In 1981, as a young MPhil scholar at the University of Kashmir, I spoke optimistically at a national conference on environmental education. I believed awareness would lead to action, knowledge to responsibility. Forty-five years later, I stand in the same Valley asking a harder question: What went wrong?The Kashmir I see is beautiful but fragile. Its rivers carry plastic instead of stories. Its lakes struggle to breathe beneath waste and its soils absorb chemicals. Yet the most troubling symptom is not pollution itself, it is our ability to celebrate while it happens. No symbol captures this contradiction better than the Wazwan.

For centuries, the Wazwan has represented Kashmir’s finest identity, hospitality, craftsmanship, and collective memory. The aroma of tabak maaz, the softness of rista and gushtaba, families gathered around a shared trami, these are rituals woven into our cultural DNA. The Wazwan tells guests, “You are welcome here.”

Yet beneath this magnificent tradition lies an environmental catastrophe we refuse to see. At weddings, feasts, and gatherings, disposable plastic cups, Styrofoam bowls, glossy sheets, and single-use water pouches have become normal. They shine under wedding lights for minutes before being discarded into drains, fields, and streams. We seldom ask where this waste goes. We rarely discuss the lack of recycling or segregation. Public advocacy is minimal, enforcement is nearly absent, Instead, there is silence, a silence wrapped in celebration. We have grown so accustomed to........

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