Click to play videoSrinagar: In her family, Shahala Sheikh is called the visionary. As ambiguous as that sounds – that is perhaps the best way to describe this 32-year-old furniture manufacturer.
She is single handedly managing a business that others would have found impossible. Shahala today caters to people who want state of the art furniture made of walnut wood, which is as good and as exclusive as it can get.
Born into a family where her grandfather was in the timber business, it was left to his granddaughter to carry the legacy forward.
Her furniture is not some thing every one can afford. But she is not complaining. Every thing that comes out of her factory is made to order and her clientele spread across India and outside.
Though Shahala hasn't started exporting in a big way its definitely on the cards. Entrepreneur, businesswoman and a proud Kashmiri woman, Shahala is what many women dream to be.
Shahala says, “I am a Muslim and nowhere does it say in Islam that women cant be independent. Its in fact a very liberal religion and very liberal to women. People are very supportive here and I am not doing any thing wrong. I think people outside Kashmir have this very wrong idea about Kashmiri women. We are all trying to do our jobs and people respect that.”
“I wear jeans because it’s convenient for me. That doesn't make me a bad woman. Its what is comfortable and that's all there is to it. Some times it gets tiring, the work culture here needs to be revived. But I am just a woman trying to make a living. I have to help myself. I wont have a messiah coming to help me. I love Kashmir and I would never leave this place and go elsewhere to work,” she added.
Shahala is also an environmentalist – a part of the People's Ecological Council that is trying to protect Kashmir's ecology.
For every person who thinks militancy ridden Kashmir is a nightmare for women to work in – there is a Shahala Sheikh to remind people that grit, determination and a little bit of dreaming is all it takes.
For some though there is no place for dreams. Even middle class Kashmiri women do forge their own professional paths, sometimes because of hard realities.
Ruhi Jan took to designing clothes as a hobby after a part time course in fashion designing when she was studying as a student in Mumbai.
But when her husband passed away in 2003 in a car accident, there was just one option left open for Ruhi. She turned that hobby into a full time profession to support herself and her two young daughters.
Three years later it has paid off. The 39-year-old fashion designer is one of the biggest names in the business in Srinagar.
Her clients – the wives of the who's who from the city. Her boutique Prima Donna always has customers dropping in to at least check out Ruhi's latest designs even if they cant always afford to buy them.
Her USP is very simple keeping in mind the fact that she works in Kashmir with its very own set of rights and wrongs.
Ruhi says, “All my tailors are women and men aren’t allowed inside my shop. It is exclusively for women so women like coming here because they know they will not be measured by men tailors. In fact I have a sign outside my shop that says exclusively for women. You see in Kashmir things are different. So one has to keep in mind these things.”
It is this balancing act between modernity and conservatism that seems to be the winning formula for women entrepreneurs here. Some thing that young Kashmiri women agree to like 26-year-old Tanhaiyat Siddiqui, a psychiatrist in a Srinagar hospital.
Tanhaiyat says, “We live here the way we want to keeping our values in mind. Modern and liberal has a different meaning in Kashmir but that doesn't make us any less empowered than you.”
In fact, in Kashmir, young women are trying to erase the colours of repression that the rest of the country seems to have painted their state in.
“Who says we are repressed. We are Muslim women proud to be Kashmiri women and we are no less repressed or empowered than anyone else here,“ says a university student Asma.
How else can you explain the birth of She a magazine recently launched in Srinagar by two young women in their twenties.
A magazine for Kashmiri women by Kashmiri women – that doesn't talk about burkhas or Islam or even about militancy. Instead the first issue of She talked about dating in Kashmir.
Editor of She Saima Farhad says, “It was a great success. Everyone dates and some one was finally talking about it.”
Saima, who is also a professor at the Kashmir University, is not surprised at the popularity of this one issue old magazine. One thousand copies found their way into the hands of women.
In fact, She has now inspired a local daily to start a women's section in their newspaper. The editors at She have taken a firm stand not to discuss any thing religious or political in their magazine - only fun things and issues that concern women here. At the same time Saima knows when not to cross the line.
“We will never discuss some thing like premarital sex in She. That would not work here in Kashmiri society because it is not applicable here. We will discuss issues that are relevant. Why talk about things that make no sense in this society, “Saima added.
Theirs is a dual existence where an orthodox world co-exists and co-exists peacefully with the emerging new order. It is this very symbiotic relationship that defines the duplicity of the lives of women of Kashmir today.
Yet on either sides of the veil, they remain defiant in the individual choices they choose to make. In today's Kashmir, Suraiya and Shahala live side by side.
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