Is It the Same for You?

by Neha Singh, Priya Sebastian (Illustrator)

“The day they found my brother with a blood stain, I found one on my kurta too, but no one noticed my blood stain.” Thus begins the story of a young girl in Kashmir as she goes through the turbulence of adolescence in her conflict-ridden world. While larger issues of terrorism, violence, and death engulf the hearts and minds of all those around her, she struggles to come to terms with her changing body and all that it entails. Left alone to deal with her constant questions, she experiences despair and loneliness but also shows resilience and hope in the faint knowledge that maybe it is not very different for all young girls around the “Is it the same for you?” she asks.
 
With powerful yet sensitive illustrations by Priya Sebastian, which infuse the story with a universality, this beautiful volume is a tender attempt in imagining the different strands of a young life in Kashmir—a place where the inner conflicts of voiceless, adolescent girls are often overshadowed by the political, religious, and military conflicts that are now a constant in everyday life.
 

24 pages, Hardcover

Published November 8, 2019

Reviews

[Vivek Tejuja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Young girls in conflict zones perhaps face so much more than we know of or will ever know. What do they think? What do they feel? When does childhood end and the reality of being where you are hits you hard? What do governments have to account for then, when innocence is lost way before time? Is it the Same for You in its most raw form asks all these questions, making the reader constantly reflect with every turn of the page.

Priya Sebastian and Neha Singh take different moments of a young girl’s life in Kashmir and bring them to fore. Amidst all the conflict (political and religious) and terror, the question remains that is it the same for all young girls out there? How is it when their bodies change? The book looks at shards of life - the ones that are rarely come about - when the not so normal becomes normal, when you get used to what you aren’t supposed to get used to, and life is lived just on the sidelines.

Neha Singh’s text coupled with Priya Sebastian’s most stunning illustrations will constantly haunt you. Each page of sparse text is a story with so many layers and so much to see. The girl who takes comfort in the assumption that maybe this is what it is for all girls over the world and who is to say it isn’t? In one form or the other that is. From one conflict zone to the other. From one state of normalcy to the next. Is it the same for you?

[William van Boesschoten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using a restrained colour palette in her richly textured drawings, Sebastian illustrates Singh's spare narrative about a girl on the cusp of womanhood in a conflict zone. It's a thought-provoking story with empathy and humanity at its core.

[Ushnav Shroff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking tale filled with lots of empathy.