“History as Adaptation”: Narrativisation of Memory in Farah Bashir’s Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir

Abstract

An individual’s memories of the events of historical significance, often narrated as memoirs, have the potential to expand human perception from personal history and trauma to collective historical consciousness and collective trauma. Studies on autobiographical narratives involve various approaches in investigating self, narrative identity, emotional valence, and construction of meaning. This study attempts to elucidate the role of autobiographical memory and narration in connecting subjective level history and trauma with national history and collective trauma through textual interpretation of Farah Bashir’s memoir, Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir. The memoir narrates the author’s disturbing memories of the insurgency in the 1990s and her experiences of psychological trauma that followed it. The insurgency of the 1990s holds greater importance in Kashmir’s history as many significant events like the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, the Gawkadal Massacre, and the Kunan Poshpora incident happened during this period. This article employs the theoretical framework of Roger Brown and James Kulik’s Flashbulb Memories to construe the role of narrative technique in exhibiting the perceptual transformation from personal level to collective level by discussing the aspects of history and trauma. Through the study, the article attempts to signify the importance of self-narration in historical revisionism and in tracing collective trauma.