Seasons Losing Script

Rain is no stranger to mountains of Kishtwar. But this week, the rain did not fall, it tore. One cloudburst and everything changed. It ripped through villages, swallowing roads, houses, and vehicles in a rage that humans could neither predict nor withstand. So far, 70 lives have gone in an instant. Many more are still missing.

The cloudburst in Kishtwar is not an isolated incident. Across the Himalayas, extreme weather is becoming recurrent, ruthless and random. Science explains it as climate change, as the Himalayas are warming faster than the global average. But for those who live here, it feels more personal. It actually feels like betrayal. The same mountains that sheltered so long, now send down walls of water that wipe out entire villages in minutes.

In Kashmir, seasons are always read as poetry. For instance, the chirping of crickets is never taken just as a sound. It’s a signal. Their chorus, rising from unseen corners, tells us autumn (harud) is on its way. It is nature’s clock. It ticks to tell us that lush green months are fading, and the fascinating melancholy of fall is approaching.

However, this year, the rhythm feels unusual. Of course, the crickets sing. But our weather refuses to follow. The sun still burns. The air is still thick and sticky. And humidity clings like a second skin. The seasons are baffled. And so are we.

As I walk through the university campus, I see golden leaves already falling from the huge chinars. They float down like fragile flickers, carpeting the ground in a beauty that hides a certain sadness. The chinar never lies. It sheds when the season changes, when time has truly turned. But how does one make sense of falling leaves in a climate that still feels like July?

Kashmir has always lived in dialogue with its seasons. Our ancestors read seasons like scripture. They knew the call of the cricket meant autumn. The first fall of the chinar leaf meant harvest was near. The snow arriving on a certain date meant the coming year’s crops would thrive. But today, autumn arrives out of tune, when the body of the valley still sweats under summer heat while its heart hears the song of crickets and the fall of chinar leaves. The old signs are clashing with new realities. The calendar in nature’s hand is smudged and rewritten by forces larger than our imagination.

Perhaps that is the metaphor of our times: we live in dissonance! The tragedy in Kishtwar and the confused autumn in Srinagar are not separate stories. They are one tale of a land where nature’s balance has tilted. On one hand, it unleashes disasters that take lives in a single night. On the other, it unsettles the smaller, quieter rhythms of daily life. It dislocates arrival of autumn, the comfort of predictable change.

And still, we persist. Because who have lived through disasters, both natural and human-made, and yet have found poetry in the ruins. The crickets singing tonight remind us that autumn must come. Even if delayed, even if altered. The leaves of the chinar are falling gracefully. Even if the air still refuses to cool. Somewhere between the muddy disaster in Kishtwar and the seasonal muddle in Srinagar lies a lesson we can’t afford to avoid. That is, we may survive, but survival without balance is a fragile victory.

The seasons are speaking. Sometimes they speak in falling leaves, sometimes in the silence of drowned valleys. The real question is—are we listening?