The Unheard Melodies of Kashmir: A Tale of Resilience Amid Despair

Kashmir - Amid the towering peaks and verdant valleys of Kashmir, a melody often wafts through the air, emanating from the numerous mosques and shrines that dot the landscape. This is the sound of Durood, devotional tracts set to traditional tunes and collectively hummed. Despite disapproval from conservative Islam, this social and spiritual custom remains an integral part of Kashmiri culture.

However, if one listens closely, beneath the harmonious hum, there lies a poignant undercurrent of sorrow. Individuals and groups gather in corners, hugging posts, ceaselessly crying and murmuring prayers. Their cries, sometimes escalating into desperate wails, punctuate the daily humdrum of Kashmir.

Above the mundane, there floats a pensive, unassuaged air so insistent it makes prayer sound like a dirge. By twilight, it rises from the houses of God, becoming a sullen shroud that defies cameras as well as banishment. The numbers of the dead and the vanished are too high to count, and the people refuse to forget. Each evening, crying resumes beneath the portals of mosques and shrines, rising to the skies like a shroud in flight. No place has cried so uninterrupted as Kashmir, where crying has become its song.

One such place of solace is the ziyarat (shrine) of Baba Reshi, nestled among the lofty pines above Tangmarg in north Kashmir. Here, under an ornate canopy, lie the remains of the revered Sufi saint, Payamuddin Sheikh, a provider of benevolent shelter and solace. People arrive in unceasing droves, seeking benediction, quite indifferent to the sporadic tableaux of electioneering.

The Baramulla Lok Sabha contest has turned keener than most. In the fray are a former chief minister (Omar Abdullah), a former separatist (Sajad Lone), and a forever rebel (Engineer Rashid), who has come from behind to spice up the campaign. Engineer Rashid, a former MLA, is also behind bars, lodged in Tihar for the last five years on terror funding charges. His son Abrar is leading the “jail ka badla vote se lenge” charge with energy that has riveted the attention of both the Omar and Sajad camps.

Yet, even in a vale so tiny, it is possible to reach locations untouched and unbothered with the clamour of elections. The tourism industry doesn’t mark out routes to them, the guides will never take you there, the state stays mostly away and averse, the politicians barely even remember. Barely even at the time they require this realm most, at election time.

“Hamara siyasat se matlab nahin, siyasat ka hamse nahin (we have nothing to do with politics, politics have nothing to do with us),” says Basheer Khan, a cloth merchant in the one-lane bazaar of Kamblinar. His aversion to the vote is just that: aversion. Quite simply about not giving anything to politics because it gives nothing to you.

We had arrived in Kamblinar quite by accident. We had climbed up the arrow road from Srinagar to the Tangmarg shrine, rounded the hill and humped over Gulmarg, and plunged down the back of the forests. Quite suddenly, the clamour of tourist Kashmir had faded and an ante-dated Kashmir had taken over. There was barely a dwelling to be seen that wasn’t ramshackle, barely a field that wasn’t being worked with bare human hands. The air was scented with the voluptuous foliage of spring, and doves darted about, beating the silence with their wings. The road had vanished and rubble had taken over. From somewhere, needling the azure sky, rose a muezzin’s call to prayer.