By Wahid Bashir

I often find myself thinking about the Kashmir I knew as a child.

It feels close when I close my eyes, even though life has carried us far from it. People had less, but their hearts felt wide. Neighbours stepped into our homes without hesitation.

My mother would rush to make tea. The house felt alive with voices, laughter, and the comfort of being seen.

I miss those evenings. We sat together on floors warmed by carpets, sharing rice, stories, and the small joys of the day. No one was in a hurry. We looked at each other when we spoke. We listened fully. Gratitude lived inside us in a meaningful way. Even the poorest families would thank the Almighty for whatever they had. Life felt enough.

The Kashmir around me now feels more restless.

People worry about things they never spoke of before. Families feel scattered even when they live in the same house.

I hear of rising anxiety in surveys, though I also witness it in the tired eyes of shopkeepers, students, and friends.

My homeland holds a strange silence even in busy places. People walk with phones in their hands, searching for calm in a world that keeps reminding them to move faster. Doors stay shut. Hearts stay guarded.

I feel it in myself too. The warmth I grew up with often feels like a memory floating somewhere behind the noise.

Sometimes I ask myself when this shift began. Maybe it happened slowly, while we were all busy adjusting to a new kind of life. Trends and ideas arrived at our doorstep through screens long before we learned how to filter them.

Family dinners now happen in the presence of glowing phones. Conversations shrink into short messages. Even when we sit together, we are elsewhere in our minds.

The speed of modern life slipped into our homes, and with that speed, something gentle slipped away.

I also see the change in how we dress and carry ourselves. Modesty once shaped us, giving people a calm confidence.

Clothing was a reflection of dignity instead of display. Today many try to match whatever they see online. Young people feel pressure to look a certain way, as if their worth depends on being noticed.

This search for approval often hides a deeper confusion about identity.

I look at old family photographs sometimes. The faces look so composed, as if they knew who they were without trying to prove it.

But now, many of us have started measuring life through wealth and recognition. Homes get bigger, but conversations grow smaller. Work stretches into evenings. Prayer becomes something we fit between tasks instead of something that shapes our day.

I see this in my own life too. I catch myself waiting to finish a call or a message before standing up to pray. Then I remember stories of my elders who dropped everything the moment the call to prayer began. I wonder when that certainty slipped away from us.

The story of Imam Hussain [A.S.] pausing in the battlefield for prayer is something I grew up hearing. It taught me that prayer creates strength in the hardest moments.

Many of us remember the story, though we forget the practice that gives it meaning. A slow distance from faith troubles the valley more than we admit.

These changes came silently, almost without warning.

One day we woke up and realised we no longer lived the way we once did. Pride took space where humility lived. Self-interest grew stronger than community care. Hospitality turned into a ritual instead of a habit. Gratitude lost its regular place in our homes.

People speak often of a strange emptiness even when they achieve everything they once wanted. I feel that emptiness too sometimes, like a silent question inside the chest.

I do not believe everything is lost. The valley still carries a soft pulse under all this noise. I feel it when an elderly neighbour sends over a plate of food. I feel it when people gather for prayer in the early morning cold. I feel it when a stranger helps push a stalled car on a slippery winter road.

These small acts remind me of who we were, and who we can still be.

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