I went to a place where a war was fought. That’s almost all the information I had on it. That’s almost all that’s said of it, repeated over and over again, as if there are no other stories there. I asked my friend if I might die (I’ve toyed with the idea of death as one does, hoping for a catastrophe to strike, so I can be gone, no fuss).
Kargil’s Suru Valley felt a bit like paradise to me on first encounter.
Wild flowers grow with abandon, streams gurgle through lush green fields, a river comes down straight from a glacier, its water clean and sweet, and the stars hang so low and bright in the night.
Little girls wanted to befriend me, curious about the outsider, who wasn’t a Shia muslim and who didn’t cover her head.
The series is a celebration of girlhood and the earth, in this present moment, driven by a sense of nostalgia for my own childhood.
The title is taken from an EE Cummings poem ‘Dive for Dreams’.
Biography
Shubhra Dixit is a photographer and journalist from India. Her work focuses on religion, gender, folklore, memory, ideas of home, and the natural world.