Building Connections: Orkut and Beyond
On a gentle Sunday evening in Reading, a handful of Kashmiri families found themselves gathered in a warmly lit living room. Coats were tucked behind the door, shoes clustered in the hallway, the air fragrant with the promise of Lipton chai and the memory of ael-dalchin (cardamom- cinnamon) lingering in the kitchen.
That’s where Sophia and Rohan (name changed but most of our readers will know) first met, with their respective families, both quietly fishing for familiarity. It didn’t take long for cliché to become truth: someone mentioned a cousin from Baramulla and suddenly a web of names began to map itself out—school friends back in Srinagar, neighbours once separated only by a thin garden fence, friends-of-friends who now lived an hour down the M4. It was a curious, almost magical unfolding, something both accidental and utterly inevitable.
Conversations inched from polite to personal. “Do you know—?” was met with “Of course! That’s my uncle’s childhood friend!” and on it went, laughter stitching new bonds with every anecdote. By the time dinner was ladled out, Sophia and Rohan—along with half the room—had built a tentative but rapidly expanding network, a thread of familiarity stretching across English counties, growing sturdy with each retelling of old stories and promises of future meet-ups.
The real link, unspoken but unmistakable, was Kashmir. Years would pass, children would grow into teenagers, but the friendships born that afternoon would grow into a community closer than family—built not only on shared memories of snow and saffron, but on the everyday companionship found and fiercely kept, a continent away from the valley they called home.
Humans are social animals. That’s what the school books said. Printed as plainly as multiplication tables or the Krebs cycle. It took me years to realise it meant something for real: the quiet ache that creeps up when the world around you don’t know your language, your favourite meal, the rhythm of your jokes.
Loneliness almost always catches you by surprise, like catching your own reflection in a shop window and wondering when your face started looking so much like your mother’s.
When I moved to the UK, the small rituals were the first to vanish. Roganjosh, that sturdy symbol of home, was well out of reach. Lamb cost what felt like a king’s ransom and foot-and-mouth warnings made every dinner seem faintly hazardous. My new friends were mostly vegetarians anyway, so I ate chickpeas and nodded supportively about the virtues of daal while, privately, missing the scents that used to cling to my clothes back home. Absence, I discovered, isn’t big or dramatic. It’s a slow, quiet shadow left when there’s nothing familiar to come home to.
Years later, with my very own kitchen and shelves full of inviting spice jars, I tried again. Welsh lamb was suddenly affordable; I lined up leder (turmeric) and yange (asafoetida) as if their order might conjure authenticity. My dumaloos, felt like cheating with promising outer layer but nothing like the inside of my mother’s version of dumaloo. I served them anyway. I told myself it was better to try and fail than never to try at all. Nostalgia, after all, doesn’t live in the taste. It lives somewhere just behind the steam clouding the kitchen window.
For a while, recognition felt entirely out of reach. My friends were generous, quick-witted, marvellous in all sorts of ways, but there was always a sliver of me floating unmoored. A part that longed for someone who’d smile knowingly at the mention of dumaloos, even if theirs also came out as wrong as mine.
And then Orkut arrived. It’s hard to explain what Orkut was. The interface clumsy, the colours surreal, but underneath it all, there was something precious. The surprise warmth of typing your surname and finding cousins, friends-of-friends, even people who claimed to have dined at your grandfather’s house. It didn’t start as friendship, just recognition and sometimes that’s enough. Recognition is the soft landing we search for, especially when feeling like a ghost.
Connection, built from pixels and then from messages, was messy and makeshift. But soon enough, it spilled into borrowed halls and bountiful balloons, children running around unfamiliar heating systems, voices clustering around paper plates of snacks. It wasn’t always straightforward. Group chats multiplied. The task of remembering birthdays, showing up when you’d rather stay under a blanket, wondering if that duty, friendship, community, might sometimes be too much. You cannot do it all; nobody can, no matter how sweetly WhatsApp reminds you. So, you learn to choose. Choose which bonds feel essential, which traditions to keep, when your own bandwidth is enough and when it’s time to let things rest.
Then there was the great pause—lockdown, “social distancing,” life compressed to rectangles on screens. Oddly administrative, oddly grim. Birthdays where candles are blown out in silence. Serious conversations interrupted by “You’re still on mute.” Yet, even then, connection found ways to persist. Cakes passed over garden fences, neighbours waved, laughter funnelled through Zoom. The ache for touch, for belonging, remained undiminished.
And that, perhaps, is the whole answer. Connection isn’t a luxury, something you polish up for special occasions. It’s air. It’s what lets you feel real in a queue at Tesco, standing between a trolley-squeak and a packet of “Kashmiri mirch” that’s an impersonation at best. Orkut, in its bright-hearted, shambolic way, tried to teach us this: you reach for people, again and again, in supermarkets, in login windows, in the small hours when the ache seems sharpest. You bring together whatever fragments you can, hold on, and keep trying.
There’s always more to say. The work is never finished. Like mending a favourite jumper, there’s always one more loose end to tuck in. But that’s the point: belonging is a work in progress, and so are we. Connection is how we remember we’re alive, and how we remember home; even if it comes as a disaster dumaloo or a wave across the garden fence.
Sheetal Raina
Dr. Sheetal Raina is the founder and editor of ISBUND, an immersive platform dedicated to preserving and celebrating Kashmiri culture. Deeply connected to the heritage and traditions of Kashmir, she brings a distinctive voice to cultural discourse - blending academic insight with heartfelt commitment to her roots.
4 Comments
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Sheetal Raina
Thank you so much, Anu, for your heartfelt words that so beautifully capture the spirit of community and belonging far from home. Reading your comment brought a wave of nostalgia—my own matamaal were right in the vicinity of Santram and your mention unlocked a treasure trove of cherished memories of those bustling lanes that shaped my childhood. It’s remarkable how these shared threads—whether it’s Roth or the familiar echo of ‘myein driyy chai’—continue to bind us, no matter the distance.
Let’s keep nurturing these connections and hold close the drive to stay connected, reminding ourselves that our stories are always worth sharing and our bonds worth preserving. To infinity and beyond—may our community thrive for generations to come.
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Moksha
Loved reading this, ❤️ The way you wrote about shared meals, laughter, and the joy of finding familiar names on Orkut brought back so many memories. I especially remember how you coming to the police colony home was always a celebration for us—the chocolates, the laughter, the togetherness. And I’m sure you also remember the Asia Hotel incident (silly to think of now, but it felt so intense back then 😅). always inspired by your words 🤍.”
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Sheetal Raina
Thank you Moksha. I had forgotten the Asia hotel incident. You were so cute then (and even now).
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Anu Handoo
Beautifully crafted. Each word resonates deeply with every fibre of my lived life in the UK. Finding meaning in friendship and 5th removed relationships. Making new bonds through shared walnuts and Roth on festivals. Creating new relations through love, advice and care. The nalmott, the myoth, the ‘myein driyy chai’… This is what they call community. This is the ‘social animal ‘ in us peeking out to form bonds over shared stories of habbakadal and Santraam…. And it is beautiful being part of this amazing journey.