From The Latest Issue: How Kashmir’s Memories Found Their Way Into A Book

I remember being in Cherrapunji during the lockdown. It kept raining heavily, and sometimes it poured so hard I could almost feel the rain inside my room. I was alone through those rainy afternoons, evenings and nights, usually with a cup of chai in my hand.

And on one of those interminably wet days, I suddenly started missing Kashmir.

Before that, I had no idea that I could write an entire book about Kashmir. I thought I had a chapter in my head. That’s it. But in Cherrapunji, I started remembering things. Those memories eventually became “Rooh,” my journey back to Kashmir, where travel was a way to return to my birthplace, to confront memory, displacement, and the idea of home.

It’s so weird what travelling does to you. You are in Cherrapunji, but you start writing about Kashmir.

Missing The Forest For The Trees

I often wonder what happens when we see absolute, stunning beauty. Do we have the capacity to digest it? I often find myself dumbstruck, just looking at the view. I don’t know what to do with so much magnificence.

I also don’t understand the concept of going to a place, quickly seeing two or three things and then rushing back. I need a lot of boredom and enough time for a place to grow on me. For instance, a week or 10 days is never enough. I have to stay in one place for more than 15 days to understand it.

I’m a mountain person, and I find myself returning to the mountains again and again. I have travelled so extensively through Uttarakhand, Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh that I now know many people there. I have stayed in villages, in people’s homes, with friends and in quaint stays. I have spent a lot of time around Mukteshwar and Dehradun, and I once spent a month travelling through Spiti after a bike trip. I’m always up for any excuse to go to the hills.

When I stay somewhere for a while, I find myself taking the same routes again and again. I walk a lot, along familiar paths, sometimes, two or three times a day. Over a period of time, you begin to recognise known faces—people you met on other occasions. You say hello. You find a café you like and keep going there until the people serving you start smiling when you arrive. You build a familiarity, and that familiarity makes the place yours.

Perhaps, I’m always searching for a place where I can breathe and feel at home.

Sightseeing, especially in the mountains, feels pointless to me. I remember when I was staying in Landour for some time during the lockdown, I would be out walking, wearing a mask, and tourists would stop me and ask where a particular tourist spot was. And I would want to tell them that what they should have been seeking was not a “sight,” or a spot where they could take pictures from, but the entire mountain itself—a place where they already were.

Not What It Used To Be

When I eventually went back to Kashmir to continue writing “Rooh,” I realised something else. You can’t go back to the same place the way you left it.

In my head, the colony where I was born was huge. There was a long lane, and at the end of it was our house. But when I went back, I realised the lane was very small. There were just two houses, and the third was ours. Everything had become so large in my memory, and then, suddenly, I was walking through this miniature version of it. We create places differently in our heads.

Travel also gives me people. I remember bumping into a young woman in Kashmir while I was travelling and writing “Rooh.” She eventually became Roohani in the book. It was such a pleasant surprise to meet somebody who felt like a character you might have written yourself. At times, while I was with her, I genuinely wondered whether she was real. In the mornings, while having kahwa, I would ask her, “Are you real?”

She would say, “You are weird.”

And I would say, “Yes, I am weird.”

I’m always lucky that when I travel, I meet some of the best human beings and, more often than not, they come into my writing. I still think about these people. If you don’t travel, how are you going to meet such incredible human beings?

Seeking Serendipity

I don’t plan at all when I travel.

I deliberately don’t search too much about a place before going there. I like surprises, and I wait for them. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s not good. But it’s okay, it’s part of the journey. You enter like a blank slate and start exploring. I like the idea that I am revealing myself to a place while it is revealing itself to me.

And then there are places I keep returning to, like Uttarakhand. I keep going back and staying there. I miss it like I miss home.

There was even a time when I thought about buying land around Dehradun. I have always had this little dream of building a place where painters, potters, musicians, and writers can come and stay. But I am also a wanderer; settling down somewhere feels a little like surrendering and saying, “Okay, this is it.” I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.

If I could disappear somewhere in India for the next two months, I would return to a small village in Pithoragarh, where I once stayed for about a month. There was this little cottage nestled in a thick forest, with the road almost two kilometres below it. At night, you could feel the forest inside your room and hear its sounds. There was hardly any phone signal. There was just a cook, who would make me some beautiful food, and I would eat it happily, enjoying the stillness of the jungle. I could easily go back there.

But I am a wanderer. There is still so much I want to see in this world, and I don’t know how much time I have. I just don’t want to miss an opportunity to say “hi” to a quiet mountain.

— As told to Kartikeya Shankar

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