There are truths that arrive quietly, like snowflakes touching the ground before sunrise. You don’t hear them falling. You only see the world changed when dawn finally comes. The truth about the absence of elders in our children’s lives is like that—silent, but enormous. It settles on our homes, our society, our future.

Sometimes, I think Kashmir itself is an elder, a wise old woman wrapped in her faded pheran, watching us from the corner of the room as we rush on with our modern errands. She keeps waiting for us to sit beside her, to hold her weathered hands, to listen. But we rarely do.

Once, our childhoods were raised by a whole tribe—grandparents, neighbours, storytellers, farmers, carpet-weavers, shepherds returning from highland pastures with pockets full of tales. A Kashmiri child

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