“Paper txt msgs from Kashmir….tells the story of an old conflict in the thwarted missives of those enduring its latest indignity. The result is a poignant, inventive and heart-breaking look at the interruptions wrought by the ban on people caught between two countries, two militaries and hundreds of millions of nationalism-fed egos. The 150 messages take us, well meaning web voyeurs, into the inner rooms of the Kashmiri limbo.” -Rafia Zakaria, Art and Resistance, Dawn
In the winter of December 2009 close to a thousand “paper txt msgs” were distributed throughout Indian occupied Kashmir as a kind of tongue-in-cheek response to the government’s ban on pre-paid mobile phone services in the region.
Virtually overnight hundreds of thousands of mobile phone users – people conducting business, college students, families, distanced loves were left without means of telecommunication.
There was little more than a whisper from the media; it was not an isolated incident. The monitoring, blocking and banning of phone services is just one of the many ways in which India’s military occupation intervenes into, disrupts and desecrates the rhythms of daily life in Kashmir.
Through the distribution of an “alternative communicative tool” dejected pre-paid subscribers were invited to write a “paper-txt-msg”, to anyone real or imagined, about anything they would like to write in a txt msg but were suddenly unable to do so.
These paper txt msgs moved between people’s hands in different ways and different places throughout Kashmir; they carried stories of their own, with many eventually finding their way back to me. It is these paper txt msgs, a cacophony of diverse and wonderful voices, that have come to form the basis of this multi-platform body of work.
This book was first published as a pdf online in early 2011, and 70 copies were printed in print in late 2011.
In 2012 the book was photocopied and bound. And in 2023 and 2024 more photocopies were made.
Contributors: Alana Hunt, with additional contributions by Suvaid Yaseen, Majid Maqbool, Zooni Tickoo, Iram Razzaq, Rahim Saeb, Gowhar Fazili, Uzma Falak, Tanveer Ahmed and many people in Kashmir. -Publisher
Text in English and Urdu
