A Kashmiri Autumn Through The Wings Of A Village Toy

By Bashir Ahmad Dar

Someone once said that autumn belongs less to nature and more to the soul. I believe this every time the first cold breeze brushes the orchards of Kashmir and the leaves begin their slow descent.

Autumn holds its breath between the exhale of summer and the inhale of winter. A single leaf on the ground carries the weight of a departure. A chill in the air recalls the cooling of once-warm feelings.

Short days, long nights, and the fading light urge the body to rest and the mind to look inward. A decaying branch stands like a reminder of endings. Even the sound of a sickle moving through a paddy field seems to reopen old wounds and refresh forgotten hurts.

Yet autumn does more than stir sorrow. It insists that we face the harvest of our efforts, and it rewards the courage to let go.

The light of this season, what poets call liquid gold, touches every surface with a slow radiance. It turns the ordinary, like dusty lanes, slanting rooftops, and heaps of dry leaves, into something both epic and intimate.

Inside me lives a long collection of autumn memories, each one a small jewel kept safe in a private box of time.

As a child I roamed freely in the soft evenings, played marbles with friends, and laughed beneath the fading sky. These scenes remain as fresh as if they happened yesterday. Among them, one memory rises like a clear flame. It carries the sound of a simple toy that once filled my village lanes with music: the tikwawej.

The name itself tells a story. Wawej in Kashmiri means a small hand fan that pushes out air. Tik hints at the rhythmic clicking sound that comes when the toy spins in the wind.

Making a tikwawej was as easy as breathing for a village child. All we needed were four small thorns, a sheet of paper, a culm of grass, and the upper segment of a maize stalk, the part just below the tassel that we called houeel.

MENAFN27092025000215011059ID1110117899