New Delhi: In the introduction to Lōal Kashmir, the author Mehak Jamal, born in Srinagar to a Kashmir Muslim father and a Maharashtrian Hindu mother, says: “I grew up in Kashmir, struggling with language, religion and belonging. I always felt I belonged to Kashmir, but I wasn’t sure Kashmir belonged to me.” But as one reads her book, recounting stories of ordinary men and women struggling for their love amid the tragedies that define her homeland, she manages to make Kashmir belong to her, and in some ways, to the reader.
‘Lōal’—the Kashmiri word for love and affection—serves as both title and framework for 16 true love stories that make up her book Lōal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land, published by HarperCollins. In this word, love is a precious thing one holds onto with their lives, not a utilitarian concept the dating app-infested modern world wants it to be. Without romanticizing people’s struggle, Jamal documents how love persists in a region where nothing comes easily. Through intimate portraits, we meet characters like Javed, caught in a military crackdown while carrying a love letter; newlywed Zara, indefinitely separated from her American husband by visa complications; Sagar and Aalmeen who steal precious moments together during militancy; and Khawar and Iqra, struggling to reconnect during the communications blackout following Article 370's abrogation.
Aside from politely and sensitively resisting the reductive narratives often applied to Kashmir, the book provides a vital counterpoint to media portrayals of Kashmiris as a monolith, revealing instead the complex humanity of people caught between geopolitical tensions. It illuminates the lived experiences of people in the Valley—experiences many Indians remain ignorant about. “The internet listed the number of days of shutdown each year,” Jamal writes, “but not one article talked about the number of childhood dreams that evaporated each passing summer.”
Jamal’s book shines in its smallest, most intimate moments, revealing the internal worlds of characters through subtle interactions that resonate deeply. What distinguishes it is its focus on the emotional texture of everyday life in Kashmir. Rather than merely documenting political events, Jamal examines what happens “when you cannot communicate your longing to your beloved.” In doing so, she illuminates what conventional histories often miss: “In protecting the history of a people, we often forget to preserve their memories as well,” she writes.
Through these collected narratives of love persisting against all odds, Jamal writes a love letter to her troubled paradise, which also serves as a profound human document and a depository of oral history.
In a conversation with Article 14, Jamal talked about her book, changes in Kashmir through the years, the universality of love, the mainstream portrayal of her homeland and the cost of the recent India-Pakistan war on the lives of Kashmiris.
What was your idea behind writing Lōal Kashmir?
I had been toying with the idea of starting a memory project in Kashmir in 2020. I wanted to start documenting the lived public memory of the Kashmir conflict. When I initially started talking to Kashmiris around me, I immediately got the feeling that the project needed some more form—a theme that can guide it. That's how Lōal Kashmir was born, to look at the Kashmir conflict through the lens of love and longing. These were stories that I personally had not read from Kashmir, so I was curious to find out more about them.
You have structured Lōal Kashmir into three chronological sections: ‘Otaru,’ ‘Rath,’ and ‘Az.’ How did you see the nature of love changing across these different periods of Kashmir's history?
Ōtrü, rāth, az - mean 'day before yesterday', 'yesterday' and 'today'. The stories are divided into these three sections according to their time periods. The first one has stories from the 80s and 90s, the second brief section has stories from the mid to late 2000s, and the final and longest section of the book deals with narratives from the abrogation of Articles 370 & 35A, and its aftermath. Interestingly, I discovered that so much in Kashmir has changed in the 30-40 years that the book traverses, but the nature of the conflict and how Kashmiris engage with it—equal parts cautious and equal parts indifferent—has not changed. The lovers in the stories still have the same urgency to show their love to their significant other, because the uncertainty of Kashmir doesn’t let them be at ease.
The avenues to love and express their love has changed and evolved, but what remains unwavering is the need to find a ‘constant person’ in the chaos, the one who will be waiting at the end of the tunnel. Also the first chapter of the book is called ‘Love Letter’ which is in the early 1990s, where a teenage boy and his girlfriend write letters to each other, because there is no other means to express their thoughts and love. Almost 30 years later in 2019 when the abrogation makes all modes of communication kaput, it is this letter writing that many couples resort to to reach a loved one. This is equal parts poetic and tragic. Just goes to show that Kashmiris have been living in a stasis for far too long, and it’s high time that people everywhere notice and start engaging.
