A conversation with the journalist Ipsita Chakravarty on what it means for the people of Kashmir to tell their stories – in a place where history is contested, identity is under siege, and memorialisation itself is a political act: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/ipsita-chakravarty-conflict-storytelling-kashmir

Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the award-winning journalist Ipsita Chakravarty about her new book, Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict (Context, July 2025 / Hurst, June 2025).

“Haalaat” is a word used in Kashmir to describe the time after 1989, the conditions under which the armed resistance for freedom gained momentum. When the journalist Ipsita Chakravarty first visited the Valley in 2016, she found the haalaat was constantly being turned into stories.

The stories often begin with the word “dapaan” – “it is said” – a signature that links them to Kashmir’s long traditions of storytelling. In a place where the conflict has seeped into homes, language and culture, everyone seemed to be telling stories of the strange conditions that had overtaken their lives.

These narratives – by turns intimate, satirical, surreal – express a kind of public understanding, a distinctly Kashmiri memory of events so often narrated from elsewhere.

In her new book, Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict, Chakravarty listens closely to these stories — not as a chronicle of the Indian nation, but as a way of seeing Kashmir on its own terms. She brings together dark humour, songs of grief and blood maps of memory that reveal how storytelling itself became a form of survival and resistance in Kashmir. 

This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/O9e-C4-NM1kSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4q6TVdGK4lnAXYAy5GbeCCApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3J85Aj1

Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode. Leave us a comment here on Youtube or send me an email (shwethas[at]himalmag[dot]com).

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