The New Indian Express ·
'The Big Book of Kashmiri Literature': Expressing the valley
From devotional verses and folk songs to short stories, radio plays, poetry, ghazals, flash fiction, songs, and excerpts from novels and plays. The Big Book of Kashmiri Literature brings together centuries of writing from Kashmir in a single volume. Edited by Onaiza Drabu, the anthology features around 120 pieces translated from Kashmiri into English.
Kashmiri is Drabu’s mother tongue, which she understood from an early age, but says she had little exposure to its literature. It was only around 2013-14 that she began reading Kashmiri literature and studying its literary tradition seriously. Drabu is a business anthropologist who also runs Daakvaak, a digital publication focused on South Asian literature and art. Her first book, The Legend of Himal and Nagrai: Greatest Kashmiri Folk Tales, was a collection of Kashmiri folklore, published in 2019. For this project, she first began translating Kashmiri into English. So when Penguin approached her to put together an anthology of Kashmiri literature as part of its series on regional literatures, she took up the opportunity.
Drabu says she wanted the anthology to represent “all the genres in some way or the other” as Kashmiri has a rich oral tradition, with much of its literature existing through songs and performances, and not only in the books. The anthology therefore treats Kashmiri folk and oral traditions as a significant part of literary history rather than placing them outside it.