Kaisar Ahmad Malla
When I was a child, the sweetest sound I ever heard was my mother’s voice singing wanwun (traditional Kashmiri song). In the quiet corners of our home, as she went about her daily chores, she sang wanwun, those beautiful, soulful Kashmiri songs, full of blessings, love and hope. I remember her soft words, trembling with emotion,” The day you get married, I will sing these songs for you.” Those songs were not just melodies, they were a lifeline, a thread tying me to my ancestors, to my roots, to who I was. Wanwun was never confined to weddings alone. It was woven into the fabric of many sacred moments, like Tumul Chatun, the traditional cleaning of rice before weddings and other rituals that marked the rhythms of Kashmiri life. But today, those sacred songs are dying. In weddings across Kashmir, the wanwun that once filled the air with love and blessings is almost gone. It has been swallowed by loud music that carries no weight, no prayers, no soul. Today, we no longer have the people who carry the spirit of wanwun, nor do we have many who grasp the deep meaning it once held. The silence where wanwun once lived is a quiet scream of loss, a reminder of how far we have drifted from ourselves.
The loss of wanwun is a loss of our voice. A loss of our identity. Kashmiri, our mother tongue, is slipping away. The language that once embraced every home, every street, every gathering, is now spoken with hesitation or not at all. In my school days, Kashmiri was the language we lived and breathed. But as I grew older and stepped into wider circles, I saw it pushed aside, dismissed, mocked, made to feel small.
How can we be Kashmiri without Kashmiri? How can we claim our identity when the language that carries our history, our stories, and our soul is fading from our lips? Our children grow up afraid to speak the language of their ancestors. They learn quickly that speaking Kashmiri invites judgment, disdain and shame. We have been taught, quietly and cruelly, that our mother tongue is backward, unworthy, a burden to carry. But that is the greatest lie we tell ourselves. Our language is not backward, nor are its speakers. It is the thinking, the shame, the neglect, the indifference, that makes it so. It is the heavy weight of a society that has learned to look down on its own voice, to silence it in classrooms, offices and homes.
Our language is not poor. It is the essence of our greatest poets, the Shruk of Sheikh Ul Alam (Nund Reshi),the Vaakh of Lalleshwari (Lala Ded),the verses of Mehjoor, the lament of Habba Khatoon, the words of Mahmud Gami,Rasul Mir, Rahman Rahi, Ghulam Rasool Nazki and countless others. Kashmiri is the heartbeat of our land, the song of our souls.
When we forget Kashmiri, we forget who we are. We lose more than words, we lose the breath of our ancestors and the warmth of our homeland. To lose Kashmiri is to lose a part of our very humanity. We must speak it. We must live it. We must love it, fiercely, unashamedly, with every breath we have left. We must speak it without fear, without apology. We must reclaim our language with fierce love before it slips beyond our grasp forever. Because without our language, we are lost wanderers, searching for a home that no longer recognizes us.
How can we call ourselves Kashmiri without Kashmiri? Nothing defines us more truly than when we speak our own language, where every word carries the weight of our history, our pride, our soul. We must hold our language close, speak it loud, and wear it as the honor it deserves, because losing Kashmiri means losing the very heart that makes us who we are.
(The author is a health worker and can be reached at [email protected])
