Photojournalist Shome Basu’s book, Shades of Kashmir, captures life in the Valley and offers an engaging pictorial treat by merging various aspects of life in Kashmir, from the mundane to sublime
Photojournalist Shome Basu’s camera’s lenses have served as a window to the spaces which cannot be explored by the common public. Having travelled far and wide, he has chronicled the lives of people engulfed by poverty and political turbulence. His recent book titled Shades of Kashmir is a coffee table book filled with striking pictures of mundane life in the Valley.
Shades of Kashmir offers a glimpse of the frame of mind in Kashmir “when a modicum of normalcy returned after two decades of proxy war”. Basu was professionally assigned to cover events in Kashmir, which led to his engagement with the bleeding and anguished, but supremely picturesque land. The pictures in the book encompass various aspects of Kashmir and Kashmiri life, the distinction between which is often blurred by the chasm between the Government and the militants.
Distributed among four sections: landscape, Daily life, People, and Protest, there are moving images of a girl praying, a child playing, a couple enjoying kahwa (local tea), girls playing cricket, houseboats along the Jhelum, an old shikara owner offering namaaz, an Army officer asking for tea at a civilian house, snowy Gulmarg, sunset at Dal lake, and much more. They are featured along with images and captions with political overtones, such as that of Kashmir’s half-widows, surrendered militants, DVDs and CDs propagating Islamic ideology being sold, a grave digger for martyrs whose son was a slain militant, operations of the Special Task Force, of mourners, and many more.
Basu’s lens narrates numerous stories from a land of wonder and rich heritage torn by violence. The pictures are clicked in black and white. As Basu writes in the preface, “This helped me retain my focus and a grip on the reality.”