Reading ‘Rumours of Spring’ by Farah Bashir

Books like ‘Rumours of Spring’ are rare simply because they are almost impossible to write. When articulating one’s world takes the form of resistance, Farah Bashir writes this memoir of growing up in Kashmir with so much grit and insight.

She recollects her life as a teenage girl in Srinagar in the 1990s as Kashmir is militarised. She writes about the personal and cultural tolls and about the ‘personal’ in Kashmir, which has never been discussed. We see the insides of Kashmiri life and how it changes overnight with the conflict.

She gathers scattered memories of her teenage self living under military siege in Kashmir, navigating her life in a war. You meet the twelve-year-old looking for some resemblances of normalcy in the lanes and alleys of downtown Srinagar, near the windows of her house where her Bobeh sat gazing at the streets, listening to pop music on banned radio stations.

Most importantly, she is resilient in revisiting these memories, often laden with deep traumas, documenting her internal and external changes in her realities. That way, ‘Rumours of Spring’ is also about a way of life that no longer exists in Kashmir. Even when woven with the anxieties and horrors of death, torture, disappearances, this recollection of a young woman spells out the existence of the ordinary and mundane despite conflict or war.

This memoir fills a crucial void as the mainstream media is ridden with repeated narratives that dehumanise Kashmiris and discredit their movement.

In a discussion about the book, another writer mentions how most of what have written about Kashmir is about addition; addition of violence, soldiers, militants and not much about what’s been taken away. ‘Rumours of Spring is about what’s been taken away, about the waning of everyday routines, disruptions in the traditions.