Thake' peynd | There’s a Kashmiri idiom I recall my grandparents saying: When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. Over time, I have found that this knowledge about trees does not extend as a metaphor for human belonging. As modernity grows its piercing roots into our current times, some people weren’t left a choice to be still as a tree.
Some have a home and outlive its comfort; they leave, feel nostalgic, restless, and homesick, but don’t have any other option than move out, to escape ennui, death. Some have to search for and create homes in other cities, from one apartment to another, in one person or another, not only to find themselves at home once again, but to make new meanings of the word home. As a photographer, this nomadic existence has taught me how to find solace in strangers.
I would never have thought of leaving the city as the summers were cool and winters snowy and we're enclosed by the mountains and have some of the largest fresh lakes. I used to spend the days of my childhood learning to swim, catching butterflies, and playing cricket.
As the clouds pressed lower and the mountains became red, the last bit of innocence was slowly squeezed out of my childhood. A rush of blood and suffering came up to the surface, and suddenly I was thrown into the throes for Aazadi — curfews, strikes, teargas, police, army and taranas. Winters used to be windy, harsh, solitary, and quiet. I knew the war wouldn’t finish in a month or two. It has come true: it looks like the war will never end.
When I'm bored, I start taking photographs; of my folks, or if I'm in a different city I try to find a home in other people. I try to find in them both the cool summers and snowy winters I know to be home. Whenever I travel back to my home, I end up discussing everything under the sun with my friends who are around. Lately, we’ve been talking about how we become people of multiple cities, and how we might be able to figure it out, to live with this more-than-oneness?
For a few weeks now, I've been back home with my family, and often, I'm bored. I go back to my familiar sport, taking pictures. Sometimes, these photos capture my cousins and my aunts, the spaces I occupy and move through, seizing a few moments of their lives.
The place I call home is very bright and beautiful but also bleak — like a deserted heart. One of my friends recently texted me, you're from a city of stars, but little does she know it's always moonless, this city.
Note: Thake' pyend' is a Kashmiri word that denotes a resting spot or home. A home is more than a space where your soul gets peace. A home necessarily doesn't happen to have a structure, it can be a person, house or anything which doesn't even have a material shape or form.
