How do you define your childhood?

by Samar S Jodha

Many creative people are big fans of memoirs, conflict and the marginalised voice. The connect is because, as an artist, one is interested in that mind, the personal experience and the struggles within and outside.

Here is a memoir, which I finally got to read. It’s about a young girl growing up in Kashmir. It’s in an environment of deadly politics, religion, violence, and one can make a whole list of what has been going on in the most conflicted part of the world. Under the dark shadows above is a personal story of a girl with all that noise outside and the silent child within.

The impact on her family and her community, and her missing out on that normalcy of childhood, which we all otherwise take for granted. Her laughter, the freedom to run in open land, the daily after school hanging out with your mates in the playground, that free spirit each child is born with. Instead, each time her dreams are shot down, she lives through nightmares of being woken up in the middle of the night to the sounds of gunshots. It is to live with anxiety, fear, trauma, which are all part of her daily life.

I don’t want to create a review of Farah Bashir Rumours of Spring (for that, you’ve got to read this sensitive narration). Still, it’s about the harsh growing up years of an individual, which unfortunately continues for countless children even today.