Lanterns of Memory in Kashmir

Through fury, floods, and flickering screens, books in Kashmir continue to endure as vessels of memory and imagination.

- Ishfaq Manzoor & Fatima Irshad

Books are never only paper. They are fire for the weary, light for the lost, and company for the lonely.

A book becomes a presence in the valley, where winters press against glass and days lengthen into silence.

A father wrapped in a pheran leans closer to its glow. A grandmother recites from a worn manuscript. A student carries a novel in secret, as though carrying hope.

From clay and palm leaves to the fragile pages that line old libraries in Srinagar, books carry forward the breath of civilizations. Equations scribbled by scientists, meditations of philosophers, laments of poets, and courage of reformers are preserved in ink.

Unlike the fleeting pulse of a screen, a book holds its ground. It does not vanish when the current fails. It waits, steady, like a lantern that refuses to go out.