Why did you feel that romantic narratives were an effective approach to deliver the intended message to readers, especially those from mainland India?
Love is a universal emotion that anyone and everyone can relate with, so I thought it would be a good entry point into Kashmir. While seeking these stories, I knew they were the lesser known narratives from Kashmir that often fall through the cracks, as the Kashmir conflict takes precedence—as it should. I wanted to focus on stories that showed what it is to live through the conflict itself, almost like an extension of it. I must add, just because the majority of them are romantic stories (amongst familial, platonic etc.), does not mean that they romantice the conflict in any way. I felt that reading stories of love from a place that is often in the headlines—yet the lives of its people are not examined much—would be an intriguing proposition for many readers. Through the book, I hope to create empathy in the reader, so that Lōal Kashmir can become the starting point of their inquiry into Kashmir, Kashmiris and the conflict.
How did you source these stories? What were the challenges you faced while convincing people to share their love stories in such detail?
I sourced these stories through an online project call and through word of mouth. The majority of the stories came through the project call, and several came through the latter. I conducted the interviews on the phone and Zoom, and a few in person. The main challenge I had anticipated before even talking to the contributors was that they would not want to reveal their real identities. So in the Google form that was attached to the project call, I had kept an option to be anonymous. Thus even before the interviews I would know who wanted to be anonymous and who was comfortable in revealing their name. This was mainly because talking about love in a conservative society like Kashmir is often seen as a taboo. Adding to that, some contributors wanted to protect the identities of the people in their stories who weren't direct contributors or who they weren't in touch with anymore.
Another layer was the ever present fear in Kashmir of someone listening or words getting misconstrued regarding the conflict. I didn’t deal with the last one a whole lot while ‘interviewing’, but later on there were instances in which the contributors changed their minds when the book was closer to release, and chose to retract their stories. Overall, I would say that I didn’t face difficult challenges in having people share their stories in detail. While talking to them, I felt this constant undercurrent that they wanted the world to know their stories, to tell people how they live and love. That took precedence over any other hesitation.
The post-Article 370 communication blackout features prominently in your stories. How was it collecting these deeply personal narratives at a restricted time?
In 2020 when I started collecting all these stories, the ‘Article’ as Kashmiris call that period, was very fresh in their minds. Thus, the majority of the stories in the book are from that time, which is a great way to document collective oral history of a concentrated chunk of time. The stories from the first two sections are around the same time periods, but they don't unfold at the exact same time. But in the section ‘Az’, all the stories are taking place at the same moment. What this does is, it creates a ‘collective undeniability’. When many people come together and say ‘this happened to us’, it becomes much harder to deny what's happening and has happened in Kashmir.
Especially during a time like 2019 when the voices of Kashmiris—journalistic and civilian both were choked, barely any information was coming from the ground and the whole of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh was under a shadow of uncertainty—memory is a great tool. I didn't face many challenges while collecting stories from this period in particular because the contributors were surer than ever—after the unequal information dissemination and clampdown on voices in 2019—that their stories needed to be out in the world.
Your book includes stories about transgender relationships and interfaith couples. How did you navigate these sensitive topics in the context of Kashmir's relatively conservative society?
Again, I would say that these were stories that the contributors were eager to tell, especially the one with the trans-man in a queer relationship with a cis-woman. If you read the book, you would know that they are not together anymore. When the book was closer to release, I had to go back to the contributors and get written permissions as well due to some protocol with my publishers. That is when I found out that the couple had broken up and I was expecting the contributor to retract his story. On the contrary, he was surer than ever that he wanted his story out there, because of the dearth of queer narratives from Kashmir. He wanted anyone else who’s in the same boat as him to know that they weren’t alone.
There is only one story in the whole book about an interfaith couple. I had another one, but that person decided to retract their story. Given that my parents had an interfaith marriage as well, I would have loved to have even more diversity in the book, but I am glad these narratives are in it. People’s reactions to them have been heartwarming, though I don’t know what everyone who reads the book thinks.
