Syed Nissar H Gilani
The state of our culture today is marked by a profound exchange: we have traded the holistic wisdom of our ancestors for fragmented, industrialized convenience. This choice has left us with a contamination that runs deeper than our food—it is a moral crisis, a contaminated conscience, born from willfully abandoning integrity for false prestige.
I. The Adulteration of Sustenance and Health
The contamination began subtly, within the spaces meant for nourishment and healing.
We recall a time when our cherished Wazwan was prepared with reverence; master cooks used natural dyes, like the home-grown herb “Muwaal,” a testament to their respect for the diner’s health. Today, that honour is gone. Those same chefs, under the pressure of speed and cost, often reach for powdered, carcinogenic chemicals. An act of nourishment has become a silent poison.
The integrity of ingredients has similarly vanished. The local lamb, once certified and stamped by dealers, is now scarce, replaced by distant, mass-produced meats. Even our essentials are corrupted: milk, once only mixed with water, is now a frightening chemical slurry, often thickened with synthetic agents. This shift wasn’t just about convenience; it was a deliberate economic choice. Local traditions represented sustainable, closed-loop systems—small profits, high integrity. The new, centralized, industrial model requires us to pay more for inferior quality, enriching distant corporations while eliminating local livelihoods.
This cultural erosion extended to our health. Our childhood “fast food” consisted of wholesome boiled grains like “Masalla” or the simple “Nana Kabab.” Our elders maintained their vitality by walking miles together to reach their destinations, a necessary daily habit that kept heart disease and diabetes at bay. In contrast, walking is now an isolating hobby for senior citizens, many requiring canes. Even our simple, generic traditional medicines have been abandoned for expensive, often substandard alternatives, despite the ancient efficacy of remedies like the judicious use of the herbs in winter.
II. The Fragmentation of Body and Spirit
Our abandonment of integrated living is evident in the work we do and the games we play.
We remember our mothers and women in the neighborhood, irrespective of status, engaging in the laborious task of husking paddy. This was integrated living: the work itself provided a complete body exercise, eliminating the need for a separate gym, while simultaneously ensuring the rice retained its vital fiber and nutritional integrity.
This functional vitality was echoed in our childhood games. “Lutkech Lout” or “Sazlung” (Gilli Danda) required only two pieces of wood. These games were democratic, physical, and demanded cooperation. Today, that shared, physical joy has been supplanted by the sedentary, isolating glow of mobile screens. Children are lost in digital games, often flirting with virtual gambling, losing not just time, but their capacity for real-world coordination and community.
Even the sacred act of nurturing has been outsourced. Where a mother’s love and her lore’s once instinctively pacified a child, the modern mother now deliberately chooses a maid helper to do the needful. We have replaced emotional connection with paid services, leaving a void that no modern convenience can fill.
III. The Retreat from Language and Identity
Perhaps the most tragic betrayal lies in the retreat from our own identity.
A trend that began in the early 1970s—sparked by supposedly “elite” private schools—was the affected speaking of the Urdu language in a misguided attempt at false prestige. This quickly became a viral affliction. We now speak a fractured, often meaningless Urdu to our children, a linguistic travesty that would cause Ghalib to “take turns in his grave.” The absurdity of this self-sabotage is captured perfectly by the phrase: “Tu bey Rani, mey be rani, kuoon baragey paani” (If you are a queen and I am a queen, then who will fetch the water?)—a metaphor for a society that has abandoned its necessary, functional roots for empty status.
Conclusion: The Path to Reclamation
The contaminated conscience is our passive acceptance of this universal trade-off: we accept less nutrition for more profit, less integrity for more convenience, and less meaningful engagement for more digital distraction.
While we cannot revert the clock, we must strive to reshape our values. Reclamation does not mean rejecting the present; it means demanding integrity. We can use modern technology, such as digital archiving and social media, not to escape, but to share and revive the ‘lores’ and recipes our mothers held, turning the internet from a source of distraction into a library of ancestral wisdom.
Let us begin by reclaiming the most personal aspect of our heritage: let us start talking to our children in our own beautiful, rich, and sweet Kashmiri language.
May God help us reclaim the soul of our traditions.
The writer is former Assistant Commissioner of Revenue Department, can be reached at (nisargilani57748@gmail.com
