GIRL, INTERRUPTED

Farah Bashir’s memoir of growing up in Kashmir is haunted by both absent comforts and present traumas

- Suvir Kaul

Farah Bashir’s memoir, Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir, is a tender and mournful account of growing up in a land in which, as her dedication puts it, children “know nothing of a normal childhood”. How could they, given that Kashmiri lives in the past three decades have been ravaged by violence that has displaced many and made others prisoners in their own homes? Those who have not left the Valley live under the surveillance and intrusions of a security apparatus that acts to instil fear into all.

Rumours of Spring tells of a girl coming into adulthood as she navigates the world outside her home while noting how nothing at home remains the same. Daily routines are disrupted, sometimes spectacularly, by curfews and crackdowns, but more often by the daily grind of fear and uncertainty. And then there is the news, or rumours in the absence of news: protests, firing, the killing of adults and children, the beating and humiliation of people going about their business. No one remains untouched, no child is exempt. The very language of childhood shifts, the everyday games and rituals of friendship, as children internalise the threat posed by bunkers and armed men with unchecked authority.