend with his own nightmares.
Rather recommends a generous dose of reading for any budding writer. He himself read Joyce’s Dubliners observing its craft and characterization closely, and was finally inspired enough to write a short story about a woman from Pampore titled ‘The Summer of 2010’.
The book has got rave recommendations from noted authors like Basharat Peer, Mirza Waheed, and Siddhartha Deb.
“Various media houses lining up to review it and interview the author. The cover has also been well received by people,” says Feroz
The experimentation into new genres bodes well for the English literary traditions in Kashmir.