In her dreams, my friend tells me, she is bald and wears a blue dress, apparently the uniform of a detention centre for aliens caught in th...
In her dreams, my friend tells me, she is bald and wears a blue dress, apparently the uniform of a detention centre for aliens caught in the great citizenship sweep that India wants to conduct on its people. These dreams follow a half year of trauma: my friend, a journalist, is a Kashmiri, and after leaving India to study last year, she could not speak to her parents during the crippling telecom blackout India had imposed on the Valley.
Hussain Haidry, a writer and poet whose poems energise the street whenever he appears at protests against India’s new citizenship law, says he stays awake longer than ever. “I’m sleeping less and less,” he says. His brain is forever ticking, and he spends a chunk of the night on Twitter and Facebook, his 24/7 link to ever-growing protests – 606 at last count.
These are uncertain, stressful and sleepless times in India, especially if you are Muslim, doubly so if you are Muslim and Kashmiri. I sympathise with the protests, I feel guilty about what India has wrought in Kashmir. I oppose the strident anti-Muslim tone of my government. I oppose its systematic attempts to push them to the margins. I am appalled and saddened...
