Lessons Still Under Water

When rivers reclaim their paths, they drown arrogance and short-term gain, reminding us nature always remembers its original course.

- Mohammad Amin Mir

I watched the Jhelum rise that night in Anantnag, swollen and merciless. Streets I had walked dozens of times vanished beneath brown water, and the familiar rhythm of life was replaced by the anxious drumming of rain.

Families clung to rooftops, farmers stared helplessly at fields submerged in water, and old embankments crumbled under the river’s weight.

The Tawi in Jammu, once a gentle, sun-kissed stream, had turned into a torrent, sweeping away homes and shops built where they should never have stood.

Floods do not arrive out of nowhere. They are a warning, written in water.

Rising river levels, heavier rains, narrowing channels, and weakened embankments signal the trouble ahead. Yet every time, when the waters rise, we react with shock.

The devastation is a mirror reflecting decades of human neglect, greed, and shortsighted planning.

We have treated rivers like land to be claimed, not life to be preserved. Houses, shops, and colonies now occupy floodplains and riverbeds, while wetlands have been converted to concrete jungles.

The rivers of Jammu and Kashmir have responded as rivers do: by reclaiming their ancient space.

The Tawi tore through illegal settlements as if they never existed, and the Jhelum reminded Srinagar and Anantnag that history cannot be erased with bricks and mortar.