Read 35 of 2022. Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir by Farah Bashir

Title: Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir
Author: Farah Bashir
Publisher: Fourth Estate India, Harper Collins India
ISBN: 978-9354224218
Genre: Memoir, Nonfiction
Pages: 240
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Farah Bashir’s book “Rumours of Spring” is an extremely poignant account of life as an adolescent in Kashmir of the 1990s, the Kashmir that was full of conflict and uncertainty. Nothing has changed for Kashmiris as of today, but we shall not go there.

I was gutted. As I was reading the book and when I finished reading it as well. I am still reeling from Bashir’s experiences as young girl in the valley – what her family and friends had to go through, and the trauma that will never go away. Some wounds never heal. Maybe that’s how it is meant to be.

The book starts with the death of Farah’s grandmother, Bobeh. The chapters follow the day of her funeral, compartmentalized into Evening, Night, Early Hours, Dawn, Morning, and Afterlife. Each chapter reveals more about Farah’s life and that of her family, amidst the turmoil – life that has changed completely, leaving only memories of the days gone by.

A young girl grows up under constant curfew, sudden raids, gunfire, and talk of death all around. A young girl grows up waiting to go to school, checking when the phone works – whether the school is open, and the buses are plying – checking whether she can go to school – dependent on whether where she stays is a sensitive area or not. A young girl has to constantly hear of deaths of loved ones, of cousins, of how you have to be careful – cannot go here and must go there with someone, and then to imagine what life must be like in places that are not Kashmir.

Bashir’s writing is devoid of sentiment but full of emotional heft. It doesn’t want to make you cry, as much as it wants you as a reader to empathize and understand the way things were. At the same time, she is trying very hard not to judge – the government, the Indian army, and even the militants for that matter. She is only stating her truth – the one that she experienced, the one that her family faced, the truth where everything we take for granted is full of terror and crackdown.

Time plays such an important role throughout the book and yet not. Bobeh’s body has to be kept at home for a day, because of curfew. Time passes then – slowly for Farah and her family, as somehow relatives and friends come to console, memories rise. When you could freely listen to music, when freshly baked bread could be bought without fear, and when you could go to one room from another in your house without the fear of wood creaking, leading to the army asking questions and perhaps even shooting a stray bullet.

Farah interweaves the history of a state and a country – including its politics with her personal spaces. From her friends who are Kashmiri Pandits and have to leave without a word in 1990 to the siege of the Hazratbal shrine in 1993, when she loses all will to study and do better. Everything is acknowledged, everything is remembered with the intention of it being forgotten.

Rumours of Spring speaks of what is lost, what remains, and hopefully what will not be lost. It is a chronicle of a girlhood, but also negotiating spaces of beauty, grace, hope, and identity in the midst of chaos, terror, and death.

Read 208 of 2021. Taxi Wallah and Other Stories by Numair Atif Choudhury

Title: Taxi Wallah and Other Stories Author: Numair Atif Choudhury
Publisher: HarperCollins India, Fourth Estate India
ISBN: 978-9354892134
Genre: Short Stories
Pages: 132
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

I haven’t read Babu Bangladesh!, but now I will. I will ensure that I do, at least before the year ends, because Numair’s writing holds you by the throat, it suffocates you, it does not let you be, and more than anything else, it makes you see the stark differences in society, if in case you didn’t know about them already. 

Choudhury’s Bangladesh is a place very much like others in and around the country – poverty-stricken, gross injustice and inequalities that are visible from a mile, and more than anything else for you to acknowledge it. They make you uncomfortable because that’s the truth and we are aware of it.

Whether it is the very evident class difference that surfaces in “Rabia” – a story of a house-help and her sudden change of relationship with her aapa (who doesn’t want to be called that anymore), or in “Crumble” – a very hard-hitting story of Shahed – a brick-breaker in Dhaka who is just trying to make ends meet, or even if it is through the story “Different Eyes” about organ donors – the ones who have no choice but to do what they do, to settle their loans, each story exposes the darkness within. Choudhury’s stories aren’t for the faint-hearted. They aren’t glossy, they aren’t easy to digest, they don’t exist in happy and shiny places. They live hidden in shadows and come out when they wish to, or are already in plain sight but not seen by people.

Numair sees the world through a lens so huge and yet so minuscule – the stories could perhaps be sent in any third-world country and yet only belong to Bangladesh. The joys (however small), the sorrows, the defeat, the victories (very rare), and kindness that displays itself unexpectedly (say in “Chokra” – a beautiful story of street children and one in particular), Choudhury’s writing is sharp, raw, poetic, and shows the mirror the world.

Read this fantastic collection of short stories, and then read Babu Bangladesh! (as I will), and then lament about the fact that he was taken away too soon.

Bhaunri by Anukrti Upadhyay

Title: Bhaunri
Author: Anukrti Upadhyay
Publisher: Fourth Estate India, HarperCollins India
ISBN: 978-9353570033
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 148
Source: Publisher
Rating: 3 stars

Bhaunri is the book that should be read on a rainy day. It is short and can be finished in less than an hour and a half. It is atmospheric. It is everything that you want from a book not set in a milieu you are familiar with. The writing makes you turn the pages, and also because you want to know how to book ends.

This novella by Anukrti Upadhyay is set in a village in Rajasthan. The protagonist, Bhaunri is married, according to the customs of her nomadic tribe of blacksmiths at a very young child, till the time comes for her husband and his family to take her away. She is a young woman now and is aware of the ways of the world. Her parents have taught her well and at the same time given her the liberty to think for herself. There is another angle to it – her parents’ love story which I will not reveal.

Bhaunri finds herself drawn deeply to her husband Bheema. The love isn’t only physical but also all-consuming. Her mother-in-law and her marital life are also a very important part of the book. With the great atmospheric background of the desert and village life, the drama plays out, to reach the end that I didn’t have in mind.

I liked the book because like I said the setting had me gripped from the first time. The folklore, the myths, the superstition, and above all the food that was cooked all worked. Plus the way the author describes the house and what goes on in there – the shed, the workings of sleeping outside in winter, so on and so forth.

What didn’t work is that the pace seemed too rushed. I felt that there was a tearing hurry to just finish the book and not build on the emotions of other characters, except Bhaunri. Also, the second-half of the book (well not like a film), somehow just left me feeling that a lot could’ve gone down (with one character just being a prop and the other not being spoken about at all), yet I guess it is to the author’s discretion.

Having said this, Bhaunri is a book that is refreshing and full of female agency and must be read to explore new lands, thoughts, and ways of life. A book that will sure want me to read her other book Daura in due time.