Srinagar: Looking at the two-decade-long Kashmir conflict, a girl (25) from north Kashmir’s Baramulla district has come up with a novel which highlights the day-to-day injustice and discrimination that the Valley women face.
For Azra Mufti, writing was not accidental, but it was a conscious choice after she saw women around her subjected to hardships.
“It was not something sudden but I felt an intense urge to write about women because I saw them suffering at every level in society. The book reflects what’s happening around us,” says Azra who is currently an Assistant Professor at Chandigarh Group of Colleges in Punjab.
‘Tearful Pages’, a 100-page novel, has reference to the laws which can help women protect themselves legally and raise their voice against oppression, says Azra.
In the last many years, the violence against women has gone up in the Valley.
“These are painful struggles that women go through every day of their life silently. We talk about everything but fail to talk about the issues that have rotten the soul of our society. Women are suffering and they need a voice,” says Azra for whom the biggest challenge was to balance between her job and her passion for writing. It was in 2015 that Azra completed the novel at her home in Baramulla. The book will be released by Punjab-based RIGI Publications on December .“There are issues that women face like female foeticide, war crimes and cyber bullying. We need to talk about all this,” she adds. After finishing her schooling in Baramulla, Azra moved to Punjab to pursue her graduation and postgraduation from Punjab Technical University, where she is settled for the last six years. Like Azra, many young women in the Valley are coming forward to tell the story of Kashmir in their own way. (TNS)