How America Changed My Understanding of Kashmir

By Akhtar Purvez

I grew up in Kashmir, and I never imagined that one day I would be driving through Virginia, singing Kashmiri folk songs with a feeling I never had while actually living in my homeland.

That realization has occupied my thoughts for years.

I left the valley decades ago and built a life in America. Virginia gave me opportunities, friendships, professional fulfillment, and a sense of belonging I deeply value. It is where I raised my family, built my medical practice, conducted research, wrote books, and found a community that welcomed me with genuine warmth.

One unexpected consequence of living thousands of miles from where I was born is this: I have come to understand certain aspects of Kashmir more clearly than I did when surrounded by them every day.

The change was not in Kashmir. The change was in me.

When I was young, I took many Kashmiri things for granted. Some I openly disliked.

I was never particularly fond of noon chai. The pheran seemed old-fashioned. Traditional forms of Kashmiri music such as Chakri rarely captured my attention. Even Rouf, with groups of women moving gracefully in unison to melodies that had survived generations, felt like something that belonged to another age.

Like many young people, I was more interested in what lay beyond the mountains than in what existed within them.

Years later, I find myself doing things that would have surprised that younger version of me. I play Kashmiri music while driving through America. I listen to old folk songs at home. I watch recordings of Rouf performances online. I admire the elegance of a pheran in ways I never did when I saw one every day.

What changed?

Perhaps human beings are simply not very good at recognizing value while standing in the middle of it.

The things that surround us daily become invisible. The mountains outside our windows become scenery. The language spoken around us becomes background sound. Customs repeated every day become so common that we stop noticing them altogether.

Distance does something curious. It does not necessarily make us love a place more, but it allows us to see it more clearly.

I sometimes think this process extends far beyond Kashmir. A child rarely understands the sacrifices of parents until adulthood. We appreciate youth only once it begins slipping away. We often take health for granted until illness interrupts our plans. 

Perhaps our relationship with place follows a similar pattern. 

We leave, grow older, and acquire perspective. Then we begin noticing things that had always been there.

When I think of Kashmir now, I realize that beyond geography, I remember an entire stage of life, voices, habits, and assumptions that built me before I understood their influence. 

I recall the smell of winter mornings, talks that seemed ordinary at the time, relatives who are no longer alive, friends whose hair has turned gray, and streets that appeared permanent because I was young enough to believe that everything was permanent.

Perhaps this gradual shift in perspective should not surprise me. 

My father, Muzaffar Aazim, spent much of his life exploring language, poetry, philosophy, and the hidden meanings embedded within ordinary human experience. Friends occasionally tell me that I have inherited some of his genes, though perhaps they required many years to blossom. 

When I was younger, medicine consumed much of my time. My days revolved around patients, research and the demands of the job.

But age has a way of redirecting the mind.

I now find myself writing essays, attempting poetry, and asking questions remarkably similar to the ones that fascinated my father. 

In my forthcoming book, The Geography of Mind: Civilization, Consciousness, and the Modern Human Condition, I explore how migration, memory, environment, and culture frame human thought. The book examines these forces at the scale of civilizations, tracing how societies evolve as they move through history and encounter new realities.

During the years I spent researching and writing this book, I found myself thinking about many of these questions as lived experiences. 

The more I explored how geography influences consciousness, how migration alters perspective, and how cultures transform across generations, the more I began to recognize similar processes within my own life. 

What I was observing in civilizations, I could also recognize in individuals. The same forces that alter societies over centuries often change human beings over decades. 

That realization helped me understand why my relationship with Kashmir, culture, memory, and identity evolved in ways that once puzzled me. The same process occurs within individual lives.

The person I am today does not think exactly like the young man who left Kashmir. My priorities have changed. 

My understanding of people has changed and my appreciation for life and culture has changed. 

Each of us migrates psychologically throughout life, even if we never cross a border. We revisit familiar places with unfamiliar minds.

Perhaps that is why returning to Kashmir felt different.

For years, I worried about the valley from afar. News reports rarely tell the complete story of any society. They tend to focus on conflict, crisis, and uncertainty.

Then came an earthquake, and then devastating floods. 

Watching from America, I worried about what would happen. What I witnessed instead filled me with admiration.

Young Kashmiris stepped forward. They rescued families, protected neighbours, organized relief efforts, transported supplies, and risked their own safety for others. I saw courage, initiative, compassion, and leadership. The same generation that is sometimes criticized revealed extraordinary character when circumstances demanded it.

Watching those events unfold, I found myself thinking of Allama Iqbal, whose ancestors traced their roots to Kashmir and whose imagination remained deeply connected to questions of human potential and civilizational renewal. One of his most celebrated couplets, which may possibly have been inspired by Kashmir itself, declares: “Nahin hai na-umīd Iqbāl apnī kisht-e-vīrāñ se / Zarā nam ho to ye miTTī bahut zarKHez hai sāqī.” Iqbal is without hopelessness for his barren field; give this soil a little moisture, and it will prove extraordinarily fertile.

Distance also allowed me to notice another development: Kashmir’s literary and intellectual culture had evolved beyond what I had realized.

I began reading essays, poems, and journalistic writing produced by young Kashmiris and often found myself astonished. There were moments when I encountered a poem and had to read it twice. The imagination, confidence, and emotional sophistication were remarkable. 

While I had been building a life elsewhere, a new generation of Kashmiri writers had silently emerged, producing work that could stand proudly beside writing from anywhere in the world.

About a year ago, I returned for a brief visit. Only two weeks. Before arriving, two weeks sounded like plenty of time. It was not.

I spent time with relatives, friends, former classmates, and neighbours. What struck me most was not what had changed but what had endured.

People often speak about how technology has weakened human connections. There is some truth in that observation. 

Phones do interrupt conversations, and screens compete with attention. But I also discovered something else.

I found my uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins, and old friends remarkably generous with their time, affection, and attention. 

During those two weeks, I felt closer to some of them than I had during entire periods of my youth. Gatherings seemed shorter than they should have been, and farewells arrived too soon.

I met classmates from medical school whom I had not seen in years. We resumed chats as though the intervening decades had somehow collapsed. The affection had deepened.

That surprised me because distance is supposed to weaken relationships. But some relationships seem to mature in absence.

The older I become, the more I suspect that memory does not simply preserve the past. It refines it. The irritations fade, and the essentials remain. 

What survives are acts of kindness, moments of loyalty, and the people who helped shape us.

Virginia has been extraordinarily generous to me and to my family. It gave me opportunities that I could scarcely have imagined as a young man in Srinagar. 

I do not view my life in America as a departure from my story. It is an essential part of it. And one of its unexpected gifts has been a deeper understanding of my roots.

Perhaps that is why so many Kashmiris discover a deeper appreciation of Kashmir after leaving it, simply because distance sometimes reveals details that proximity conceals.

The valley remains where it has always been. The journey just happens within us.

• The author is a physician, poet, and clinical researcher from Kashmir, now based in Virginia, United States. He can be reached at [email protected].