By Sabahat Fida

When I was transferred to a distant Kashmir countryside, I expected only hardship in the form of unreliable electricity, long roads, and few amenities. What I didn’t expect was to meet a part of my culture I’d never known.

It was here I learned of Pir-e-Khear, a festival marking the first bloom of rice grain.

During those ten days, daughters are called home to their parents’ kitchens, fish prepared with meticulous care, and prayers stretched into the night. The air remains thick with the smell of hearth fires and the sound of old Kashmiri songs.

The festival is philosophy in action: the divine acknowledged in the renewal of nature, the love of daughters reaffirmed, tradition kept alive through taste and sound.

Fish recipes are handed down for generations. Songs are sung in Kashmiri, each word carrying centuries of thought. These are living archives.

And yet, people told me, it is not celebrated like it once was.

In some places, it has stopped entirely. The loss was not........

© Kashmir Observer