Abstract
‘Heaven on earth’ is a creative non-fiction piece which juxtaposes life under lockdown in Sydney 2020 with my experience of curfew in Kashmir in the 1990s. The COVID-19 crisis is explored from the resonances and dissonances across place and time. In this hybrid personal essay, I reflect on how a sense of space is constructed from wealth and community, and how a white, middle-class status benefits from lockdown, juxtaposed against the ongoing political and social isolation of Kashmir.
Highlights
Uneasy in Sydney, and this strangeness reminds me of Kashmir
In Sydney we are a long way from curfew in Srinagar and the military occupation of Kashmir with hundreds of thousands of Indian troops (Zia 2020: 360)
We were both grinning like nobody ever got killed in Kashmir
Summary
From six in the morning, cars whoosh past my house, on their way to work and school. As long as I had supplies of Gold Flake cigarettes to smoke and Abdul to play Snap with me, even if he cheated because his luck was bad and couldn’t win fair and square. In that intersection of time and space, I could fool myself that Abdul enjoyed my company and that I was not another demanding white tourist. If I asked Abdul when will curfew end his answer was soon.
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