Streams Without Mills

Once vital to village life and powered by nothing but gravity and glacier-fed streams, Kashmir’s traditional water mills are collapsing under the weight of climate change, apathy, and modern flour.

- Shereen Naman

In the village of Rafiabad, near the lower slopes of north Kashmir, mornings once began with the sound of water meeting wood. It was not a roar or rush, but a reliable creak, the sound that told you the day had started, and bread was on its way.

Sara, now in her thirties, remembers those mornings clearly. Her grandfather would rise before the sun, sling a jute bag of maize or rice over his shoulder, and head to the village Aab-e-Gratte, a traditional water-powered flour mill built on the stream that ran through the valley. He returned with freshly ground flour, warm from the friction of stone on stone, ready to be kneaded into kulchas and roti.

Today, the stream still flows, but the wheel doesn't turn. The millstone is split. The wooden sluice gate has caved in. Moss coats the fallen beams, and thorny shrubs fill the hollow where the flour was once collected.

The Aab-e-Gratte, meaning "water flour mill" in Kashmiri, was once a fixture in almost every village of the valley. Designed without motors, fuel, and fuss, it relied entirely on the natural gradient of mountain water.

Water was channeled from a stream to strike a wooden wheel, which turned a vertical shaft, rotating two stones, the top one (runner) spinning over the lower (bed), to grind grain into flour.

For centuries, these mills offered more than sustenance. They were the heartbeat of community life. People waited their turn while discussing crop yields, family marriages, and village disputes. Some came just to listen to the hum of water, the scrape of stone, and the occasional bird perched on the dripping beams.