Dapaan: Kashmir's stories of conflict, resilience and remembrance

After 35 years of armed conflict, Kashmir abounds with stories-heard and unheard-of loss, laughter, haunting, and place-making, but also of defiance against the state

Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict

By Ipsita Chakravarty

Published by Hurst & Co Ltd

291 pages  ₹699

  Award-winning journalist Ipsita Chakravarty’s debut book is a story about stories in Kashmir. Ms Chakravarty, who has reported on politics and armed conflict in Kashmir and Northeast India for decades, brings out multiple Kashmiri voices — heard and unheard — through several forms of storytelling, including personal memories, urban legends, oral histories, folk theatre, songs, jokes, rumours, myths and fables. The book consists of various stories in the region — about loss, laughter, haunting and place-making. 

In Kashmir, “haalaat” is the word used to describe