In times of turmoil, loving someone is no less than a form of revolt – Mehak Jamal

In January 2025, Harper Collins published a fascinating book, Loal Kashmir- Love and Longing in A Torn Land. Written by a Kashmiri filmmaker and writer Mehak Jamal, Loal Kashmir is a poignant account of human suffering in the region. The book explores the inner lives of lovers and offers an emotional lens into how personal relationships are strained by a brutal conflict. Jamal’s work highlights the resilience that ordinary people have exhibited in the face of repression and deception. As India and Pakistan stood on the brink of a full-blown war, and the Kashmir conflict once again drew national and international attention, ACADEMIC Bilal Gani spoke to Mehak Jamal about her book and the heavy physical and psychological toll the conflict is taking. In this conversation, Mehak talks about the Kashmir conflict, vilification of the Kashmiri lives under the rubric of hyper-nationalism, and why Kashmir deserves an everlasting peace and dignified existence. Here are the edited excerpts.

Bilal: The title uses the word “Lōal,” a tender expression in Kashmiri. How important was it for you to root this book linguistically and emotionally in the Kashmiri experience?

Mehak: It was certainly imperative since the book is about Kashmir and Kashmiris. Lōal in Kashmiri means love, affection, longing. The name ‘Lōal Kashmir’ came to me much before I even started interviewing people, and I am glad I wasn’t asked to change it later by my publishers, for ease of understanding etc. A simple subtitle in the book’s name does that job. I have used Kashmiri words, phrases and dialogues wherever possible in the book and they flow seamlessly into the prose. The book touches many facets of regular life in Kashmir that roots it firmly in the place and culture. For a Kashmiri reader, I hope the book is an emotional and immersive read; and for someone not from the valley, I hope that they learn something new about the place and its people.

Bilal: Many of the lovers in your stories live under constant threat—curfews, raids, surveillance. How did you manage to portray such vulnerability without losing the dignity and agency of your characters?

Mehak: The credit for the vulnerability exhibited by the characters lies solely with the contributors who were willing to open up their hearts and lives to me. They were authentic and unabashed in the telling of their own stories, and that’s what creates these layers and nuance that you see in the book. For most of the contributors, as for most Kashmiris, living under these constant threats has become a part of life, with a mixture of uneasiness and indifference. They have learnt to act and adapt to the most volatile of circumstances. This is nothing to be proud of. But in these stories you discover the kind of agency that the characters exhibit in the direst times. This need and urgency to reach out to a loved one, to know that they are okay, is an understandable and universal emotion. But in Kashmir, where there may be an elevated anxiety attached to the same, there’s all the more reason for these lovers to out seek each other—to search for ‘their constant’ in uncertain times.

Bilal:  You explore how love in Kashmir is shaped—and often stifled—by the long shadow of conflict. In what ways do you think love becomes a form of resistance in such environments?

Mehak: The Kashmir conflict has been a long enduring one, and Kashmiris have been living through it and feeling its repercussions for decades. In a place like this, almost every facet of life is affected by the conflict in some way or other, and love is no different. That people love and want to be loved is a given, in any place. Kashmir of course is no different. But when the Kashmir conflict takes precedence in the documentation of the place—as it should—what falls through the cracks are the lived experiences of the conflict. Lōal Kashmir chooses to look at a small part of these experiences, those of love and longing. In these sixteen stories, ranging from the 1990s to the 2020s, we see a myriad of different narratives about lōal in Kashmir. Though these stories span decades, the ways in which people carry out their love—equal parts cautious and equal parts unfettered—is an intriguing thing to observe. In times of turmoil, loving someone is no less than a form of revolt, a form of resistance. Because what you are saying is, “you can silence our voices, but not our love”.

 Bilal: Edward Said says that an intellectual in exile is often best positioned to understand the complexity of conflict at home. You are a Kashmiri but live in Mumbai. How did you reconcile the two and which identity weighed most heavy on you while writing this book.

Mehak: I’m not sure if the statement pertains to me entirely, since I do divide my time between Kashmir and Mumbai. But I can attempt to explore this for myself. I had not been home in Kashmir in 2019 during the Article’s communication blockade. Like many Kashmiris outside, I was scrambling for bits of information from home and feeling helpless and alone. Kashmir was in the news but the voices from Kashmir were choked. I was immediately struck by how important it was to document that time, to understand the ground reality and how the inner lives of people were affected. Maybe for someone living through that time on the ground, this may have felt unimportant. But I felt that collective public memory was the key to make that period undeniable, especially when most narratives pertaining to it were skewed. Thus Lōal Kashmir came to me a year after the abrogation. In 2020 when I was home in Kashmir during the Covid-19 pandemic, I decided to start this project and began interviewing people for it. Maybe through the process, I was trying to document the time that I had myself spent in Kashmir, as well as exploring those parts of history and the recent past that I knew little about and / or had not found accounts of. The two parts of my identity, the one home and the one way, came together in the writing & crafting of this book

Bilal: For decades, Kashmiri identity has been eclipsed by the clashing tides of Indian and Pakistani nationalisms. Your book attempts to restore a human lens by making love—a delicate and deeply human emotion—its central theme. How important is it to humanize this conflict?

Mehak: There is a human cost to any conflict, and in Kashmir time and again, we are reminded of the same. So many different wars and skirmishes have been fought between the two warring nations, and the people of the Jammu & Kashmir region face the brunt of it. Though both the nations lay claim on the territory and it is the basis of the conflict between them, how regular Kashmiris live and survive is not explored or questioned by them. The representation of Kashmir and Kashmiris in popular news and media is enough to make this point. When authentic narratives from a place are missing, they create further dissonance in an already misunderstood region. Lōal Kashmir is the tip of the iceberg to understand how Kashmiris live, love and go on. There is much more to document, explore and learn—to understand the human side of the Kashmir conflict. It is very important to do so.

Bilal: During the recent military confrontation between India and Pakistan, people in the volatile border areas have faced death and been forced into displacement. Are their lives as precarious as those of the characters in your book?

Mehak: The recent exchange between the nations shows that the cost of life of the people from the region is seen as dispensable—this includes J&K, areas along the LoC and IB, and PoK, etc. Many people living in Uri, Poonch and other areas around the LoC have lost their loved ones as well as faced damage and loss of property. This is deemed as collateral damage and there has barely been any public outcry or outrage about the same. I would say that the lives of these people are more precarious than many of the characters in my book. Though there are characters in the book who find themselves in difficult circumstances and are at times saved from a volatile situation by a whisker, I think it would be insensitive to compare the same.

Please buy the book here.