Taste Is Truth

PAHALGAM BLEEDS, and with it, a th0ousand memories crumble— of saffron air and simmering pots, of apple orchards ready to welcome autumn’s kiss, of dried fruits stacked in woven baskets, and laughter echoing between mountains that have witnessed too much silence.

A terrorist’s bullet has no flavour, no faith. It does not discern between mother and child, pilgrim and guide, Brahmin and Muslim, host and guest. It is tasteless. It is soulless. It is not of Kashmir. It is not of India.

And yet, when that bullet shatters peace, it tears at the fabric of a place that’s held together by threads far more delicate than steel—threads like pashmina, like kani weave, like the warp and weft of generations who’ve stitched together a shared story. Of loss, yes—but also of living.

Pahalgam, once again, is made to carry a burden not hers. Her people, the mehmaan-nawaz Kashmiris, were only just beginning to breathe freely, to open their doors to tourists hungry for Rogan Josh that simmers like slow poetry, for Dum Aloo with its red rebellion of spice, for Chaman Paneer kissed golden by saffron and milk. They were proud of their orchards, the apples that remind us that sweetness too must be harvested, that “an apple a day” can keep away more than a doctor—perhaps even despair.

But now this. Again.

And yet, this is not the Valley’s truth. The truth is in the taste of noon chai shared under walnut trees. It’s in the tears of a Shikara boatman as he rows past soldiers, wondering how his beautiful Dal became a mirror to so much pain. It’s in the eyes of a woman who still embroiders phool-patti patterns even when the world outside her window wilts.

Kashmir is not the tragedy. It is the tenderness. It is the talent. It is the tenacity.

India must remember: we are a plural people, a secular spirit, a feminine force. Maa Bharati— our Mother India—is not made of soil and border lines alone, but of stories, of senses, of shared meals and shared mourning. We are not defined by the men who carry weapons, but by the women who carry spices in the folds of their sarees, by the grandfathers who still roast almonds on snow-lit mornings, by the children who run through mustard fields and dream of peace.

Terrorists have no home, no country, no God. They are orphans of empathy. We must not let them hijack our humanity.

So let this moment not be one of division but decision. We must stand as one—north to south, apple to mango, saffron to mustard, kahwa to cutting chai. Let our anger be sharp, but our justice precise. Let our sorrow be deep, but our love deeper.

Let our response be as refined as our cuisine—layered, complex, generous. Let it burn where it must—but only where it must. Not at innocents.

Not at neighbours. Not at the very people who suffer most when such evil descends.

Kashmir deserves peace. Not performance. Not pity. Peace.

And so, we must speak of this not just in newsrooms, but at dinner tables, in schoolrooms, through poems, through policy, through patience. Let us teach the world what India tastes like—how we infuse grace into grief, how our thali holds multitudes, how our tongues speak in many languages but one longing: for a tomorrow kinder than today.

In every bite of Dum Aloo, in every thread of pashmina, in every child laughing on a hill in Pahalgam—there is the soul of a nation.

And it will not be broken.

Kashmiri cuisinesmehmaan-nawaz KashmirisnutritionRogan Josh