#LalDed

“A woman walked out of a cruel house with nothing, wandered a valley that was changing religions around her, and left behind verses so true that two faiths have spent six hundred years claiming her — and the Kashmiri language still speaks in her sentences.”

“She took the most sophisticated philosophy India had built — the Śaivism of Abhinavagupta's Kashmir — and spoke it in short, sharp verses in the language of farmers and boatmen; six centuries on, Hindus and Muslims both claim her, because her verses refuse both labels.”