Dedication

To those who remember—
the mothers who still prepare tahar,
the fathers who whisper Herath prayers,
and the children who ask,
“What does this thread mean?”
This is not a lament alone—it is a reckoning.
A meditation on what we have lost—not just land, but language, attire, ritual, and rhythm.
And yet, it is also a prayer for return—not to geography, but to essence.
The Silence After Celebration
In the hush that follows a festival, one hears the true sound of exile.
There was a time when Eid in Kashmir meant more than prayer—it was a choreography of colour, scent, and song. The pheran swayed like a flag of belonging. Pandit homes shimmered with the sanctity of Herath. Almond wood crackled in the hearth, and the air carried the scent of kehwa and memory.
Now, the rituals remain—but they no longer resonate.
They echo faintly, like a song remembered in fragments.
Displacement is not just geography—it is the slow unraveling of attire, ritual, and identity.
It is the silence after celebration. It is the forgetting that follows forgetting.
Attire as Archive: The Vanishing Skin of Culture
Attire was once a declaration of self. The pheran, the taranga, the kasaba—each thread carried memory, each fold a story. Before the 1990s, change had already crept in, but exile made these garments impractical. The body, stripped of its cultural skin, begins to forget its own story.
I remember my aunt wrapping her taranga with a precision that felt sacred.
Now, her daughter wears denim and speaks of convenience.
The kasaba, once a crown of continuity, now lies folded in trunks—its meaning lost to those who inherit it.
Clothing is not costume. It is ritual.
And when the ritual fades, the body becomes anonymous.
The Quiet Death of Festivals
Herath in Delhi apartments. Eid prayers in unfamiliar street mosques. Rakshabandhan replaced by Rakhi. These are not mere changes—they are amputations.
I once saw a child ask why we light a lamp in February.
The mother hesitated, then said, “It’s just something we do.”
But it was not just something. It was everything.
Rituals were once the grammar of belonging.
Now they stutter, both in exile and increasingly at home.
The syntax of celebration has broken. The vowels of memory are fading.
What Remains When Rituals Fade
Identity was once lived, not declared.
It was in the way a father folded his pheran, the way a grandmother whispered wazwan recipes like incantations.
But turmoil and exile bleach it.
The gestures remain, but the grammar is lost.
And yet, the thread persists—in poetry, in storytelling, in quiet resistance.
A woman in Srinagar still embroiders sozni patterns no one wears but a few.
A man in Jammu recites Lal ded,s verses to a child who prefers cartoons.
These are acts of resistance.
These are prayers stitched into silence.
Memory as Resistance: Reclaiming the Lost Colour
Memory is not nostalgia—it is survival.
To remember is to resist forgetting.
To wear a pheran in Delhi is not fashion—it is defiance.
Those who archive, who write, who teach, who whisper the old songs—they are the custodians of continuity.
They remind us that Kashmir is not just a place—it is a cadence of celebration and sorrow.
I have seen young poets write in Kashmiri, even when their peers mock the language.
I have heard elders correct pronunciation, not out of pride, but out of mourning.
This is resistance.
This is reclamation.:
Language as Threshold: A Prayer for Return
Language is the soul of identity. As Rehman Rahi said:
"Language is identity, knowledge. It is the path to the soul."
But today, Kashmiri is vanishing.
A Kashmiri may become a millionaire—but without the sweetness of the language, he is not a Kashmiri.
He will not be the heir of Sharda Peeth.
He will be a stranger in his own myth.
"Kashri seit aes Kashir, saeri nate waeranik, haeran kaw."
(With our language, we remain Kashmiri. Without it, we are like crows in the desert.)
Let this be a prayer—not for return to land, but to essence.
Let us return to the pheran, the Herath, the tahar, the idiom, the cadence.
Let us return to the thread.:
The Thread That Still Holds
Even now, in the quiet corners of exile, the thread persists.
It is stitched into lullabies, into recipes, into the way a shawl is folded.
It is in the question—“What does this thread mean?”
And in the answer—“It means we are still here.”

Email:---------------shamshadkralwari@gmail.com