Mir Khalid’s Jaffna Street, a book on militancy in Kashmir, has been receiving acclaim ever since it was launched a few months ago in Srinagar. Khalid is a Srinagar-born surgeon who currently works in Saudi Arabia. Jaffna Street, his first book in English, is based on real people from the old city who decided to join militancy in the 1990s. Khalid discusses the idea behind the book in this interview.
Q: You were living the life of a surgeon in Saudi Arabia. What motivated you to drop the scalpel and pick up the pen instead to dissect the 1990s?
A: Having lived through the violent 1990s in the Valley and the turbulent 2000s in Europe, I realise that feelings of grief, alienation, angst are universal. Literature gives you an insight into the general human condition and I think Western authors have grappled with these issues long before we did. But it is also necessary to contextualise them so that we can understand the conditions they arose from.
Q: Having witnessed the harrowing times of the 1990s, were you looking for closure, like many restless souls in Kashmir? Does a book bring closure to a writer or does it act as a tombstone for restless souls?
A: It is well nigh impossible to find closure in a conflict zone. The violence-addled 1990s, with its blurred frontlines, radically changed life patterns. The ramifications of this still haunt the people of the Valley. My book is an effort at understanding the times by looking into the lives of the people affected. However, it is true that completing the book was a cathartic experience. It helped me come to terms with my own alienated self.
Q: A book set in Kashmir and confined to the old city is named Jaffna Street. Why?
A: Here is this downtown area of Srinagar that has suffered cycles of violence. Its residents seek to give an allegoric address to their locality by naming it after a place raked by war thousands of miles away in Sri Lanka. It reflects the changes that the conflict has brought to Kashmir. It eroded stereotypical notions about the state and created a new self-image for the inhabitants.
Q: The book talks about characters but the author also voices his own thoughts. Was this deliberate? Do you see yourself as one of the characters who was witness to the turmoil of the 1990s?
A: Research — the conversations, readings — made me identify with the travails of many of the individuals I profiled. I felt like a voice telling stories that others couldn’t because what you had seen and experienced back then had changed meaning with the passage of time. I felt that I had found my own voice in their voices.
Q: The book’s protagonists look back at the good old days in Kashmir, and the author too seems to revere the past. Do you think that the 1990s brought an end to the evolution of Kashmir into a modern, cosmopolitan city?
A: Srinagar in the 1980s was a cosmopolitan city and it’s no surprise that many of the citizens remember that fondly. The tourist traffic from Europe was but one of the reasons behind that cosmopolitanism. One came across all sorts of people on the streets — intellectuals and pamphleteers spewing Camus, Malraux and Genette. The city had some of the finest bookshops, with a breathtaking range of reads gracing their shelves. Srinagar was a place where you could find original Levi’s and Lacoste apparel at a time when these brands didn’t have franchise outlets east of Middle East.
This cosmopolitanism existed in a politically unstable environment where talks of political disenfranchisement, State violence and rumours of a forthcoming war had a perpetual presence. As a result, the same high-school teen adoring Reinhold Messner and aspiring to be a world-class climber would also be found on the street, fighting the State, stone in hand, end up in prison and then hop across the LoC to get trained in militancy. I feel that the Srinagar of today has a very desi feel, which was hardly there in my childhood days. So your question runs counter to facts.
Q: How would you classify your book? Is it a journalistic account, a personal diary or something else?
A: I would call Jaffna Street a work of sociology. It took years of research to complete it but that was fulfilling in the sense that it made me realise even conflict cannot stop human evolution, that the meaninglessness conflict breeds for its victims gives new, more profound meanings to life. This is as true of the Kashmir conflict as it is of any other conflict.
Q: Jaffna Street is your second book. Are you planning your next book any time soon? Will it be fiction or non-fiction?
A: I have nearly finished my next book, which is a novel set in the U.K. that concerns the life of the British Asian community there. It deals with blighted relationships and involves coming to terms with bereavement.