“I used to sing in the open fields of Kashmir, with my neighbours,” Mir recalls by phone from Muzaffarabad, the city in northeast Pakistan where he now lives. Mir fondly recalls performing at school assemblies as a child, and at local wheat-sowing ceremonies in Kashmir. “But I was forced to run away from my homeland, when the situation deteriorated,” he says.
As a migrant in Pakistan, Mir had to give up singing, and began working as a textile embroiderer, making intricate Kashmiri needlework designs for clothes, tablecloths and curtains. (It’s still his primary job.) But after a few years in the country his love of singing was rekindled, when a Pakistani neighbor heard about Mir’s talent and hired him to sing at a family wedding. The job snowballed into more gigs and eventually leading to regular appearances on Radio Pakistan.
Needull in a haystack 