Each spring, Kashmir returns with its contradictions.
Plum blossoms and unpredictability.
Light and loss.
The city wears a new face: smart, they call it.
Electric buses hum past manicured boulevards, the lake
reflects cleaner edges, floodlights
crown the Shankaracharya Hill, and tricolours bloom like wildflowers across every street.
This work begins in the dissonance between the city's polished surfaces and the silent
changes inside a home that is slowly emptying out.
Beneath the lights and the slogans, occupation still hums, persistent and quiet.
The cracks are not always visible, but they remain.
In this city of constant revision, the camera becomes a way to sit with what doesn’t settle.
To offer rest, and to listen.
Who talks when everyone is forced to be silent?