Salik Basharat, Author at INVERSE JOURNAL

Salik Basharat

Salik Basharat is an independent researcher working on Kashmiri Literature and Philosophy at Ashoka University. Prior to his completion of the Young India Fellowship in 2019, Salik worked on several community-based projects in Saudi Arabia. His personal project, Expatriate Tales, documents the discrimination faced by working-class expatriates in KSA. He has also worked with Blank Noise, a community art project headed by Jasmeen Patheja, to spread awareness about sexual violence and the blame narrative in India. Salik was the Editor of Dream Compass, a quarterly literary magazine, and a member of the Executive Body of SAASC (Students Association and Study Circle) at Punjab Engineering College. He is currently filming a docu-series about Kashmiri poetry with Professor Abir Bazaz.

Three Poems for Six Months of Silence — by Salik Basharat

February 8, 2020 | Poetry

Relying on the subtlety of the verse, Salik Basharat introduces three poems for six months of silence in Kashmir to amplify the depth of meaning found in Kashmiri life and its everyday experience. “A Postcard from Gulmarg Dated 27th April 2019” carelessly signs itself off to the reader through the precise verses of the young poet. “Six Haikus from Kashmir (August 2019 – January 2020)” oscillates in poetic form, between the plurality of six haikus for six months and the partitioned structure of one poem, depending on how readers engage with its verses. وہ مہکار غل اور وہ دانا بلبل (translated “The Garden and the Nightingale”) balances despair and hope on the thin fine line of everyday life trapped between grief and uncertainty.