When Echoes Turn to Gunfire : Remembering Pahalgam, Reckoning With Yesterday

The dates have been looping through my mind like beads on arosary :9 June 2 0204 to 14 th June - the week I stayed in Kashmir, the week I thought I finally inderstood the word " trianquility ".A3rd d then 23rd April -2025 - yesterday -when tranquility shattered into headlinws and the echo of gungfire crept into every happy memory in had stitched togetther. 

Morning in Kashmir10th June 2024 

The air smelled of apple blossoms and wood smoke the morning we landed in Kashmir . . A faint chill still clung to the back of each breath , as though winter had left fingerprints on the valley walls. Next day at 8.30 our day was started with on our way to Dal Lake - or rathe . a glass fragment of it deep inside pahalgam's winding wateways. A solitary ourcrop of sontes jutted into the water , and I stepped ont the fartthest one . Suddenly  I was surrounded by liquid mirrors . Every mountain inched into focus , bright enough to make the sky look washed - out .

And then came the sound - the tiny slap of ripples against rock , the hush that foolos a meakdowlark's call , the low , steady pulse of water moving around my ankes. No orchestra coild rival it. I closed my eyes amd felt the strange luxury of hearing absolutely everthing and absolutely nothing at once. Peace wasn't an abstract noun ; it was a pulse in my wrist , a wash of sun across my shoulder blades . 

Minutes, ? hours ? I don't know how long I stood there , alone but completely accompained by the earth .I felt like " Silence that sounds like home " . The rest of the trip unfolded like pages of illuminated scripture pony bells at Dal Lake , Adi Shankaracharya's Math , a blue dusk that tucked itsekd around snowy peaks . On our last day we felt like to extend our jouney for 2 more days .but,all our desires wont be fulfilled .

 

Yesterday ,23 April 2025 

Yesterday's afternoon lilght had the same amber tinge as Phalgam at sunset. Maybe that 's why the news headline felt so cruelly intimate, like a stranger addressing with " A newly married couple who were at Kashmir , one among them were shot dead in Pahalgam attack ; 

I felt like the water that once carried sunlight now carrying the metallic echo of rifles . The silence I loved so fiercely - gone , replaced by screams and the nattle of automatic weapons . 

I believe in the universe 's oldest ledger , the one linked with the law of reciprocation . If you give brutality , be prepared to inherent it . If you deal in grief , brace yourself for its interest payments . I'm stating a principle as old as gravity  :what goes up comes down "and bullets like curses , have a habit of circling back . 

       Kashmir is still the most beautiful place I have ever stood barefoot upon . 

Yesterdau .beauty bled . 

Let the extremist read that as defiance of they wish .  Let them hear the echo of footsetps returning to valley's they tried so empty . For every life they trumcate, ten more travelers wo;; stretch the story forward . Because Kashmir deserves more than headlines  ; it deserves every story we can salvage , every footstep we can lay gentlyon its soil , every note of peace we can coax back int its mountains and militants , the architects of yesterday's horror ? 

They 'd better study the law of give and take . The valley has taught me one thing beyond doubt . What you echo across these mountains eventually returns - louder , and perfectly clear .