Ipsita Chakravarty’s ‘Dapaan’: As haalaat kharaab hue

A compelling blend of reportage and storytelling, ‘Dapaan’ draws from a well-established lineage — exploration of Kashmir’s fractured history, told through the unvarnished voices of its people. Yet, its reimagining of the “tales from conflict” is both daring and deft. The title ‘Dapaan’ — Kashmiri for “it is said” — evokes a world of oral tradition, rumour, myth and shared history, where truth lives in the echoes of collective storytelling.

The book opens with a poignant story of a Srinagar businessman who buries his beloved radio dramas alongside Pakistani pop cassettes, simply saying, “Haalaat kharaab hue” — the times turned bad. The narrative throughout centres on haalaat — a term from everyday speech, elevating it from a casual remark to a charged lens through which Kashmir’s layered tragedies are revealed.

In the four parts of the book, keeping ‘dapaan’ as the larger frame, Chakravarty evokes the textured voices and shifting truths that have echoed across Kashmir before and since 1989. It is not the events alone, but the craft of their telling that gives them deeper meaning. For instance, in one part, Chakravarty unpacks how Kashmiris weaponise wit, folktales and theatre against the weight of oppression: “The roots of bhand paether lie beyond recorded history in Kashmir. Bhands have always been here… witnessing the rise and fall of empires, the cycles of suffering and rebellion…” Once a roaming theatre of resistance that satirised power, bhand paether gradually lost its edge following a State-sponsored censorship.

Chakravarty explores the spectres of Kashmiri life — of memory and fear, both metaphor and lived reality — and connects incidents like that of “braid chopping” with violations that continue to haunt a community left vulnerable. Told in whispers, such stories carry fears that defy logic, but cut deep.

However, the book offers only a fleeting nod to the trauma of Kashmiri Pandits and even the folklores forget to reminisce them as much. It does mention Pandit killings and their exodus — “Tensions between the communities had been rising… so when the haalaat came, the Pandits of Sopore knew it was time to go.” But the depth of their emotional and psychological burden remains untouched, or is pushed to the margin.

In another section, the author examines how mourning in Kashmir blurs into political expression, turning grief into quiet rebellion, such as wedding songs transformed into elegies at militant funerals. She goes on to chart, delicately but with precision, the emotional landscape of Kashmir through its scarred geography — graveyards, shuttered cinemas, border posts, and abandoned orchards become “blood maps”, where violence imprints itself onto memory.

The book closes with the fallout of the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 and the communication blackout that followed, describing a chilling stillness — the haalaat have gone silent, muzzling public life and trapping Kashmiris in a suspended state between remembering and being made to forget.

‘Dapaan’ is evocative yet unflinching, fusing folklore, memory and politics into a narrative that is both intimate and haunting.

— The reviewer teaches at GGDSD College, Chandigarh