The writer explores the emotional toll of small-town life, the longing for freedom, and the quest to break free from mental and physical confinement in pursuit of a broader world
By Shafiya Showkat
Being a Kashmiri comes with a lot of privileges. You get to brag about things, you get to tell people that you live in a forest, that you are surrounded by snow-covered trees in winter, and in summer, there are walnuts scattered everywhere you set foot. You actually start to romanticise each and every part of your life—but that happens only when you leave Kashmir. You tell your new friends how life used to be back home, how you never had to worry about carrying a water bottle because your school had a spring running through it. You give them the sense that you, too, carry something within you—a legacy, a dream perhaps—something that makes you deeply nostalgic.
But the reality is something else. No, I am not going to talk about political issues. I was never a political person to begin with. I am a poet, and I would like to be remembered as one (not that poets are never political). But like Jane Austen, I believe that “three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.” I always loved writing about the issues I saw around me, within just a few miles’ distance, because that was the extent of my world for most of my life. I did my schooling from kindergarten to matric in the same neighbouring school, then higher secondary at a walking distance, and even my college was only a short walk away. It was only recently—last year, to be more specific—that I broke the shell and decided to come to Delhi for further studies. The transition from a quiet, woody, and green village to the most fast-paced and loud city in India was a real challenge for me.
So, it feels only natural that I talk about that small village—or, more precisely, about myself. The real issue was always that we were surrounded by snow-covered mountains, but that also meant that we were very confined. We are still confined back there. It’s like we live inside a box, and we’ve lived in that box for so long that even a single ray of light irritates our eyes. That box is our whole world, and we are so tired of living the same life. We have explored as much as possible within ourselves, and when we ran out of things to discover, we moved on—to the lives of our neighbours, then our relatives, then other Kashmiris we saw on social media, and then… nothing. After that, there is only a void. There is nothing to do, nothing new to explore, and having to look at the same faces every day begins to take a toll on us. We clash, we find faults in each other, we fight, we gossip, we create stories that aren’t true—simply because we need to fill the void, to have something entertaining.
I know a lot of people are going to hate me for saying this, but if you don’t relate to it, then this isn’t for you. As I mentioned earlier, my subject matter is just “two or three families”. In Delhi, it is a different world. Not that I don’t love what we have back home, but the things I find here are so new to me. I never knew you could go and watch a play live in a theatre. I never knew you could step into a museum and find hundreds of people eager to learn more about the art and the artist. I never knew you could get your favourite book signed by your favourite author. I never knew you could join a book club where all you had to do was read and present your ideas and opinions. I never knew you could attend a mushaira, and it wouldn’t even be considered a big deal. These are all very simple things, but for me and my sisters back home, they are extraordinary—because our world is so small.
And that small world, for women, gets even smaller. We go from school to home, home to school. We need an excuse to go buy chips. It’s all very depressing, and nobody talks about the mental dilemma that we go through. This applies to all genders, while we may have cool breeze, warm tea and all beautiful things, our mental health suffers every day, because of the lack of opportunities, lack of doors and windows in that small box. This isn’t just about Kashmir; I am sure village life everywhere has that effect. People might have been romanticising the conventional lifestyle in the past, but now we have access to the whole world. We can see what people are doing in America, and if not wholly, we want what they have, at least partially. Now, kids are not born; dreamers are. And the box is never going to accommodate all the dreams.
I was talking about how we proudly talk about our place, but it’s only when we are not there anymore. And we don’t talk about its glories with someone who lives there. At least I don’t. Because a part of me knows that this person must be laughing in his heart since he knows what life there is like . My English was pretty average since the beginning, but that was rare in my school. However, if you talked in English, you would be ridiculed and judged and tagged as a ‘show off’. Maybe, that’s why I never had the confidence to talk about my interests out loud. My Kashmiri was average, my dreams were big, and I had no idea what I would call them in Kashmiri; they could only be described in big English words. So, I never talked about them at all, and I guess they were suppressed somewhere deep in my consciousness. Exceptions are always there, for example, in college (which was in the same locality), my professor encouraged me to use big fat English words, and I could again dream. He gave me a new vocabulary and told me how to define things. I guess he was also deprived of dreaming growing up. And once I started dreaming, the box wasn’t enough, and I left for Delhi, which also came with its own complications. In Kashmir, not many people accept your will to leave.
I have seen people blame those who leave their birthplace and criticise them for enjoying life to the fullest. I have heard people say, “In the name of freedom, they just want to do vulgar things.” But this freedom is so new, so rare, for someone who knows they have to return to that same life again. I have heard that ‘It takes a village to raise a child’; similarly, it has taken a community of dreamers to push us beyond the boundaries. You cannot blame us for breaking the box and deciding to take a whip of fresh air. I know I am talking about what may seem like trivial things and labelling them as “the definition of freedom.” But if I were to travel to London tomorrow, these big things would suddenly seem small to me. Right now, I find going to eat Panipuri quite liberating, but it will seem absurd to me in a few years, if I were somewhere better than this. However, if I went back to the same ways I ran away from, this would be what we call ‘Nostalgic’. Truth to be told, even if I am in the biggest city in the world, I am always going to be confined; there will always be something in my mind telling me that I don’t belong here, I am always going to be suppressed by my own desires, and I am always going to be in a box. But it all boils down to this: how big a box do I think I deserve, how big of a box am I willing to settle for, and how big of a box do I want my children to have?
The writer is pursuing a Master’s in English Literature at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
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