In a Kashmiri village, the dead are suddenly denied the right to rest in peace, one by one. Soon, the horror shifts from the ordeal itself to the way the living learn to live with it.
Written over 60 years ago, ‘The Shroud Thief’ (‘Kafan Tchoor’/کفَن ژوُر) – initially titled ‘The Hellborn’ (‘Jahanami’/جہنمی) – carries ripples of Kashmir’s recent history, and continues to resonate in the present as well. Even though the story makes no direct reference to politics or conflict, it bears facets of angst, frenzy, grief, enforced silence and the spectacle-making of violence – all of which have an unfortunate centrality in life in Kashmir. It also serves as a literary archive of an acceptance, tiresome as it may be, of an unforeseen shock, of the grim scars of years of turmoil.
Amin Kamil, a pioneer of modern Kashmiri fiction linked to the Progressive Writers’ Movement, published the story in his 1966 collection ‘Kathi Manz Kath’ (A Tale Within a Tale/کتھہِ منٛز کتھ). At the time, Kashmiri prose was in its youthful prime, and marching to match the oeuvre of the language’s older, more popular, poetic tradition. The 1950s had marked a literary dawn, with the appearance of the first Kashmiri short story (‘Jawabi Card’, or The Reply-Paid Card, by Dina Nath Nadim) and the first Kashmiri novel (Doad Te Dagg, or Pain and Disease, by Akhtar Mohiuddin).
A milestone in Kashmiri fiction, ‘The Shroud Thief’ operates on a broader metaphorical level. The thief is a personification of something unseen yet unsettling: larger forces that disrupt order and dignity among those living in conflict zones, and that remain difficult – even impossible – to resist. The villagers find comfort in vague explanations – devils, strangers, anything that distracts them from facing the underlying truth. It is a fairly human reaction in environments shaped by conflict, where blame is rarely clear and often displaced.
The story’s absurd conclusion lingers in the mind long after the reading ends. Once feared and viciously cursed, Ghane Baab is, all of a sudden, fondly remembered. Uncomfortable as it may sound, such a shift can feel truthful in a place like Kashmir. This bizarre turn becomes a rude reminder of how, during hardship, people begin to measure which suffering is more tolerable instead of questioning the suffering in the first place.