How do you, as an author and filmmaker, see the demonization of Kashmiris in mainstream media and films like ‘The Kashmir Files’?
I think Lōal Kashmir came from a growing frustration in me about how Kashmir and Kashmiris were portrayed in popular media, film and news, etc. Kashmir in movies went from being that place where they shot Bollywood love songs in the ’60s and ’70s, to a place of terror from the 1990s onwards. Somehow, Kashmir seems to exist only in these two dichotomies with little room left in between for authenticity and nuance. Time after time, the goings on in Kashmir are sensationalised into headlines and subsequently the headlines become the titles of movies, further cementing the monolithic portrayals of the land and its people.
Lōal Kashmir seeks to break through this clutter and show Kashmiris as real people, and not stereotypes.
In your introduction, you mention having a Kashmiri Muslim father and Maharashtrian Hindu mother. How did your mixed heritage influence your perspective while writing this collection?
From collecting the stories to the book coming out, it has been four years. It has been a personal journey for me, not just because it is my first book. I grew up in Kashmir struggling with belonging, and writing this book has certainly gotten me closer to Kashmir than ever before. To be invited into someone’s world and their personal story, to have them open up to you and want to tell you things that they would shy away from otherwise, is the greatest sense of belonging to a place and a people. So writing this book has been cathartic for me. I wouldn’t say that my heritage particularly contributed to my perspective while writing. I have tried my best not to ‘add’ myself to the narratives and rather act as a shepherd guiding the stories.
Several of your stories involve characters going to extraordinary lengths—flying despite fears, hiking to police stations—just to communicate with loved ones. How did documenting these efforts change your own perspective on digital connectivity and relationships?
I think an easy way to understand this would be the Covid lockdown. The world was at a standstill, people were away from each other, but they were still connected to each other digitally. In Kashmir, just the previous year in 2019, not only were people disconnected physically, they were disconnected digitally as well.
Shutting off phones and the internet in Kashmir to control information dissemination was not new in 2019, but the length and extent of the communication blockade post the ‘Article’ was unprecedented. I am not comparing the two lockdowns, as they are not equal in any way. I just want to use this as an example to show how people from the mainland and elsewhere take communication for granted, whereas for Kashmiris sometimes it becomes a privilege. People should not have to live like this.
Beena and Sakib's wedding showcase Kashmiri traditions and rituals, while Layla and Mahdi’s story creates interesting parallels between conflict zones like Kashmir and Gaza. Beyond the love stories themselves, how important was it for you to document these cultural practices and boundary-crossing love stories?
Wherever possible, I did add as much cultural and political context for the reader as possible. Of course, a lot of these were organically part of the stories. This was not just to make the narratives tangible and the stories more evocative, but also to do justice to them and keep them authentic. So that Kashmiris see themselves in the book, and non-Kashmiris learn more about the place.
In the case of Layla and Mahdi, I feel there can be a joint allyship and unspoken solidarity when it comes to such relationships. I know that Kashmiris everywhere support the Palestinian cause and see themselves in their struggle, and vice versa. They are very vocal about the same. So personal relationships—romantic or otherwise based on such similarities will certainly have a shared way of being and thinking. But beyond that, there are real human beings in these relationships, so their bonds cannot only function on the basis of this.
How do you see the recent war between the South Asian nations and its effect on the Kashmiri psyche?
Kashmir has had an ongoing conflict for decades and continues to endure the wounds of it. So many different wars and skirmishes have been fought between the two warring nations. The recent exchange between the nations shows that the cost of life of the people from the region is seen as dispensable—this includes J&K, areas along the LoC (Line of Control) and IB (International Border), and PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, etc. These cycles of violence have a deep effect on the psyche of the people, with many dealing with undiagnosed PTSD and trauma. What is unsurprising but still shocking is that there is barely any public uproar or outcry when there is a loss of life or property from this region. That is all seen as collateral.
(Zeyad Masroor Khan is a freelance journalist and author of City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh.)
Get exclusive access to new databases, expert analyses, weekly newsletters, book excerpts and new ideas on democracy, law and society in India. Subscribe to Article 14.