Lala Argami’s village speaks again

There are places that scream for attention. And then there are places like Aragam in Bandipora district—that whispers. It doesn’t ask to be seen. It waits to be felt.

Tucked between the silver gleam of Wular Lake and the shadows of mountains that hold centuries in their wrinkles, Aragam is not just a village. It is a pulse. A soft, ancient breath that never stopped, even when the world began to forget how to listen.

Once, in this valley we call home, books were not luxury—they were life. There were queues outside bookstalls. Libraries were sanctuaries. A single newspaper passed through a dozen hands before it finally rested, its edges frayed like worn-out dreams. We waited for books the way we now wait for likes. Slowly. Hopefully. With reverence.

But time changed its tune. Scrolls replaced silence. Screens swallowed stories. And somewhere between the race for relevance and the rush for reception, we stopped reading. Bookstalls shut their shutters. Libraries echoed with emptiness. And words—those delicate bridges between souls—grew brittle from neglect.

But something extraordinary happened.

It came quietly, like snow falling on walnut leaves. It came through memory. It came through Aragam Bandipora.

The same Aragam that once cradled the soul of Lala Argami, the mystic saint whose verses bloomed like spring flowers from his lips. His poetry wasn’t written to impress—it was spoken to awaken. He spoke of love, of longing, of surrender. And it’s almost as if, long after his bones returned to the earth, his words kept walking through these village lanes, tapping gently at forgotten doors.

And someone—perhaps a child, or an old woman with a faded shawl—opened the door.

Now, in this unassuming village, fifteen homes bear a sign that reads: “Here, books live.” They’re not palaces. They don’t house bestsellers with gilded titles. But inside, there are books that breathe. Books that still believe in us.

This quiet revolution was planted by Sarhad, a Pune-based NGO, and watered by the District Administration of Bandipora. Together, they asked a question we had long buried: What if every home could be a library? And in Aragam, that question didn’t become a report. It became reality.

Here, a living room shelters novels and memoirs. A bedroom is warmed not just by a kangri, but by Sufi poetry and children’s tales. A shelf stands where once there was a television. And a child, nose buried in Alif Liala, forgets for a moment that the world outside is busy losing itself.

Fifteen more homes are being added. Book-themed homestays are on their way. Tourists will come not just for snow or saffron, but to sit with a cup of “noon chai “and read. Even a selfie point has appeared—not in vanity, but in soft celebration.

But this is not about nostalgia. It’s about survival.

In Aragam, reading is not a hobby. It is a way of remembering who we are. It is the grandmother who still knows how to recite a story from a torn book she read forty years ago. It is the boy who now dreams in paragraphs, not pixels. It is Lala Argami, reborn—not as a saint in a shrine, but as a spirit moving between pages, whispering: “Keep reading. Keep seeking.”

In an age where everything is designed to be fast, loud, and forgettable, Aragam has chosen the opposite. It has chosen slowness. It has chosen stillness. It has chosen books.

And so, perhaps years from now, someone will ask, “Why did they choose books when the world had moved on?”

And the answer will come like a prayer:

“Because the books never moved on from us.

We just had to walk back.”

Khursheed Dar is a teacher and author from Langate.