Why So Many Young Kashmiris Are Leaving And Not Looking Back

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer)
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By Hirra Sultan

I've spent too many Fridays listening to sermons that begin with paradise and end with guilt.

The voice from the pulpit always reminds me to honour my parents, to treat them as divine, to seek their approval as if it were a key to heaven. And for the longest time, I believed it. I swallowed it like medicine, bitter but necessary.

They never tell you, though, how heavy that medicine can be.

In our homes, parents are not just guardians. They are myths in motion. Their word is law, even when it wounds. Their dreams are scripts for their children to act out, never to revise. And if a child dares to edit even a line-chooses a different career, questions a custom, loves someone unexpected-the script is torn up, and the child becomes a sinner.

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We are not allowed to grow. We are expected to remain small, obedient, always grateful. We are raised not to think for ourselves but to reflect our parents' expectations like clean, polished mirrors. And when we crack under the weight of that reflection, the blame is ours. It always is.

The verse they often quote-“do not even say 'uff' to your parents”-comes with a quiet clause they forget to mention. When they reach old age, when they are in your care. Not when they are fit and controlling. Not when they use religion like a leash. Not when they call your voice rebellion and your choices disobedience.

Obedience. That word echoes in every room I have ever lived in. But obedience, I have learned, is owed only to God. To parents, there is kindness, not servitude.

We confuse the two. We blur them until kindness feels like silence and obedience like virtue. In doing so, we raise children who do not trust their own thoughts. Who feel guilty for existing in ways that do not please. Who leave home at the first chance and never really return. Not in body, not in heart.

There is something terrifying about growing up and realizing that the people who taught you to pray also taught you to disappear. That love often came with conditions. That you had to earn it by giving up small pieces of yourself-your voice, your freedom, your joy. And when you refused, even once, they said you had forgotten God.

But I remember God in quiet, trembling ways. In the space between pain and understanding. In the moments I choose not to shout back. In the times I remind myself that I was not created to live afraid.

Children are not unfinished versions of their parents. They are whole, distinct souls. They are not vessels for someone else's redemption. They are not tools for mending old family wounds.

If Allah gave us tongues and thought and heart, it was not so we could bury them under parental approval. It was so we could live-with integrity, with compassion, with courage.

I do not write this in anger. I write it in longing. For a home where a child's opinion is not an act of defiance. For a world where love is not so conditional. For a prayer that sounds less like command and more like understanding.

I do not want to break the sacred bond between parent and child. I want to cleanse it of fear. I want to tell every mother and father that raising a child was never a favour, it was a trust. And trust, once broken, takes a lifetime to rebuild.

The children who leave are not heartless. They are just tired. They are seeking the one thing they were promised but never felt-peace.

And peace, like love, is a two-way street.

• The writer is a Srinagar-based techie whose works have appeared in multiple publications. Views expressed in this article are author's own and don't necessarily reflect KO's editorial policy.

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