Around a decade ago, when Asiya Hassan, a girl from Kashmir’s Pampore area, asked her five-year-old nephew in Malaysia to utter names of days in Kashmiri, he could not. Startled, Asiya took it upon herself to serve her native language though being in the foreign land.
In the next few years, Asiya while pursuing her graphic designing degree started a process of making colourful cards and inscribing Kashmir words with meaning on them.
“As I tried to look up on the internet for the resources on Kashmiri language, I felt let down. You will find Google translator in scores of languages but not in Kashmiri. There was also not any major book or online platform for Kashmiri dictionary. I thought why not make one myself that will serve people of my homeland while on foreign lands and this is how the idea started to take shape,” Asiya said while talking over phone with Greater Kashmir.
Asiya is based in Malaysia from her childhood; on one of her visits to Kashmir, she collected whatever literature she could gather on Kashmiri to help her research. “My mother is one of the great resources for me. I took her help to develop this online Kashmiri dictionary. She also helps me to record the pronunciation and voice for my social media accounts and website of Kashmiri dictionary,” she said.
By 2017 Asiya created social media accounts for her Kashmiri dictionary. In just a few years her Instagram page (Kashmiri.dictionary) has over 13,000 followers while her Facebook page with the same name has more than 3,000 followers.
Adil Ahmed who has been following the Kashmiri.dictionary said: “Few months back, I asked my friends if they knew the spinal cord is called Thar Kond in Kashmiri, eye balls are called Toji, crocodile a Grah and bicycle a Zalgur? Despite being fluent in Kashmir, they hardly knew the words. The platform is amazing, you get to know new words, proverbs, grammar, riddles, pronunciation and many other things. Before knowing about Kashmir dictionary, I thought I knew everything but I guess there is a lot to learn.”
With good response on social media, Asiya thought of creating a website for Kashmir dictionary. In 2020 she created the Kashmiridictionary.org which is running successfully and serving the language.