Srinagar-born, Mumbai-based Kashmiri writer-filmmaker Mehak Jamal speaks with Mayank Chhaya | SAM Conversation
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00:00The mention of Kashmir conjures up a discomfiting mixture of images of unremitting Himalayan
00:24beauty and its decades-long separatist violence. It's easy to get sucked into the complex historical
00:31forces that have overwhelmed everyday life. Instead of doing that, writer and filmmaker
00:39Mehak Jamal chose to reach out to Kashmiris who navigate the unique challenges of living
00:45a measure of normal life in the giant shadow of Kashmir's relentless conflict. The result
00:50is her remarkable debut-making book, Lol, Kashmir, Love and Longing in a Torn Land that
00:57chronicles personal stories of what she describes as love, loss and longing. Incidentally, lol
01:05in Kashmiri means love. A child of mixed parentage with a Kashmiri Muslim father and Maharashtrian
01:13Hindu mother, the Mumbai-based Mehak was born in Sringer where she spent many years and
01:18continues to visit the valley regularly. She spoke to Mayank Chah reports from Mumbai.
01:25Welcome to Mayank Chah reports. Mehak, it's a great pleasure to have you.
01:28Thank you. It's nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me and for your interest in my
01:34book.
01:35Oh, you're always welcome. Congratulations on your debut-making collection of stories
01:42from Kashmir. I'm quite fascinated by what I've read so far.
01:50A thread that runs through all your stories is your ability to listen with great attention
01:58and even empathy for those who are telling their stories. That's evident in details that
02:06you've captured, say, for instance, in the story of this title, Visa. Tell me how you
02:15retain genuine interest in other people's stories.
02:21Like, like how I retain my...
02:24Yeah, it's an effort to get into somebody else's life to begin with. I mean, I'm sure
02:32it builds up into something interesting, but to begin with, it's a bit of an effort
02:37for anyone else.
02:39I think, see, I've been, the book is out now, but I've been working on this project, I would
02:48say for the past four years, almost. And I started in December 2020. And I started collecting
02:57these stories, I started interviewing people, talking to them around that time. And I think,
03:05so yeah, so most of those stories have been collected around 2020 and 2021. And a few
03:12later, only then, you know, I'd gotten into, when I decided that it was going to be a book,
03:17and I knew that I wanted to look for specific stories. That's when I went out, you know,
03:23to look for them again. But why I was interested in, you know, finding these stories and telling
03:31them was really because I was intrigued by how love changes in a place of conflict, or
03:40how it's affected in a place of conflict, when it's, you know, not given as much importance
03:45of everything else which is happening around these people. And even though it's seen as
03:52something separate from the unrest itself, it is very much affected by it. And as,
04:01and, yeah, as an extension of it, I think. And so I think when I was, when I was interviewing
04:10different people, and all the different contributors,
04:14genuinely, I think I was very surprised about how they opened up to me, in many ways. And,
04:25and I don't know whether it has to do with the questions I was asking or the way I was asking
04:30them. But I was genuinely surprised. And, and as those conversations went ahead, I,
04:37my curiosity also grew. So that's why I feel, that's why I feel that genuine interest kind of
04:45never really went down. And also, because I am a filmmaker, and I'm a very visual thinker,
04:53I could see those stories kind of unfolding in front of me while these people were speaking.
04:59So I was, you know, I was already writing it in my head. And I knew that, okay, this is how
05:04it's going to start, this is how it's going to end, this is the point where it's going to end.
05:09So that way. And so I think that also dictated what kind of questions I asked them. And it really
05:16kept me focused on what is it that I am asking these people. Because I wanted to, I wanted to,
05:27you know, get stories and ask people questions, which they themselves felt like they haven't
05:33been asked before, or nobody's taken that kind of interest in their life before. And I think they
05:39were equally surprised by the project, and me as I was by their retelling of their experiences.
