Yaarbal: Letters From Kashmir

The project, ‘Yaarbal: Letters from Kashmir’ is an initiative ideated by Kashmir’s feminist literary and cultural magazine, Maaje Zevwe. The project aims at gathering diverse and dissenting women’s voices from Kashmir in the form of letters—addressed to a friend, a parent, a lover, a ghost, a place or, to no one in particular.

Through these letters, we want Kashmiri women to be ‘themselves’ by candidly penning down their emotions and lived experiences of and about living in an open-air prison like Kashmir. This project is an attempt to add a unique dimension to the existing discourse in Kashmir by stimulating the informal documentation of lived realities of Kashmiri women. We want to go beyond the nuances of ‘research’, where it is difficult for women to document their experiences; therefore, making them feel seen and heard, in and through these letters.