Meet Dr Subhadra Jalali, a Kashmiri Pandit and Director LVPEI, who is preserving a 150-year-old 'Pheran'

In a special conversation with ETV Bharat on the sidelines of an event in Pahalgam, Dr Jalali said that the pheran is priceless for her which she wears only on special occasions. She said that her mother-in-law had given it to her as a simple cloth to make a dress out of it.

Pahalgam (J&K): For Dr Subhadra Jalali, a Kashmiri pandit woman who migrated from the valley in the wake of armed militancy in the 1990s, the traditional Kashmiri gown 'Pheran' is not just a piece of cloth, but a culture representing her ancestors. And when it is about the Pheran gifted to her by her mother-in-law, who inherited it from her mother 150 years ago, it is all the more priceless.

Born in 1962 in the Karan Nagar area of Srinagar city, Dr Jalali was practising ophthalmology when militancy began in the valley after which she migrated to Hyderabad to pursue her career. Now Director at the LV Prasad Institute Hyderabad (LVPEI), Dr Jalali recently visited Pahalgam to attend a Community Ophthalmology of India International Conference.

At the event, Dr Jalali attracted everybody's attention including guests from India and abroad with her Pheran. In a special conversation with ETV Bharat on the sidelines of the event, the doctor said that the pheran was priceless for her and she wears it only on special occasions. She said that her mother-in-law had given it to her as a simple cloth to make a dress out of it.

However, over the years, Dr Jalali realised that the Pheran is less of a dress and more of a confluence of generations. "I see my mother-in-law and her mother and all these generations and memories in this pheran. It represents our culture,” she said. Besides the traditional Kashmiri gown, Dr Kaur also wears the headgear known as 'safa' inherited by her from her paternal grandmother from Shopian who was married in Srinagar.

She also wears the earpieces called 'dejhor' which used to be handwoven by Kashmiri artists of the yore. Dr Jalali said that she once wore the dress at a wedding where the girl asked why she had worn the fancy dress. “I wondered if they did not know it was our culture. It is priceless,” she said. The Kashmiri doctor says she would like to pass on the dress to her daughter-in-law.

“Maybe it will end up in the museum someday," she said. Dr Jalali urged the people to preserve the culture of their ancestors.