05:51What's been your assessment of how in the time of conflict, love, longing and loss play out in a
06:00place like Kashmir? Does it get accentuated? Does it get distorted? People come closer because of
06:07the conflict? I'm sure there are several consequences to any conflict when it comes to
06:12these emotions. Yeah, I think it can affect it for the better or for the worse. There are a lot
06:21of stories in the book where the people in them have not ended up together. And there are many
06:26in which they have as well, and they're married, they have children. And there are people who just
06:31lost touch and haven't seen them, seen each other in decades. So there are all sorts of stories,
06:39and also not just restricted to romantic love, also platonic love between two friends, or
06:48love between parents and their children. And also love for a land, love for your homeland,
06:56even that is there in the book. And I feel like in all of them, they are unique in their own
07:05separate and different ways. And I feel that, yes, love does get affected in a place like
07:14Kashmir. Because often, when there is so much uncertainty around you, especially in
07:22really short periods of time, like for example, after the abrogation of Article 370, which happened
07:28in 2019, when there was a big communication blockade. And those stories actually take up
07:34the majority of the book towards the end. There were months and months upon which there was
07:41complete silence, and there were no phones, phone lines, or there was no internet. So at that time,
07:47in all that, you know, that vacuum that you're feeling, you're looking for a constant in your
07:55life, you're looking for that person who is going to be there at the end of this ordeal. So I feel
08:01like I found that a common thing in a lot of these stories, where having that person in your life
08:09really helps you get through these periods, because you have another person who understands
08:17what you're going through. And, yeah, and these similar experiences and as lovers going through
08:24them together, I think have shaped a lot of these stories for better or for worse.
08:31Did you come across any examples where especially in the aftermath of the abrogation of the two
08:37articles 370 and 35A, that there were people who were brought together by
08:47shared concerns over what might happen in the aftermath of that, and some of that may have led
08:53to sort of either affection, platonic or otherwise, and that it became an abiding relationship?
08:59I mean, I can't think of one of the top of my head. I know that a lot of connections were made
09:06because of the abrogation because you know, people were trying to communicate with family back home.
09:13So a lot of people who were living outside the valley found a lot of people who were traveling
09:18back and forth to send messages across. So that is a lot like those stories. I've heard
09:25a lot of and actually, but one particular thing comes to mind. In one of the stories, which is
09:36called Fight or Flight, it's about a flight attendant. And she's a flight attendant with
09:41Saudi Airlines. And she's outside the country, she's just flown out of Qasimir and the
09:49abrogation happens and she can't connect to her parents back home. And she finds various people
09:54to connect with, connect with her family, because at that time, the satellite phones were working.
10:00So she would find people who had the satellite phones and try to talk to them. But more often
10:04than not, you know, these things wouldn't really work out. And even when landline slowly started
10:09working, you know, there would be a long queue for somebody to make even a 60 second call. So she,
10:17she went through all of these ups and downs till she found a family very close to her parents house,
10:24who had a landline phone. So her family would go to that person's house and call her
10:31and they would actually have the freedom to sit there and talk for hours, not talk for hours, but
10:35at least talk without the fear that, you know, they're eating into somebody else's time as well.
10:42And because of that, those families actually grew closer together to each other, because they were
10:48forming this link for this girl's parents to be able to call her. So once she came back and
10:55she met her family again, she met these people, this family was for the first time, even though
11:00they probably lived very close to each other, she had never really seen them or met them.
11:07And today, the family kind of made an unbreakable bond because of navigation.
11:15I see. You know, you live in two contrasting places. You have lived in two contrasting
11:20places in Kashmir and in Bombay. This is a bit of a speculative inquiry. Do you think love
11:28developed differently in a place where there is an ongoing conflict for over three decades now,
11:35and a place that is so business-like, which wants to just get on with life? Do you think
11:42they develop differently, even longing or even loss?
