Those Golden Grains

In rural Kashmir, there once lived a tradition—humble, golden, and alive. It was called “Chirem Tumul”. Not many remember it now. But once upon a time, when the sky was still blue in its silence and children didn’t wear shoes unless someone died, the month of sowing whispered secrets only the old understood. Elders in pherans stained with smoke and memory would gather like crows around a bonfire of talk—discussing soil as if it were poetry, seed as if it were scripture. The air was heavy with unspoken reverence.

Paddy seeds—small, brown, unassuming—were soaked in cold water, placed tenderly in coarse sacks, and kept by the hearth. And like all sacred things, they required warmth to become. Days later, little white shoots would push through like shy promises. That was the sign. The women knew. They always knew.

The mothers, the widows, the tired daughters-in-law—they would rise early, shawls tied tightly across their chests, and carry those seeds, now half-awake, to a patch of land they called “Thujnaer”. It wasn’t much—just a piece of earth that hadn’t yet been claimed by concrete. But it was sacred. Not because someone said so, but because everyone felt so. Faith had no architecture here—only intention.

From the “Thujnaer, a handful of seeds would come home, not to be sown, but to be celebrated. The homes—those smoky, half-lit kitchens with soot-kissed ceilings—came alive. Copper pans clanged. Wood hissed. Laughter hung low like garlands. The paddy was parched, fire-kissed until it turned the colour of old gold. And then the pounding began.

Mortars—wooden, heavy, softened by the touch of generations—throbbed with rhythm. Thump. Pause. Thump. Children, their faces freckled with the dust of play, would crouch near the door cracks. The smell was everywhere—roasted rice, sugar, and something else. Expectation.

The chaff floated away, surrendered to the wind. What remained was “Chirem Tumul”—crisp, burnt rice, golden like the dusk light on a child’s cheek. A bit of sugar was folded in. Not too much. Just enough to remind the tongue that joy could be subtle.And then the magic.

The women would call out—no microphones, no invitations, just a voice loud enough to pull children from wherever they had vanished. They would come running, their palms outstretched, steel bowls clanging, paper cones wilting from eagerness. And into each hand, a scoop. No discrimination. No tallies. Love measured in careless handfuls.

It wasn’t about hunger. It was about belonging.

But today, I walk through that same village and find the gates closed—not locked with keys, but with indifference. The “Thujnaer” is a grave now—buried under broken bricks and the bones of plastic. The mortars are silent in attic corners, buried beneath wedding albums and rat droppings. And the children? They no longer chase voices. They chase screens.

No one speaks of “Chirem Tumul “anymore.

But let me tell you this: it didn’t vanish because it was meaningless. It vanished because we stopped believing that small things matter. We got busy. We got smart. We got important. And somewhere between progress and pride, we forgot the soft power of rice roasted on a slow fire.

Traditions like Chirem Tumul were never about food. They were about stitching souls. One grain at a time. They were a language. A lullaby. A landscape of kindness built in backyards. We didn’t lose a recipe. We lost a relationship—with the land, with the seasons, with each other.

And maybe that’s why, even today, when April tiptoes into the valley, something inside me stirs. A faint ache. A flicker of roasted scent. A sound—maybe just a memory—of a wooden mortar in motion.

Someday, I believe, a child will tug at the sleeve of a silver-haired woman and ask, “What is Chirem Tumul?” And maybe she’ll close her eyes, smile into a sunbeam, and begin, “Once upon a time, we celebrated seeds…”And just like that, maybe a thread will be stitched back.

The author is a regular GK contributor.