Let the soul of Kashmir breathe again

There was a time, not too long ago, when stories weren’t told through screens but through trembling lips beside warm hearths. Grandmothers spoke of saints with smoke in their eyes and reverence in their voices. Fathers pointed to shrines on hilltops and whispered, “There lies the one who prayed for rain when our springs dried.” Mothers lit lamps at dusk, their silent prayers weaving into the tales of the barefooted saints who once gifted our valley its soul.

But now—there is silence.

A silence so loud, it pierces.

In homes where once the air trembled with the poetry of Hazrat Alamdar-e-Kashmir, Lalla Ded, and remembrance, now only the hum of machines and the sterile glow of devices remain. Children sit, swaddled in Wi-Fi, their hearts fed on reels, not roots. And their parents—busy, tired, distracted—have forgotten to remind them. Forgotten to name those who once walked the meadows with words sweeter than the ripest apricots.

Who tells the child now about the man who wept for a dying tree? About the woman who left her home to find God in the mirror of her breath? About the saints who spoke to silence and healed it, who touched dust and made it sacred?

Ask a child who Lalla Ded was—and watch the blank stare bloom. Ask about Sheikh Noor-ud-din Noorani, our Alamdar e Kashmir—and you’ll hear a pause long enough to echo.

Mention Hazrat Sheikh Hamza Makhdoom (RA), the saint who watched over Srinagar from the heights of Koh-e-Maran, and the child may know the shrine, but not the saint.

Say the name of Hazrat Zain-ud-din Wali (RA), the disciple of the great Nund Reshi, and it drifts like an unfamiliar wind.

Hazrat Baba Payam-ud-din Reshi (RA)—the saint who fed strangers irrespective of caste, creed, and colour—has become just a name on a plaque.

And what of Hazrat Syed Ali Hamdani (RA), the Shah-e-Hamdan, who brought with him not only Islam but the very architecture of our shrines, the papier-mâché, the Kalamkari, the art, the soul of this land?

They are all slipping—name by name—into oblivion.

But the fault lies not with the children.

It lies in the homes where their tongues first curled into speech. It lies in the laps that now rock them to sleep with lullabies stolen from the West, not the vakhs of Lalla Ded or the shruks of our saints. It lies in the evenings when fathers scroll and mothers stir silence into their curries—no one remembering the duty of remembrance. No one mentioning the names that once made this land sacred.

It is not just forgetfulness.

It is betrayal.

A generation that once prayed with tears now only photographs the shrine from afar. Parents have become mute historians of a culture that bleeds quietly behind their backs. They speak of progress, of foreign jobs, of the future. But they forget that a future without memory is just an exile in disguise.

Let us sit again at dusk. Let fathers tell stories again. Let mothers trace the names of saints in flour on the kitchen floor. Let children ask, “Who was he?”—and let us answer, not with sighs, but with fire in our voices. Let memory return before it’s too late.

Let the soul of Kashmir—a soul that once embraced saints, sages, shrines, and people alike—breathe again.

The author is a regular GK Contributor