"Welcome to Paradise on Earth", read an LCD display put up by Jammu & Kashmir Tourism at the arrival lounge of the Srinagar Airport. As people milled around – unusually quietly and hastily – collecting their check-in baggage, they spoke in whispers on finally being able to meet their families after weeks, but refrained from talking about the lockdown that had kept them away from their loved ones in the first place.
This was my first trip to the valley – one that I had long awaited. I grew up on tales about Kashmir's stunning beauty and sweet apples, from my parents who had chosen the valley as their honeymoon destination and countless others. In my adolescence, Bollywood films like Roja and Mission Kashmir doled out romanticised pictures of a valley caught in conflict – pictures that were disrupted when I studied towards and began working as a journalist. In due course, I made Kashmiri friends who spoke of their home as 'occupied territory'; who spoke of historical injustices, and human-rights violations like mass killings, sexual violence, torture and illegal detentions.
Over the past few years, my experiences while reporting on the Maoist conflict in India only deepened my interest in seeing and understanding the conflict in the valley for myself. After the Indian government imposed a clampdown in Kashmir this August, I ached to go—to see the theatre of conflict for myself, but also to inquire after friends who live in Srinagar. Finally, I was able to team up with a senior journalist to travel to Kashmir as his photographer.
"We have lived under Indian occupation for decades," a Kashmiri friend who lives in Mumbai told me days before my visit. "But this time, it's different… They've designed barricades and checkpoints in a way that makes it extremely difficult to get around. So although your destination may be only 500 metres away, and although you might be able to see it, barricades in place would require you to take several detours – perhaps travel 5 km, and still not reach."