11:48Yeah, of course, I think they do. There are a lot of things at the base level that can be very
11:55similar in relationships. But what happens often in Kashmir is that a lot of people,
12:06they might have been brought together in circumstances when there is, you know,
12:09there isn't civil unrest happening outside. But they have also been through those trying times
12:15where they haven't been able to, you know, meet each other or talk to each other for elongated
12:20periods of time. And that comes from actually, you know, being from Kashmir itself, because you've
12:27gone through that even when you weren't dating somebody or you weren't with somebody. So I think
12:33it comes from being from a place like that itself, which I feel like in if you take a place like
12:38Bombay, people haven't grown up like that, or they haven't had those experiences. So it's,
12:43you know, from that very, from that very core, I would say it's very, it would be quite different
12:52how these relationships emerge. And I think like, in one of the stories in my book, there is a
13:01wedding happening in which there's a Kashmiri guy and girl from Delhi, and an abrogation happens.
13:07And everything is shut down. And the family of that girl is like, really scared. They have to
13:12leave immediately, but they don't know what's going to happen to their daughter. And even though
13:17like, you know, the boy's family know that everything will be fine, like she's going to be
13:21safe. But even that little thing, which is totally uncalled for and is unknown for somebody who is,
13:29you know, from the mainland, who doesn't really understand the way of the land in Kashmir,
13:34how they perceive it is very different. And I think, for example, I mean, I can't really,
13:40I don't want to compare the two things. But what couples felt in COVID,
13:47probably when they couldn't see each other, and they were, you know, social distancing and
13:51probably carrying out the relationships over the internet. That is maybe like 10% of what somebody
13:58in Kashmir would be going through when they are going through the elongated period of conflict,
14:05because it's not just about not being able to speak to somebody, it's also about the volatility
14:12of what is happening outside them, and not really knowing whether they're going to see the next day,
14:20or if the world outside, as they know, it is going to be the same for them anymore.
14:28So it's all of those parameters as well.
14:32When it comes to real life stories being told by those involved in them, oftentimes the narration
14:40is disjointed, because that's how generally people talk. There is no particular structure
14:45in the way we understand stories. What were your challenges as a writer to make them cohesive,
14:51give them a sort of a structure that one can understand in a book?
14:56Yeah, I think that was one of my, one of the biggest challenges that I had,
15:02if people talk very non-linearly. And you might ask one question, but they, you know,
15:07they start off in like 2010, but they end up in 1990 or something like that, right?
15:13And then, yeah, so it is all over the place. But I think it's also one of the things which I enjoyed
15:19most doing, which was, you know, making sense of what a person has told me. And because,
15:27because I'm a screenwriter as well, and I, and I write stories which have a beginning, middle,
15:32middle and end, I felt like that really came into handy for me when I was writing these stories,
15:38because I knew, because I could see the structure very, very well for myself. And even in some
15:45cases, when I was talking to people and interviewing them, I could, I, some of my
15:50questions were guided by that, when I felt like, okay, this story is not going to seem complete,
15:57when I write it, I would ask more questions. And I asked more probing questions, if I could,
16:01if they would want to answer, of course, not overstep, but ask for details where necessary,
16:07like ask like, Oh, do you remember what she was wearing? And even if it's like 30 years ago,
16:12they would remember it. So these are, you know, these are details which make the stories real,
16:19even while you're reading them. Because it is a piece of narrative nonfiction, it's not just,
16:27you know, nonfiction, the way I've written them, they are almost short stories on their own,
16:32the only thing is they are real. And so, so yeah, and I also gave into that, gave into not
16:43knowing. Because the thing is, a lot of times people tell you what they remember, also what
16:49they want to tell you, right? They're not going to remember exact dialogues or certain dialogues,
16:55exact wordings of what they said to another person. And I can't make those things up myself.
