Lalla, Laya, and the Labyrinth

March 27, 2025

I can’t stop thinking about this - how much Lal Ded spoke about chakras, meditation, and, most intriguingly, Laya (dissolution). Laya. It’s almost eerie, like it was meant to connect somehow. And then there’s "Lal bōh لال بہہ", the phrase she uses so often in her poetry - it literally means to cast away, to dissolve. Isn’t that exactly what laya is? Maybe Lalla and Laya were always meant to be synonymous. Maybe I was always meant to stumble into her words. And that thought? That thought is messing with me in the best way possible.

This whole research spiral actually started because The Kashmir Education, Culture & Science Society reached out to me a few days ago. They had seen an artwork I did of Lal Ded a couple of years ago and asked if I’d contribute something for an upcoming event. And that’s when it hit me - I hadn’t really gone back to her work in a long time. Not like this. I don’t even know how many times I’ve flipped through the pages of "I, Lalla" over the years, but today, for the first time, I sat down and really looked at the Kashmiri script each letter, each stroke, trying to trace its connection to Arabic, the script I grew up with, the one that’s always felt like home. And I’m just… stunned. The way Shiva, chakras, pranayama are written in Kashmiri script, flowing through these ancient verses - it’s unreal. It feels both foreign and familiar at the same time, and I don’t even know how to process it.

I’ve had an exhausting and not-so-great last couple of days, but here I am, surrounded by books of her vakhs, flipping pages back and forth, caught somewhere between bewilderment and inspiration. Sleep can wait. This...this feels too important to pause.

April 2, 2025

I revisited my research today, and now my mind is even more tangled. If Lalla wrote anything at all, it wouldn’t have been in the Kashmiri script I pored over yesterday - it would have been in "Sharada". Sharada. The script of old Kashmir, of ancient manuscripts, of a time that feels impossibly distant. And yet, it’s another thread in this strange, magnetic pull I feel toward her words. This whole thing is turning into a labyrinth, and I can’t seem to stop walking deeper into it.