The Viral Prompt: I met my younger self for coffee today

I met my younger self for coffee today.

I arrived 10 minutes early. He showed up 20 minutes late.

He wore distressed jeans, a leather jacket, and Chelsea boots. I spotted a Reglan Pheran with a Kani-design muffler.

He greeted me like a reporter chasing a deadline. I sat across from him in silence.

His eyes were wide with questions. Mine, perhaps, heavy with answers.

“You look like someone who just escaped a funeral,” he said. I smiled and said, “That’s not entirely inaccurate.”

He ordered coffee and pizza. I ordered Kehwa and Shermal.

“So did we become what we promised to be?” he asked. “That depends on which promise you mean,” I replied.

He took out a notebook from his messenger bag and showed me scribbles about rivers and resistance, saffron and almonds, papier-mâché and carpets, glaciers and meadows, Sozni and Kani.

“Do we still write about Kashmir?” he asked.

“Every day,” I replied. “Sometimes with ink, sometimes with fire, always with love.”

He asked about the stories, the ones he had not yet dared to chase. I told him about desolate homes, about boys with heroin in their veins.

He told me about his desire to change the world. I told him about the years that felt like theatre with no audience, of times where silence stood in queues longer than voters in elections.

He told me about the hazy-eyed boy in Sopore who knew the names of every victim in his neighbourhood. I told him about the old man in Warwan who built a shelter after the village fire took everything else.

He spoke of parents burying young children. I talked about the foreigner who called Kashmir a paradise.

He talked about moving mountains. I told him about men who returned from the bustle of cities to the silence of mountains, from the murky whirlpools of hope to heartbreaks.

He asked if people started liking us now. I told him we stopped caring.

He asked, “Do they still care? Do they read the stories?”

“Some do,” I said. “Others mostly scroll.”

“But will I still write?” he asked.

“You won’t stop,” I said. “There will be times it will feel useless. But you will write anyway. When Kashmir is hurting, you will write. When it is beautiful, you will write. When it disappears from headlines, you will write to remind the world it still breathes.”

He inquired if we write stories that look like a carpet and smell like Noon Chai. I said sometimes the most subversive thing we do is make people feel and sometimes we let humour in through the backdoor, just to keep the soul from rusting.

He asked if we are still an introvert? I replied, yes, but it didn’t come our way.

“But do we still love Kashmir?” he asked.

I said, “We do. Fiercely. Foolishly. Closer than our name, closer than our breath. We loved it through editorial redlines and existential dread. We loved it even when it turned its back on us. Maybe especially then. We watched her bleed and burn. We will watch her blossom. We write every version of her.”

He said, “And are we tired?”

“Yes,” I said. “But never done.”

He asked about fear. I said we still feel it when the phone rings, when the gate creaks, when a name disappears from the byline.

He told me he doesn’t think about me often. I told him I think about him every day.

He asked if I was happy. I said most days I try.

He started to cry. And so did I.

We lingered in silence as if it might evaporate all the years between us.

I noticed the way he still scribbled in the margins, still underlining words like truth and disappear.

“What would you tell me to do differently?” he asked.

“I’d tell you to read every day. Not just the news and books, but the textures of things. I’d tell you to listen to elders, really listen. Make friends, not just contacts. Help the younger ones. Learn to pray. Not just perform it, but feel it. Become spiritual. You will need something deeper than outrage to keep you standing,” I replied.

Before we parted, he tore out a page and handed it to me.

It had only one sentence on it: “Write like Kashmir is reading.”

I folded it carefully, tucked it into the pocket of my Pheran.

I hugged him tight. He said: “I hope we meet again for coffee.”

He stepped outside. I stayed for a while and looked at the overcast sky out the window.

After a few minutes, I left too.

A child chased pigeons through barbed wire as I headed to my workplace.

I met my younger self for coffee today.

And I remembered why I write.

Author is Senior Editor Greater Kashmir