menu_open Columnists
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

How Generations in Kashmir Built Love Without Language

10 0
previous day

By Adil Mohiuddin

On a summer morning in Vailoo, South Kashmir, the valley blazes awake in gold and green. Apricot trees drip with fruit, their shadows sharp on sun-cracked walls. From tin rooftops, mynahs rise like flung sparks. The air smells of dust, leaves, and something older: stories the wind won’t stop telling.

At school, I walk into my classroom, where students sit with their backs straight, books open, eyes expectant. I read to them from Yeats. The words carry slowly across the room: “When you are old and grey and full of sleep…” They nod, half-understanding, waiting for explanation.

I wait with them, not rushing, letting the line breathe. Sometimes, the meaning of love arrives in the pauses.

I am a teacher. But I speak often of things outside the syllabus: longing, affection, and the soft ache that remains when everything else disappears.

Love, I tell them, is not a subject, but a thread. It winds through literature, yes, but also through life. It binds a girl to the memory of her grandmother’s voice, or a man to the weathered hands of his father. It remains long after we think it’s gone.

This is what Keats taught me with breath.

Gasping for air in the damp air of Rome, he wrote to Fanny Brawne with ink and........

© Kashmir Observer