What We Did To The Water

Once a place where water was treated with sacred reverence, Kashmir now swims in filth. Our environmental decay reflects a deeper, moral unravelling.

- Dr. Ashraf Zainabi

I remember my grandfather standing by the brook for ablution, careful not to spit the rinse water back into the stream.

Even while refilling his hukka, he would step away from the water to empty the residue elsewhere. He wasn't a man of degrees, but he carried a rare wisdom—an unspoken reverence for the land and its lifelines. That consciousness, that instinctive respect for nature, was in his blood.

Today, I look around and wonder: where did it all go?

We seem to have lost something elemental. It's not just the rivers or lakes that are choking, it's our moral fibre. Once considered paradise, Kashmir is now comfortably coexisting with garbage on the streets, plastic in the rivers, and sewage in the air. Filth has become ordinary. Unnoticed. Unchallenged.