It was Pawans share which lead me to seek out the review. Read Basharat Peers Curfewed Nights, he says, a memoir cum reportage about Kashmir. He doesnt define himself as an Indian, hates India as an occupying power. His sympathy obviously lays with the Kashmiris and not with India or Pakistanis and he is very upfront about it. He writes about Indian army picking up kids from their villages and handing them live mines, sending them on gunpoint into abandoned houses where militants are firing from. He writes about a bride being picked up and gangraped by soldiers and the baraat being fired on. Hes not really concerned about Kashmiri pandits, though there is an obligatory chapter about them. Hes concerned with mostly the kashmiri muslims. And then he closes his book with a beautiful moment, when an officer from a paramilitary force who starts bullying and threatening some journalists, but then the conversation veers towards Delhi university, and the two sides share their memories about girls hostels and college haunts. And the officer says wistfully, I was a different man before I joined the force. And before the crisis started. And for the first time, in this book, you see that its not only Kashmir that has changed. Its India that has changed too because of the conflict. Its a sad, anguished, marvellous book. If you are the patriotic sorts, you will hate this book. But if you can look beyond the surface and beyond the friend-enemy duality, theres lot to be learnt, and lot about the world that you know, that you will start questioning. My observation about a friend/enemy construct was to look at the book not in terms of hamare desh ko aisa kaise keh raha, but to see it as a human story. What is undoubted is, Kashmir is a murky pot of grey and we mostly make our observations from a perspective of presumption. The more ignorant the populace remains, the greater the scope of pain and strife?
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 07:51:08 +0000
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