Bangalore, Jan 2022 Ashfaq Saraf today takes only so much from yesterdayas may serve to make life bearablenothing ever is as it was before, things change –age, morph, decay so thatone sees in the mirror, sees their own faceand exclaims with relief at the awareness: I did love is it … Read more →
APNA TIME AAYEGA — A Primer for an Artivism-Driven Online Performance
Compay Lizardi APNA TIME AAYEGA (translated from Hindi as “My/our time will come”). You see this motto on this red T-shirt as a battle cry of individual resilience. For the common Indian, and particularly the Indian youth, it is a saying that represents the overcoming of struggle to reach a … Read more →
The Near Death of an Unborn Marriage
Dr. O Bilal failed. Again. It was the twenty-eighth time in ninety-two days. I He loved football. Growing up, Bilal idolised the great footballers of the time and styled his play on a tall Portuguese goal-scoring machine. He became the most sought-after footballer in his village by the time he … Read more →
Review, Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan through Its Women Singers
Author Fawzia Afzal-Khan, 2020, 252 pages, Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford UP Reviewer Dr. Shazia Malik Dr. Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s book Siren Songs: Understanding Pakistan through its Women Singers is a wonderful feminist intervention into a conventionally masculinist discourse, depicting Pakistani women music performers’ dilemmas, resistances, and identities intricately connected to the political, … Read more →
Review: The Chill in the Bones
Written by Wani NazirPoetry, 2022, Book Street Publications, ISBN:978-93-91317-50-8, Pages 126, price INR. 200Reviewer Ayaz Rasool Nazki Kashmiri poets and writers never shied away from languages that were essentially foreign; the languages other than the native language – Kashmiri. At least two streams of intellectual expression have always existed, one … Read more →
A Letter to My Newborn Daughter
Gulam Mohammad Khan Dear Sweetheart, I am writing this letter to you when you are just three months old when you have just learned to smile; the smile that lights up the world of your mom and dad. I write this letter so that when you find it many years … Read more →
The Voice
O Kashmiri I tried telling The Voice, To let me go my way, But it spoke too loud, And the words were too strong, I couldn’t resist following, It, the way it led me, To an edge of a Cliff,’ I thought I heard the waves, Call my name from … Read more →
Ripening of Apples
Shabir Ahmed Mir “I am only taking these from you so that you don’t think you haven’t tried everything.” Parable of Law (The Trial, Franz Kafka.) When the Law changed Karim Nanwoar was relieved that he remained on the right side of it that is, until, he was told about … Read more →
A fun look at our Kashur Khandar and female folk
Mahliqa Muzafer Kashur wedding (khandar) is all fun with the lovely female folk, starting from cute chubby toddlers dressed in beautiful uncomfortable dresses to old great grannies who have only one job “Doikher Karun.” Now let me mark some other categories of women in the festivities. My favorite is the … Read more →
The tragedy of changes in J&K’s land laws
Muzamil Jaleel A point by point response to the claims made by the government regarding the changes/amendments in J&K’s land laws: The claim that 90 percent of the land cannot be sold to outsiders is completely wrong. The Big Landed Estates Abolition law of 1950 and the Agrarian Reform act … Read more →
Quarantined thoughts: Poetry for the hearts in pain
Shakir Shafiq Qadri’s debut poetry collection “Quarantined Thoughts” is out. Saddam Hussain captures a few aspects of the poet for Kashmir Lit The writer So, I am from Srinagar, Kashmir. I spent my childhood years in Downtown Nowhatta, in Srinagar. It was the most dangerous place to be … Read more →
Graveyard of empires
Syed Jesarat The postman hasn’t Left the post office since Two decades, My Dream’ letters – to the Broken mirror of Himalayas Will never reach you But the scattered carcasses. The pocket letters of Our times’ are hollow shadows of memories snatched away And kept in a dungeon … Read more →
No Lockdown can overcome us
Abdul Azeem* Nothing is new neither this plague nor its lockdown it came with. All along, we’ve been witness to so many plagues and lockdowns. Not only social distancing, the plague of occupation exposed us to communication lockdowns as well. Since the past seven decades, the continuous tribulations, are meddling … Read more →
The Coalman
Gulam Mohammad Khan Barely weeks before the arrival of long winters - when the reaping and binding and threshing is done, when the barns are full, when flocks of swallows migrate to warmer places, when the green foliage slowly wears on a yellowish hue, when the rivers flow low and … Read more →
Language of Resistance
Epistemic violence constitutes the very foundation of the pyramid of violence. The reason is that it is much more lethal, and has the power to transform the subjects or to rally an entire community against another based on the distortions scripted in the language in the form of histories, folk … Read more →
Blurred Hopes
Arfat Shiekh Blurred Hope is a short film about women in the Indian occupied Kashmir who have lost their sons, husbands, and brothers through enforced disappearances between 1989 and 2006. I took the inspiration for the film from an organization known as the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) … Read more →
Your Brother
iKoshur Your brother walks in shadows, roams the land in utter secrecy, his image alive in a multitude of hearts that are far too many to count. His feet touch upon the soil like determined whispers of a man whose voice is louder than any force a million strong. His … Read more →
Zanaan Wanaan release Kashmiri Bella Ciao
New Beginnings, Radical Possibilities Kashmir Lit (KL): What invoked you to adopt this anthem for Kashmir? Please tell us its significance? Zanaan Wanaan (ZW): As the Indian state stripped Kashmir of its partial autonomy on the 5th August by abrogating Article 370 and imposed an arbitrary communications ban, those … Read more →
Survival by Ashaq Hussain
(I) How do you bear the separation While your home is under siege: By recalling an army of metaphors Or dead clichéd caterpillars of hope? How do you bear separation alone While you oscillate between awful Dregs of despair and the hazy Halloweens of commercial ads? (ii) How do you … Read more →
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