17:00So there's a lot of, there are a lot of beats in these stories, which are not there, which are
17:05missing, but I don't feel it while I'm reading it, because that is what I know. And I can't
17:11embellish, you know, wherever I can maybe write something from my own experience while describing
17:17a place or an object or something that I've done. But you know, a conversation between two people,
17:22I can't recreate it by myself. And maybe like, for example, you get the chapter,
17:29the love letter chapter, I didn't know what's written in the love letter,
17:33but I don't think that, but I don't think it took away from what the story was saying. So
17:41that's what I was, that's what I realized, while writing a piece of nonfiction, is that there is a
17:46lot of beauty in the silences, in the gap, where the reader can really make up things on their own.
17:57And even though creating the narrative and creating sense out of what people were saying,
18:03and you know, I mean, of course, each chapter has gone through multiple, multiple, you know,
18:09writing, one would be just writing everything down, somebody said, the second time would be
18:13actually creating sense out of it, the third time would be writing it in a way that would
18:19actually sound like a story. And then the fourth round would be actually checking everything.
18:24I think each chapter has gone through at least four or five rounds of that to reach the place
18:30it has right now. Yeah, you mentioned the love letter saying, in fact, not knowing what Javed
18:37wrote, makes it even more compelling. It's, it leaves it to your imagination what he might have
18:45written in it. Yeah, that's what I thought when I was reading it. Five years passed,
18:52little over five years passed the abrogation of the two articles.
18:56What's your sense about how the political tumult in Kashmir has impacted people culturally and even,
19:05especially beyond politics?
19:10Culturally, can you explain? Because for decades, it was used to being a special status state,
19:19right? Which led to, I mean, in my frequent visits for nearly 10 years at the height of
19:27the insurgency, I could feel that they had a sort of a sense of entitlement of being special.
19:34Now that has been taken away from them. I'm sure there would be some cultural shift that
19:41would happen that they would think that we are just another state now, or another place
19:47within the union. And that I'm sure has some impact, at least politically,
19:51those who practice politics as a matter of profession.
19:56No, I mean, I mean, I wouldn't say that there is a sense of entitlement, which
20:06the people from Kashmir had about having special status, because I mean, that goes back to
20:12the accession to India and everything, everything about that. But the main thing,
20:19which came about, when that, you know, when the articles were abrogated, and also important to
20:25know that those articles which, which came into being in 1953, or something, they were,
20:31they have been diluted over the years. So they were very skeleton of what they were,
20:36when they had come into being. But the main, the main issue, which was,
20:41which Kashmiris were struggling with was that, that this would lead to a demographic change
20:49in the, in the valley, and host, host abrogation. And the article itself was given a sense of
20:57security that, you know, this is their place, and this is their land, and nobody is able to
21:02push them out of here. And I think that is what really angered the people when it,
21:07when it happened. And the way also, the way it happened, when everybody like tourists and
21:14everybody was thrown out of there, and only the Kashmiris were left, and then they were all their
21:18phones and internet and everything was cut off. And then they barely even knew what was happening
21:23and like what was meted out to them. And only a few people must have found out who had like a
21:28DPS television connection. Otherwise, people themselves weren't, didn't know that what was
21:33happening to the land that they're living in. And, and Jammu and Kashmir was made into a union
21:39territory, which is, it still is, it hasn't gotten its statehood back. And Ladakh is a separate union
21:45territory. And the, you know, the first legislative assembly election that happened after 10 years,
21:53last year, in just like in October or November of last year, right. So,
22:01in terms of the changes, which I have, which I have noticed, in Kashmir, whose abrogation is
22:08more of a sense of false normalcy, which is, which is peddled a lot in the media,
22:16that everything is okay, on ground. And that is also because journalism isn't
22:25allowed to be free over there. A lot of people who are, who are jailed, who are not allowed to
22:32fly out of the country. And there is a lot of censorship, which is happening in Kashmir,
22:39a lot of archives, older archives of newspapers, which are disappearing, which aren't there
22:46anymore. So, I think that is what I feel that there is a ball of normalcy, false normalcy,
22:54which is always in the same sentence as Kashmir nowadays. And the people over there know that,
23:03you know, at the heart of heart, they know that maybe nothing for them has changed. But
23:11they have to just follow what's happening over there. And that's the sense, that's the sense
23:18that I am getting that people are more cautious and more worried about who's listening to them,
23:24what are they, if are they going to listen to what they're saying? Is something going to
23:28make into propaganda? What is going to happen? I mean, there are people who I interviewed for
23:34the book, who chose to retract their stories. And people who I had to, you know, convince to
23:40keep their stories in the book, because even they were, they weren't sure whether they wanted to
23:45tell these stories anymore, only in a span of a couple of years, and that has changed for them.
