‘Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir’ review: Growing up under curfew

Farah Bashir recalls a traumatised adolescence in conflict-ridden Kashmir of the 1990s

Farah Bashir has written an extraordinary, poignant account of life as an adolescent in the conflict-ridden Kashmir of the 1990s. A narrative on the death and funeral preparations for Bobeh, the protagonist’s beloved grandmother, is interspersed with multiple flashbacks where the author recounts growing up in Srinagar when militancy was at its peak. The chapters of Rumours of Spring follow the day of Bobeh’s funeral — Evening, Night, Early Hours, Dawn, Morning, Afterlife — and each touches on different aspects of Farah’s life. Kashmir is often seen through the lens of politics and violence. Farah humanises the violence in a heartrending way and makes you reflect on the kind of life it must have been for a young girl growing up in constant curfew, with sounds of gunfire and convoys, and the perpetual talk of death. Every simple aspect of life we take for granted is fraught with terror. Exchanging love letters with a young man is brutally interrupted and never resumed when the post office is burnt down; attempting to escape the strict Islamic dress code by wearing a high pony tail and lowering her socks ends when a friend has acid thrown on her because she was wearing jeans; she makes herself invisible and less attractive by wearing a headscarf, plucking out her hair, not washing her face for days, not wanting to look attractive in any way, so that she doesn’t attract unwanted attention.