Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir by Farah Bashir

Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir by Farah Bashir

Author:Farah Bashir [Bashir, Farah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2021-04-23T00:00:00+00:00


I WOULD GROW UP TO BE COLLATERAL DAMAGE

THE LIGHT OF THE MORNING was expanding. It was getting brighter. The softest, most measured footsteps could be heard coming from the direction of the main door, and I knew who it was: Aunt Nelofar. Considerate as always, Father’s youngest sister, my aunt Nelofar walked in quietly and hugged Father. They both sobbed quietly. Aunt Nelofar’s presence made me aware of the sombreness of the funeral that would begin in a few hours. I recalled the funeral Aunt Nelofar had been to a few months ago, the one that she kept referring to as Karbala.

It was raining hard that day. I was covering my new textbooks with brown paper. It had been four months since our exams had been over, but the results were not out yet as the year had been especially restive. Teachers couldn’t work. As this was considered one of the most crucial years of high school, Father thought I should not waste time and get started with the syllabus on my own. Assuming I would pass, he bought me a new set of books for the next grade. Then, as usual, our annual squabble began: he wanted to give the books to the binder to get them hardbound and I didn’t want to part with my books.

‘What if the shop is gutted in a gunfight? What if the owner is killed and they never open the shop again? What if the binder goes missing and never returns?’ I worried, selfishly.

‘I will cover them with brown paper and then wrap cellophane on top,’ I convinced Father.

He didn’t try to reason too much. He wasn’t aware of what I was thinking. He bought me some sheets of brown paper, cellophane and a large bottle of glue. I was short of one roll of brown paper to cover some of my notebooks. I decided to cover the remaining ones with newspapers until schools opened regularly that year, which was a matter of chance than anything else. I looked through piles of broadsheets in the storage under the staircase. Though the writing in Urdu looked appealing and calligraphic, it also meant wrapping notebooks with unending deaths, killings, arrests and protests printed on those broadsheets. The morbid print was likely to discourage me from opening them.

I opted for the pile of Indian English dailies, which, other than the local news, also carried large sections of full-colour advertisements. These print ads had men posing with colognes, couples grinning wide to show their perfect dentition, young women posing even as they’d wake up in their fluffy beds to morning rays of the sun or slightly older women beaming at their children and their laundry, celebrating their motherhoods and everyday chores alike. I had developed a habit of scrutinizing the ads, wondering about the lives of the people who made them, the ones who featured in them and the people these ads were intended for. It was a world that was far from the long-standing strife and bereft of any unresolved political conflict.



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