In the shadow of political upheaval and military lockdowns, Kashmir’s human stories often go untold. Mehak Jamal’s debut book Loal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land (HarperCollins India) brings to light intimate narratives of affection, heartbreak, and resilience.
The Kashmiri filmmaker and author started working on the book right after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A in August 2019, when Kashmir was put under a complete communication lockdown. In conversation with The Federal, Jamal reflects on her motivations, the complexities of love in conflict, and why telling these stories is an act of collective resistance. Excerpts from the interview:
Your book began after the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 and 35A, amid a communication blackout. What moved you to write about love during such a time of silence and repression?
As you rightly said, the book is about love and longing in Kashmir, especially through the conflict. It traverses many years—from the 1990s and ends around the abrogation in 2019. I began collecting these stories in 2020, a year after Article 370 was abrogated. I’d been hearing stories—urban legends, perhaps—of people going to extraordinary lengths to connect with loved ones during that communication blackout.
Having grown up in Kashmir and experienced multiple periods of civil unrest myself, I kept wondering whether people outside truly understand the lived reality of conflict. The idea of the book came from that gap, and framing it through love was a direct result of those stories. What began as a memory project took shape into a book four years later.
You write that the blackout was intended to portray that ‘nothing is happening’ in Kashmir. Was the book your way of resisting that narrative of erasure?
Yes, I’d call it “collective undeniability.” History in Kashmir is well documented in terms of conflict, but what’s often missing is the memory—the emotional, public memory of the people. This book tries to capture that.
In 2019, when there was no internet, no phones, and even physical movement was restricted, the voices of civilians and journalists were choked. By bringing together these stories, it becomes undeniable that life went on—filled with love, longing, heartbreak—even during that enforced silence. That’s powerful.
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The title ‘Loal’ comes from the Kashmiri word for love and longing. The book includes romantic, platonic, familial, and even nationalist love. Why was it important to show this emotional diversity?
Initially, I thought the book would centre around romantic love. But as people started reaching out with their stories, I found other forms of love just as compelling—between friends, between a parent and child, and even for the homeland.
There’s a story of a woman who longs to return to Kashmir but can’t. That longing is also a kind of love. These diverse narratives created a fuller, richer tapestry. Loal, for me, isn’t just romance; it’s about yearning and loss in all forms.
There are stories of queer love, female desire, and trans identities in the book—topics rarely discussed openly in Kashmiri society. Was including them a conscious act of challenging norms?
It wasn’t a deliberate act of rebellion, but it evolved into one. Of course, I wanted diversity in the book, and I put out a project call for stories. Many people reached out. The choice to tell their stories came from them, which in itself is a form of resistance.
One story is about a transgender man and a cis woman—they’re no longer together, but he was certain he wanted his story included. There are so few queer narratives from Kashmir, even though the queer community exists. Their spaces aren’t often visible.
Similarly, many stories centre on female agency—women who take the initiative to find love, reach out, or even break patriarchal norms. One woman, after a decade-long relationship, couldn’t marry because of her strict father. When she finally did, she said she found freedom in marriage—a complex, but deeply personal perspective.
Several love stories in the book are entangled with identity, exile, and citizenship—like a Kashmiri Pandit boy grappling with his roots, or a woman named Zahra unable to reunite with her husband because she’s Kashmiri. What do these stories reveal about being Kashmiri today?
The Kashmiri Pandit boy doesn’t hide his identity—he’s grappling with it. His family stayed back in Kashmir post-exodus, making him a minority in his own hometown. He falls in love with a Kashmiri Muslim girl, and the tension is more internal, about his own reality.
Zahra’s story is layered too—she’s Kashmiri, works in biomedical science, was born in Saudi Arabia, and it takes her almost a year after marriage to get a U.S. visa. Her story speaks volumes about the red flags and scrutiny Kashmiris face.
These stories span decades—from the ’80s and ’90s to the mid-2000s and even recent years. Some are about students in present-day India, who feel the brunt of events in Kashmir. All of them reveal the emotional cost of simply being Kashmiri.
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Do you see your book as a continuation of earlier Kashmiri voices that centred emotion rather than political reportage—like, say, Farah Bashir’s memoir on growing up during the insurgency?
For a long time, books on Kashmir weren’t written by Kashmiris. Much of it was academic or journalistic non-fiction. That began to shift in the 2000s with Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night, Mirza Waheed’s fiction, and others.
Farah Bashir’s Rumours of Spring was a breakthrough—it was a woman’s voice, speaking about growing up during the height of militancy. When I read it, I felt reassured that there was space for these kinds of stories.
Documenting the lived experience of conflict is just as crucial as reporting on it. It doesn’t romanticize or trivialize violence—it makes the experience human. That’s what I hope Loal does.
As a filmmaker, did you initially imagine these stories visually, or did the written word feel more apt given the silences and invisibilities you were trying to convey?
I didn’t begin with a set medium. Initially, I imagined it as a film or anthology. But as more people opened up to me, I realized the only way to do justice to the sheer number of stories was through a book.
Also, many didn’t want to reveal their identities—something that wouldn’t work in visual storytelling. A documentary would’ve been too complicated. Fiction, even harder. Writing the book made it more feasible, though I still hope to adapt it for film someday.
You describe Loal as your ‘language of Kashmir.’ How did writing this bring you closer to the place and its people?
It was deeply cathartic. From the first conversations, I felt immense privilege. Most people in the book were strangers who chose to share their innermost lives with me. That’s not a small thing, especially in a conservative society like Kashmir.
The abrogation was still fresh, and many felt claustrophobic from the silence. They wanted the world to know how fiercely they had loved, how deeply they had lived. I was a shepherd for these voices, living with them over four years. This book is my baby, and it has brought me closer to Kashmir than ever before.
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Kashmir has long been either exoticized or vilified in Indian cinema. How do you, as a filmmaker, view the way the region and its people have been portrayed on screen?
For decades, Kashmir was just a backdrop for romantic songs, with no regard for its people. After the ’90s, it became a setting for terror narratives. Even now, Kashmiri characters are often flattened—shown in black and white, with little nuance.
This book partly came from my frustration with that portrayal. I wanted to offer something truer—a complex portrait of people who have endured conflict for decades. Films that try to do that often struggle to find distribution or funding. That’s why writing is so powerful—it can be a starting point, a form of quiet but radical storytelling.
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