JAFFNA STREET

In 1989, an adolescent
schoolboy from downtown Srinagar watched as his elders extricated themselves
from university campuses, high-school grounds, handloom machines and farms to
bear arms and fight a war of attrition against the Indian state.Twenty-two years
on, Jaffna Street was born from his explorations of the human dimension of
the conflict appositely termed the Kashmir tragedy. Combining anecdotes,
personal memories and extended interviews, the author takes us behind the
scenes and headlines into Srinagar city’s ‘notorious’ perpetually politically
charged downtown as well as its upper cityside belt to create a panoramic
portrait of recent Kashmir history. He profiles ordinary people—hitmen,
insurgents, artisans, failed Marxist intellectuals, mystics, exiles,
gangsters and ordinary individuals—who wouldn’t make it even to the footnotes
of history but have been crucial first-hand witnesses, participants or
victims of some of the important events that marked the tumultuous and
violent years of the insurgency.Jaffna Street attempts to trace these
individual trajectories by exploring significant events in their lives within
the wider adumbrate of history, without losing sight of the big picture.