When one spends decades away from home, especially in the Armed Forces, memory begins to transform into a landscape. Home becomes both a place and a feeling, an image minted in time. Three-and-a-half decades after I returned “home,” I returned not merely to visit but to rediscover. What met me was at once familiar and foreign, comforting yet unsettling: a microcosm of contemporary India, where progress and loss march arm in arm.
The first breath of home
There is something sacred about the first breath one draws upon returning to the Valley. The crispness of the air penetrates both the skin and the soul.
My car wound its way through the roads from Srinagar toward Baramulla, when the early morning mist was still lazing upon the fields. But the fields were fewer now. Orchards that once stretched endlessly had shrunk into irregular patches fenced by newly built homes, an array of modern bungalows with aluminium gates and satellite dishes pointed at the sky that once heard the laughter of children climbing apple trees.
My childhood home sat on a modest mound overlooking what used to be our family’s orchard. Where apple and almond trees once marked the colourful seasons, there now stood a mass of brick and concrete. A dozen houses now replaced the fruit-laden trees.
Fields to finance
In my younger days, I recall, wealth in Baramulla was measured by the health of one’s soil and the fruitfulness of one’s harvest. It is now measured by the growl of automobiles and the bulk of construction.
Old friends greeted me with the exuberance that only Kashmiris can understand, with warm embraces and moist eyes. Yet, behind that bonhomie, there lingered crude tales of loans, EMIs, and the proud anxiety of modern living.
“General Sahib,” one old classmate said, his beard now streaked with white, “we are all contractors now.” He laughed, a full and hollow laugh at once. He had once been a cultivator, but agriculture had lost its charm with no promise of instant returns. He now built houses for others and lived in a brick box himself, paying EMIs that tethered him to the very system he both benefited from and resented.
Roads to nowhere
Progress, I noticed, travels in curious ways. My village had sprouted a cell tower where there should have been a Chinar tree. Yet the road leading to it was still a muddy trail, stubbornly indifferent to official promises and political visits.
I watched a group of young boys, their fingers deftly scrolling through their mobile screens as they balanced baskets of apples on their heads, making their way through ankle-deep slush. Modern Baramulla is a place where technological modernity outpaces basic infrastructure, and connectivity thrives amid disconnection.
When I left the Indian Army after decades of service, I had witnessed transformation in geopolitical shifts, digital revolutions, and the changing face of warfare. Yet, none struck me as sharply as the domestic mutation of my native soil, altering the very rhythm of life that once defined it.
The politics of belonging
In the evenings, tea flows in Baramulla like an act of faith. I joined a group of elderly men at a modest shop, the smell mingling with the earthy scent of rain on dust. They spoke, as elders everywhere do, of “the old days.” Yet between reminiscences of leisurely summers and bumper apple harvests, names of parties and leaders surfaced with scientific precision.
The younger generation spoke not of weather or yield but of elections, alignments, and candidates. Politics, like an agricultural crop, is sown, nurtured, and traded with fervour. Local parties, national players, and political developments - from Srinagar to Delhi and beyond - all cast long shadows across daily conversations.
Beyond the posturing and passions, most people simply yearned for stability, dignity, and livelihoods that did not require them to leave home.
The vanishing rhythm of the earth
One morning, I walked toward what used to be the village’s communal farmland. It was a ritual ground of sorts where seeds tied families together, and harvests were a collaborative joy. Today, I struggled to find any trace of coordinated agriculture. A few stubborn plots survived, guarded by men whose shoulders drooped not only from age but from loneliness, as the younger generation had moved to other places for work.
“General Sahib,” said Bashir, an old hand whose family had tended the same land for generations, “the soil is still good. But who will touch it? Everyone wants a city life now.” He matter-of-factly said this, without a tinge of bitterness.
He was echoing the unspoken tragedy of rural India’s quiet decoupling from its agrarian roots. The shift to a horizontal economy, as some economists describe, was visible here in evidence of divided land, multiplied houses, and transformed livelihoods, a horizontal spread of concrete supplanted the vertical growth of trees.
Nostalgia in fragments
As dusk descended, I found myself standing by the Jhelum’s edge, a mighty river that was once fed by snow now grasping for survival. The same river that once carried our laughter now carried reflections of streetlights and the occasional passing car. Children played by the bank, their cricket balls occasionally plunging into the shallow water. Their shouts carried echoes of my own childhood, making the years between us dissolve for a fleeting moment.
There is something paradoxical about nostalgia. It is both comforting, but it comes with a gentle pain. I missed the simplicity of a world untouched by relentless change, yet I could not deny the pride in seeing young boys and girls mastering technology, speaking fluent English, dreaming of universities abroad. Perhaps, every generation must surrender one beauty to gain another.
In one evening gathering, a young student recording our chat on his smartphone asked me, “Sir, are we losing our roots, or is this just progress?”
I thought long before answering. “Maybe both,” I said finally. “What defines a root is not only where it begins, but whether it can nourish new growth. If you forget the soil, you may grow tall but fragile. But if you cling too tightly, you may never grow at all.”
The silence that followed felt like reverence, or reflection—or perhaps both. In that moment, Baramulla was united by shared yearning, the desire to belong meaningfully to both past and future.
The unchanged undercurrent
Despite all visible transformations, there remained something deeply immutable. The scent still rose at sunset. The call of the muezzin still echoed through misty mornings, tying the community together in ritual symmetry. The warmth of friendship, the pride in hospitality, and the tenderness toward elders had weathered all change.
Progress had altered lifestyles but not the essence of being Baramulla. Beneath the luxurious attire of modernity, the heart still beat in rustic rhythm, as laughter burst out in unfiltered, boisterous melody.
The road home
On my final day, I stood outside my old home, now surrounded by new constructions, each topped with gleaming tin roofs and satellite dishes. The crisp morning sun lit up the snow peaks in the distance, and for a moment, I was transported back to boyhood. The road was still unpaved but people walked it every day, carrying groceries and smartphones. Progress had indeed arrived in Baramulla, albeit selectively.
As I prepared to leave, an old neighbour shouted, half in jest, “General Sahib, now you have seen our new world. What do you think? Is it better or worse?”
I smiled. “It’s not better or worse,” I said. “It’s simply ours—just a bit louder, a bit faster, and perhaps a bit lonelier.”
A home forever in transit
The drive back toward Srinagar carried a tinge of melancholy. Through the windshield, I watched the valley morph once again from bustling neighbourhoods to far-flung meadows, from half-built homes to sprawling shopping complexes. In every square mile, I could sense the push and pull of old and new, the orchard’s quiet dignity wrestling with the restless dynamism of modern ambition.
Homecomings, I realised, are less about returning to a place and more about catching up with time. The Baramulla I had loved had not vanished—it had evolved in ways we could never have imagined. Change, after all, is nature’s original command. The challenge lies in remembering that progress and preservation need not be adversaries.
Epilogue
As the train of my reflection slows, I find the past and the present sitting together under the same sky. The Baramulla I left behind and the Baramulla I rediscovered are two sides of one eternal story - the story of a land learning to grow while remembering where it came from – the old and the new connected by the same resilient heart of the Valley, which is faithful, longing, and alive.
(The author can be reached at: rsinghreen@gmail.com)
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