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Sydney tastes Kashmiri nun chai, mourns 2010 unrest
An Australian artists project helps connect hearts on distant shores
Bismah Malik/TNS
Srinagar, September 30
At first, one may wonder how having a cup of tea can be synonymous to mourning somebodys death but when you come across the project of Alana Hunt, an Australian artist, you gauge the hidden emotion behind it all. One look at pictures that are part of Alanas Cups of Nun Chai exhibition, which she recently organised at the Mori Gallery in Sydney, Australia, is enough to feel connected to her thought process, which gives away her bond with Kashmir.
The project Brewing memories. Tasting Kashmir is Alanas way of paying tributes to those who were killed in the summer unrest of 2010 in the Kashmir valley, which triggered after the Indian Army allegedly killed some civilians, claiming they were Pakistani infiltrators. Alana witnessed the unrest during her stay in the Valley during that time.
These ordinary-looking pictures convey an extra-ordinary thought. Over the course of two years, I invited 118 people to come and share a cup of nun chai as a simple act that acknowledged the loss of every life (during the unrest), she says.
Carefully brewed, as Alana says, into a rich rusty red tea from a distinct form of green tea leaves, punctuated with a pinch of phull (bi-carb soda) and made nourishing with milk and salt, nun chai, literally meaning salt tea, is Kashmirs most common drink. People in Kashmir have it during their breakfast, at mid-morning, in the afternoon and also after dinner.
Alana went on offering people in various cities, around the world, cups of nun chai, sharing with them the grief of Kashmiri families who had lost their relatives during the unrest and who now longed to fill that empty cup with Nun chai for their loved ones.
In the face of violence, growing number of dead and lack of thorough media coverage, it seemed necessary to speak, to connect and to write in a form that somehow reached places where the news headlines could not, says Alana.
When Alana invited people for the special tea, people asked for more things about Kashmir, even the recipe of nun chai and she was ready to help- with tea leaves and with her memories of her stay in Kashmir.
With each conversation that unfolded over a cup of Nun chai, each dead person who got killed in the 2010 mayhem envisioned in my mind and I developed a website where all these nun chai cups and the transcribed conversations were put together, Alana shares.
Alanas romance with Kashmir dates back to 2009 when her project on paper text messages, which was a sarcastic take on the ban on pre-paid phone messaging, was showcased at the Sarai Media Lab in Delhi. The more Alana interacted with Kashmiris at the Jawahar Lal Nehru University, where she studied the conceptual media art, the more she became interested in voicing the problems of Kashmiris in an artistic way, exhibiting her work from New Delhi to Sydney.
An Australian artists project helps connect hearts on distant shores
Bismah Malik/TNS
Srinagar, September 30
At first, one may wonder how having a cup of tea can be synonymous to mourning somebodys death but when you come across the project of Alana Hunt, an Australian artist, you gauge the hidden emotion behind it all. One look at pictures that are part of Alanas Cups of Nun Chai exhibition, which she recently organised at the Mori Gallery in Sydney, Australia, is enough to feel connected to her thought process, which gives away her bond with Kashmir.
The project Brewing memories. Tasting Kashmir is Alanas way of paying tributes to those who were killed in the summer unrest of 2010 in the Kashmir valley, which triggered after the Indian Army allegedly killed some civilians, claiming they were Pakistani infiltrators. Alana witnessed the unrest during her stay in the Valley during that time.
These ordinary-looking pictures convey an extra-ordinary thought. Over the course of two years, I invited 118 people to come and share a cup of nun chai as a simple act that acknowledged the loss of every life (during the unrest), she says.
Carefully brewed, as Alana says, into a rich rusty red tea from a distinct form of green tea leaves, punctuated with a pinch of phull (bi-carb soda) and made nourishing with milk and salt, nun chai, literally meaning salt tea, is Kashmirs most common drink. People in Kashmir have it during their breakfast, at mid-morning, in the afternoon and also after dinner.
Alana went on offering people in various cities, around the world, cups of nun chai, sharing with them the grief of Kashmiri families who had lost their relatives during the unrest and who now longed to fill that empty cup with Nun chai for their loved ones.
In the face of violence, growing number of dead and lack of thorough media coverage, it seemed necessary to speak, to connect and to write in a form that somehow reached places where the news headlines could not, says Alana.
When Alana invited people for the special tea, people asked for more things about Kashmir, even the recipe of nun chai and she was ready to help- with tea leaves and with her memories of her stay in Kashmir.
With each conversation that unfolded over a cup of Nun chai, each dead person who got killed in the 2010 mayhem envisioned in my mind and I developed a website where all these nun chai cups and the transcribed conversations were put together, Alana shares.
Alanas romance with Kashmir dates back to 2009 when her project on paper text messages, which was a sarcastic take on the ban on pre-paid phone messaging, was showcased at the Sarai Media Lab in Delhi. The more Alana interacted with Kashmiris at the Jawahar Lal Nehru University, where she studied the conceptual media art, the more she became interested in voicing the problems of Kashmiris in an artistic way, exhibiting her work from New Delhi to Sydney.
