Ashish Sharma, 33, is a denizen of Kashmir, he’s neither a Kashmiri Pandit nor a Kashmiri Muslim. A senior photographer with a national weekly, he’s a Hindu whose family decided to stay put in the valley when Hindus were fleeing the valley in 1990.
Ashish was barely a few months old, when his 70 years old grandmother, Vidya Devi, accompanied by his 17-year-old sister, Sandhya, returned to the valley within a few months of their exodus, in March of 1990, to stake claim to the family-owned photography shop and the house Ashish’s father had built. It’s in the heart of Kashmir valley–a few hundred yards from Lal Chowk.
Vidya preferred to die living in the motherland than to face the ordeal of piecing together a life in an alien city. Home is where the heart is. And her decisions were not guided by fear but by the love of her land.
Ashish narrates the story of his grandmother with a certain element of pride. The two women, one fairly old, and one very young, reached home after an arduous journey changing many buses, in the middle of a biting cold night. She found the house unlocked, and ransacked, only a few bulky pieces of furniture remained, the rest was stolen. There were beds but no bedding. All that could be carried was taken away. A local priest fed the two of them on the first day. A young Muslim man helped get some firewood to warm a room.
The next day Vidya visited the photo studio that was run a few months ago by his father. She was told in polite terms that she shouldn’t be seen here, it’s dangerous. She sat there the whole day, staking her rightful claim to the shop saying, 'I have nowhere else to go.'
The rest of the family followed after a couple of months, joined her, and resumed their life under the ominous shadow of fear of death.
In this picture, Ashish is standing at Lal Chowk, as a kid, which is dubbed the most dangerous place on the planet. To him, it’s home where he grew up. A cluster of houses where Hindu families live, for decades, is now provided security by the CRPF after the abolition of Article 370, and renewed targeted attacks on the Hindu community in the valley.
“Yes! I’m a Hindu who grew up in Lal Chowk,” Ashish asserts. The first 18 years of his life here were intense, to put it mildly. It was not easy. Ashish had traumatic experiences growing up that cast a shadow on him even today. There were nights and days they are lucky to have survived. Like a militant holding his father, Roshan Lal Sharma, hostage at gunpoint in their own living room for hours one night. Ashish was not even ten years old and he witnessed the ordeal hiding behind the curtain. “Those long lingering horror moments continue to haunt me in my dreams twenty-five years later,” he says.
Nightmares are what his subconscious produces to vent the deeply seated trauma. “I may be a nervous wreck, despite, somehow, operating under the shadow of fear happens naturally to me. That’s what the valley has taught me, ” he says with a certain disdain.
Now I understand. I did a story travelling with him along the line of control. And as soon as the sun was about to descend behind the tall mountains, Ashish would get restless and would ask to get back to our stations, and not be out in the open before it turns dark.
Having said this, his pictures of the valley are devoid of any fear and are fairly assertive of the beauty of the valley–paradise on earth–where the serenity of night is often broken by the sounds of gunshots.
Despite the lingering conflict, the people of Kashmir are fairly well off, at least visually, compared to the rest of the country, and lead a dignified life amidst unrest. Unrest is harmonised in the life of the valley.
Ashish gets hassled when he hears conflicting narratives about his motherland, “none of them are completely true or false,” he explains. There are layers upon layers, what is seen is not real, people have divided loyalties, some are loyal to the government, others to the neighbour state that’s fomenting terror, and some to the local leaders seeking their personal aggrandisement, and many to all, and therefore none.
The polity and the people are radicalised. A significant few have made a fortune selling miseries of Kashmir in the international market. This protracted low-intensity war is a boom for some at the cost of the rest—we the people. All seem to be trying to win an argument, competing portrayals of miseries—mine is greater than yours. And the politics, land, religion, jealous neighbour, militant camps across the border, militancy, security forces, and the stone pelters, with their incompatible ideologies, are all added to the mix of the valley and churn out affected narratives.
Therefore, Ashish can’t escape the feeling that these conflicting narratives don’t represent the truth as he has lived. The burning of Kashmir is a source of livelihood to many, and it’s in their interest that the valley simmers unrest. “All of them are missing the point”, he says with conviction.
As Gandhi had said in a different context: ‘My life is my message’, Ashish says with equal conviction: “My life is the story of Kashmir.” He is a good storyteller, his images are a vivid portrait of the valley and the life, art, culture, and people here. "I will not sit on judgement, but that doesn't mean I will shy away from calling a spade a spade," he says unperturbed by the thought of annoying certain powerful interest groups in Kashmir.
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