The sacrificial Eid is yet months away Yet Ishmael is dangled on the cross The angels keep their censored silences and pour them into our hearts. It isn’t even Muharram But sisters wrap mourning over their torn cloaks, and wipe off sweat from the cold bullets settled in the brows … Read more →
Pashmina, Tombstones have names & Witness by Sayen Aich
There have been evenings When my grandmother would weave stories, from the pashmina threads of memory. That still kept her going. With such delicate threads one had to be careful. A little lie here, a little too much effort And a castle of stories would crumble down. She would … Read more →
The Calendar of Death by Zeeshan Ali
1 With the onset of Spring, Death comes seeking: in twos and threes in gold-plated pyramids in ogives, traced by thirsty hands (wounded by salt) by instinct. It slithers away with the smell of impunity. 2 In the midst of Summer, death comes seeking, again: in hundreds and thousands of … Read more →
To a half disappearance & If wishes were horses by Zabirah Fazili
Back home we laughed merry laughs, tears streaming down our eyes, a defiant smile on the face offsets familiar aches felt by us. we lost him in our strength and frailty yet we hugged and held each other back home to shelve our shrieks we smiled at our helplessness. we … Read more →
‘When Kashmir wept, I wrote a poem’ by Premjish
To the Kashmir I’ve never visited, not even in my dreams. I know you will understand, my fear for the uniforms, the masculine parades, the gun holding men who look like Indian gods with elongated genitals, who look like my father with their moustaches, you know I despise my father, … Read more →
Ghazal for February by Ananya Pandey
There is a dog on the road looking up at the city every day With eyes of a poem’s tireless wonder – I too try, every day On Rani Jhansi road, the houses have been half demolished for years Here, construction and livelihoods carry on every day At the chowk … Read more →
A view of the Women’s War in Kashmir
By Shazia Yousuf The soldiers had just left and my grandmother’s house looked battered and bruised. Cupboards and chests lay open like fresh wounds, bleeding secrets of the family that were neatly kept between books and folded clothes. It was a crackdown, a routine search operation that Indian soldiers carried out … Read more →
This Is How Kashmiri Women Are Risking Their Lives
April 6, 2017, 4:30 PM ET Republished transcript of an Interview with Arooja (name changed) a Kashmiri woman on NPR’s All Things Considered JULIE MCCARTHY Some residents of the Indian-administered Kashmir Valley are using more aggressive tactics to thwart Indian security forces: Women are placing themselves, literally, between militants and soldiers. KELLY … Read more →
Stories of Kashmir’s Women
Kashmiri writer-journalist Majid Maqbool spoke to Freny Manecksha about her new book that focuses on the women of the valley and their struggles with life in a place that is constantly at war Freny Manecksha first visited Kashmir in October 2010 and kept returning to the valley every year since. … Read more →
Enforced Disappearance of a young Kashmiri woman
Raqib Hameed Naik Doda (Jammu and Kashmir): Inside the dilapidated single story mud house with wood and polyethene sheets covering the roof, Ghulam Mohammad Butt, 88 opens his steel trunk and brings out an old, torn newspaper. Flipping all the pages, he stops at the last and keeps gazing at the … Read more →
Behold, I Shine: Narratives of Kashmir’s Women and Children
Freny Manecksha Book Excerpt: Chapter “I Can Save Myself: Dissent and Feminism in a New Millenium” The challenging male diktats on morality is extended to conversations around religion. In a lengthy conversation, Essar remarked how men simply assume they are the thekedars of what is right or wrong and she was … Read more →
Jaffna Street: Tales of Life, Death, Betrayal and Survival in Kashmir
Excerpt from “The Saint of Shalimar” With these armies comprising Pathans, Poonchis and Mirpuris knocking at his gates, the story—making the rounds of Srinagar street—goes that the Dogra monarch sought an audience with Meerak Shah so as to seek some divine intervention to ward off the looming cataclysmic scenario awaiting … Read more →
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