23:50And that doesn't come from a place where people feel secure, I would say. And I don't think,
23:56I wouldn't call it that normal. But that is the word which is thrown out there all the time now.
24:03Right. Yeah.
24:05No interest, it's fascinating. From what I've read so far, you were born in Srinagar to a
24:11Kashmiri Muslim father and Maharashtrian Hindu mother, as you write, early on, how has that
24:17mixed parentage influenced the way you approach Kashmir as a long standing conflict zone?
24:24Um, well, I grew up over there. And by growing up also, because then I was born in the 90s,
24:32but I think I did a lot of my growing up in the 2000s. And around that time, because the militancy
24:39had quietened down by that time, I don't think while we were growing up, any of us really knew
24:44about the Kashmir conflict in all of its entirety. And it's only around 2008-2009,
24:51when the Amarnath Naland Rao happened, when the Masjid-e-Sheikh encounter happened,
24:57and we were plunged into civil unrest almost every summer is when we started realising that
25:05we come from a place of conflict. Of course, there are those things which you
25:10see every day, and you don't realise this is not normal, because there's a huge army present
25:16in Kashmir. And we, you know, they're almost part of the scenery. And these are not normal
25:20things. But we grew up with them, we grew up with, okay, hearing that, oh, there was a bomb blast
25:25somewhere, there was a grenade blast somewhere, there was a tear gas attack, and there's an
25:29encounter somewhere. And we heard all of these things. But the actual impact of it really
25:36happened when, I think in the late 2010s, or the late 2000s, when the summers of unrest started
25:43happening. And so my understanding of the conflict also has started from there and evolved from
25:49there. Of course, being from a mixed heritage, I've always felt a little bit of a little bit of
25:55confusion about, like, you know, just where I belong. But because I grew up in Kashmir,
26:01I always felt I belonged to Kashmir much more than anywhere else. And I still feel that.
26:08But I do. But I do feel that I, I always take more of an effort to educate myself about what
26:17is happening in Kashmir, what's happening with Kashmir. Because I, you know, I feel, I feel that
26:24sense of forgetting or maybe, you know, going away from my roots sometimes. And I think writing
26:33this book has really brought me closer to Kashmir, closer to Kashmir again, and made me
26:38understand it in ways which I wouldn't have before. And also found an acceptance from people
26:46for myself. And, and yeah, and, of course, and I've, I felt that dichotomy for myself while
26:54growing up, because I spend a lot of time in Bombay, as well, and then go back home to Kashmir.
26:59And I saw a very, very different environment on, on both sides. But from a very young age,
27:05I had to educate and learn and really understand where, where I stand and how I look,
27:14look at the world. Right. Yeah. Just last couple of things. One is, of course, how do you think
27:20people, Kashmiris in the valley in their 20s, who have basically only known conflict,
27:29how do you think they are looking at the last five years? You mentioned demographic shift,
27:34which is perhaps early days, but it hasn't happened in any significant way. It's not as if
27:39Indians from elsewhere has overrun Kashmir yet. That was one of the fears I heard even when I
27:44used to report. It could happen in the next 10, 15, 20 years. No one can tell right now. But
27:51how do you think youngsters in Kashmir look at Kashmir now?
