What the Chinar Knows

While going on a walk today, I stopped without meaning to. A chinar stood there, the way it always has, and for a moment I wondered how many generations have passed beneath it without realising it was watching.

That thought stayed.

We walk past these trees every day, often without lifting our eyes, forgetting that they have been here longer than our worries, longer than our certainties. The chinar does not demand attention. It waits. And perhaps that is why, when it finally speaks to us, it does so quietly.

This tree has seen people grow from children into adults and from adults into memories. It has watched laughter spill into afternoons and grief arrive unannounced. It has seen weddings move past in colour and funerals move past in silence. It has witnessed moments we celebrate and moments we do not know how to name. Through it all, it has remained. Not untouched, but steady.

We often describe Kashmir as fragile, as if it survives by chance. But standing there, looking up at the chinar, that idea felt incomplete. This land is not fragile. It is patient. It has learned how to stay.

The chinar understands time in a way we do not. For us, time presses forward, constantly reminding us of what we are losing. For the chinar, time settles. It does not rush years. It absorbs them. Aging here is not something to fear. It is something to carry. Each season leaves a mark, and none of them are hidden.

Death, too, feels different when you have stood long enough to see its rhythm. The chinar has seen death arrive and depart without drama. Leaves fall. Branches thin. Roots grow deeper. What we call endings are, more often than not, transitions. The tree does not mourn loudly. It adjusts.

Every autumn, the chinar sheds itself completely. There is no hesitation in the way its leaves let go. They turn, they fall, they make space. We photograph this shedding, admire its beauty, call it poetry. But we rarely recognise its lesson. Letting go here is not defeat. It is preparation.

We, however, struggle with this. We hold on long after a season has passed. We cling to people, to moments, to versions of ourselves that no longer fit who we are becoming. We confuse shedding with loss, and loss with failure. The chinar does not. It sheds so that it can survive the cold. It sheds so that it can return.

Re-dawn in Kashmir is never dramatic. Morning arrives quietly, sometimes reluctantly, often cold. Yet it arrives. The chinar trusts this. It does not hurry spring. It does not resent winter. It waits, because waiting here is not weakness. It is knowledge earned over time.

Think of the mornings this tree has witnessed. Mornings after celebrations and mornings after sorrow. Mornings when life felt ordinary and mornings when it felt unbearable. It has seen people pause beside it, rest against its trunk, gather themselves, and move on. It has learned that nothing stays exactly as it is.

We say Kashmir has changed, and it has. But perhaps what has changed most is our relationship with time. We have become impatient with cycles. We want certainty where there is only repetition, permanence where there is only return. We want healing without rest, growth without shedding.

The chinar does not argue with reality. It works with it.

Its bark is rough at places, smooth at others. It carries scars without explanation. There is no attempt to appear untouched. That honesty feels rare. We spend so much of our lives trying to remain unmarked, as if being affected by life is a weakness. The chinar stands as proof that being shaped by time is not failure. It is evidence of having lived.

Returning is the chinar’s quiet promise. After months of standing bare, after appearing lifeless to those who do not know better, it returns. Green first, then whole. As if nothing was wasted. As if everything was waiting.

Kashmir understands returning because it has practiced it for generations. People leave and come back. Traditions soften but survive. Homes empty and fill again. We often mistake absence for disappearance. The chinar never does.

Standing there today, I realised something both unsettling and calming. We believe we are watching Kashmir change, but Kashmir has been watching us. Watching us struggle with time, fear aging, resist shedding, and still, inevitably, return.

The chinar has seen us hopeful and broken. It has seen us invent reasons to stay and reasons to leave. It has seen us grow smaller inside our anxieties and larger inside our endurance. It does not judge. Witnesses rarely do.

As I walked away, I did not feel inspired in the loud sense of the word. I felt steadied. As if something older than me had quietly reminded me that survival does not have to be noisy, and meaning does not have to be urgent.

Long after our names are forgotten, something here will still know when it is time to let go, and when it is time to return.

And maybe that is what the chinar has been teaching us all along. Not how to endure endlessly, but how to endure with grace.

Baiza Mushtaq, GKSC Bootcamp participant.