LoC — refers to the ‘Line of Control’, the most militarised zone in the world demarcating Indian and Pakistani administered Kashmir. And yet seemingly forgotten behind the perpetuity of an over 800 year conflict, is a past wherein the place was considered to be an idyllic syncretism between philosophical schools of thought, an epicentre of learning and culture. Residues of landmarks from that era remain amongst the contemporary barbed wire terrain. A profoundly paradoxical experience emerges upon encountering present-day Kashmir. All nostalgia and romanticisation of the past is inadequate compared to its legacy of conflict. But still, the isolated ruins of that ancient history, the mesmerising mountains of the Himalayan landscape, the mist and the flowers, nevertheless resound the echo of Amir Khusrau, that ‘if there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.’ The conditional being, ‘if’.