You can evict the Kashmiri family from their rented room. You can blacklist the Kashmiri shop, boycott the Kashmiri artist, silence the Kashmiri poet. But you can’t teach us how to hate like you.
You think being Kashmiri is easy? Try carrying your soul in your mouth everywhere you go, just so you can explain yourself to people who don’t even want to understand. Try apologising for crimes you didn’t commit, while handing out cups of free tea to strangers who still think you’re the enemy.
Something ugly happened in Pahalgam. Tourists got attacked. Blood on the streets, screams in the air, shame crawling over everything like smoke. And just like that, the old script got dusted off again: blame all Kashmiris. Paint every wrinkled old shopkeeper, every schoolkid, every housewife, every bus driver with the same dirty brush.
But here’s what the headlines won’t tell you — while the valley cried in anger and heartbreak, the people here — my people — opened their homes. Hotels threw their doors open. Restaurants put out more plates. Drivers offered free rides. Villagers with barely enough for themselves handed out free food, free shelter, free kindness — to the very tourists who now look at them with suspicion.
That’s Kashmir for you. We’ve been stitched together by grief for decades, but somehow, the damn fabric still smells of love.
Meanwhile, far away in other states— the hatred was spilling faster than the news could contain it. Kashmiri students beaten with sticks.
Shopkeepers told to shut down or pack up.
Rooms vacated, jobs lost, buses refused.
And the sweet whispers in the corners — “Israel-Palestine them. Bulldoze them. Teach them a lesson.”
You want to teach us a lesson? You think we don’t already know pain? We eat it for breakfast. We sip it with noon chai.
You think we don’t know loss?
We grow up playing hide-and-seek with coffins.
But here’s the real joke — after all of it, after the beatings, the betrayals, the open threats — you’ll still find us offering you tea the next time you come to our mountains. Still offering you a bed when your bus breaks down in the cold.
Still treating you like honoured guests when you treat us like stray dogs.
Because being Kashmiri is not about politics.
It’s not about religion. It’s not about who threw the stone or who fired the gun. It’s about carrying a heart bigger than the betrayal you keep tasting. It’s about choosing kindness when rage would be easier. It’s about standing there, arms open, while the world spits in your face — and still not letting hate rot your soul.
And let me tell you — that takes more strength than any army, any bullet, any angry mob could ever muster.
The real tragedy isn’t that Kashmir bleeds. The real tragedy is that when we bleed, we’re still the ones handing out bandages. We’re still the ones feeding the ones who fear us.
We’re still the ones saying “You’re safe with us” while getting phone calls telling our own kids not to step outside their rented rooms in strange cities.
Being Kashmiri means you carry hospitality like a second skin — even when the world slaps you for it.
It’s not weakness. It’s not stupidity. It’s what happens when generations learn that no matter how heavy the sorrow gets, you never, ever pass it along to the next guy. You know why? Because big hearts don’t shrink just because the world gets colder.
Because mountains don’t bow to every passing storm. Because our mothers didn’t raise cowards.
And make no mistake — what’s happening now isn’t just about Kashmir. It’s about a slow rot eating away at whatever’s left of decency. It’s about turning neighbours into enemies with a flick of a headline. It’s about forgetting that humanity isn’t a tribe you can sign out of whenever you feel like it.
There’s a sickness spreading. And it’s not in Kashmir. It’s in the way people celebrate cruelty, the way mobs feel powerful, kicking a lone Kashmiri kid in a train station.
It’s in the way men cheer when someone says, “Wipe them out like Palestine.”
It’s in the way people sleep better at night, thinking pain is only real when it’s happening to them. But here’s something they should remember —hearts like ours don’t break easily. They crack, sure. They bleed, sure.
But they also heal. And every time they heal, they get bigger. Stronger.
More stubborn.
You can beat the Kashmiri kid in the alley.
You can evict the Kashmiri family from their rented room. You can blacklist the Kashmiri shop, boycott the Kashmiri artist, silence the Kashmiri poet. But you can’t teach us how to hate like you.
We’re built different. Made of snow and blood and poetry and tears and stubborn goddamn hope. Being Kashmiri is not easy.
It’s carrying a country in your ribs that the world only sees through a cracked window.
It’s walking a tightrope made of barbed wire with a smile for anyone who dares meet your eyes. It’s standing in the middle of the storm, handing out umbrellas to the people throwing stones at you.
Not everyone can do it.
Not everyone should try.
But us?
We’ve been doing it for generations.
And we’re not even going to stop it. To fellow Kashmiris, I want to say you make me so proud, and I am proud to say, “I am a Kashmiri.”
Mahoor Haya Shah is a writer from Srinagar
Mahoor Haya Shah
ha*********@***il.com