27:57I think, firstly, I think I'm not sure about the exact demographic shift, but there are,
28:04there are laws which have come into play. There are, there is a lot of forest land,
28:08which is being taken over by the army slowly, which you kind of don't really know,
28:13which you don't really know about, it doesn't make it to the news. But all of these things
28:18are happening in the background, for sure. So which have been made possible because of the
28:23abrogation of the article. So I don't think those fears were uncalled for, or it is happening
28:31slowly, but it is happening surely. And coming to the second question of people in their 20s,
28:37and, you know, who have grown 20s and 30s, I would say, who have really grown up in the,
28:43in the conflict. So what was your question about them?
28:48How do they look at, especially the last five years? Do you do they think there is any,
28:55any change for better or for worse?
28:58Um, because I don't, I don't live in Kashmir. And I don't, on a regular basis. And I only,
29:07I visit from time to time. So I don't know the exact situation on the ground,
29:11everyday situation. But I do, I do get the feeling that there is a lot of,
29:19there is a little, like a lot of angst in, in the people. Because yes, on one, one end,
29:25everything, like there are, there haven't been any big hathas or anything in Kashmir for the
29:30past couple of years. And like I said, the fall of normalcy is there everywhere. But I think the
29:37youngsters also haven't forgotten about what has happened in their past. And they do want to
29:43speak up and they, they do, they have that connection with the identity as Kashmiris.
29:49And they want to create, create art, create things which are significant to, to Kashmir.
29:58And there are, I mean, of course, people have flourished in many ways. They become,
30:02there are a lot of entrepreneurs and artists and musicians who are coming from the valley and have
30:07over the past couple of years. But I don't think anybody is under the false belief that, or has
30:15forgotten what has happened, what has happened in the past, I would say. But that itself is a
30:22noteworthy development that people on the artistic side, be it literature, be it painting, be it any
30:30number of things who have begun to not assert, but at least reveal or pursue those identities.
30:37I think that, that can have a profound effect on, in the next 30, 40 years, if that continues.
30:44People from that part of, yeah, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I think literature and art and music,
30:52are, are the tools, so to speak, of soft power, which we have, right?
30:59When, you know, when like big things like journalism and, you know, big media is,
31:04if it's throttled at any point, I think it's really the personal stories of people which can really
31:09help document a history of a people. And, and I think it is as important as,
31:17as like a photojournalist doing their job. Absolutely.
31:21And I think that is also one of the reasons why I started writing this book, was to,
31:28was to create, was to collect memories of conflict, of living through a conflict, because those are
31:34the things which are very fickle, and they can change and people forget, they forget their
31:38experiences, they won't forget, maybe what had happened, but in their memory, maybe yours can
31:43just, you know, blur into each other. And I felt, you know, documenting the history of people
31:51has to rely as much on the facts and figures as it has to do on the lived memories. And I
31:59see a lot of people doing that and not just in, and in fiction as well in, you know, writing,
32:05in writing fiction and short stories, in writing memoirs and making films and making documentaries
32:10and making art, you know, illustrations and murals and making, making music. And I think
32:18it is all a part of just not forgetting, not forgetting our history, our, all our, and our
32:26memories. And I think that is a beautiful thing in itself, because in itself, you are
32:33not denying what is, what Kashmir is. And, and I think there have been a lot of efforts to
32:43deny the on ground situation in the valley. And, you know, iron over a lot of things.
32:50And I think the youth in the valley, like you said, we go in their 20s and their 30s,
32:55are striving to do, to do that, to undo that really, and to tell their stories in whatever
33:03way they can. On that note, Mehak, I want to thank you for your time. It was wonderful to
33:10have engaged you on this. My congratulations once again on your book, made, become a bestseller,
33:17raked in a lot of money, which is important. And more, most importantly, continue to tell
33:24stories like that from a deeply conflicted state.
33:28Thank you so much for your interest in Mayank. And it was lovely speaking to you again,
33:33and about a different thing altogether, and a different medium. And yeah, thank you.
33:39No, it's a pleasure.