The women had gathered beneath the pale light of Hazratbal, their hands raised in prayer as the Prophet Muhammad [PBUH]’s relic was displayed.
Some wept openly, others bowed their heads, murmuring prayers for children, parents and lives caught in difficult seasons.
Thousands had come to the shrine in Srinagar for Eid Milad-un-Nabi, turning the Prophet’s birthday into a day of devotion, reunion and emotional release.
Among them was Halima, a woman in her 70s who has spent more than 55 years attending Milad at the shrine.
She cannot read or write. Her granddaughter holds two master’s degrees.
Halima describes the young woman as deeply learned, argumentative and capable of finding an explanation for almost everything.
But depression has left her confined to her room, and that is one problem Halima says her granddaughter has struggled to explain.
The family has tried everything, Halima said.
On the Prophet’s birthday, she came to Hazratbal with another appeal to God: bring her granddaughter back to herself.
Her prayer held the force of a lifetime spent in Kashmir through the violence and uncertainty that followed the 1990s. Curfews, political upheaval and years of security restrictions had tested families in ways that extended well beyond physical hardship.
Halima said spiritual healing gave her generation a way to preserve its sense of balance.
“We have seen terrible times throughout our life,” she said. “But one thing which kept our sanity intact is the spiritual healing which days like these bring.”
The shimmering shrine represents a simple proposition for Halima: Human beings can feel powerless before circumstances that exceed their understanding, while faith gives them a place to turn.
Her granddaughter belongs to a generation that has grown up with a different intellectual inheritance.
Some young Kashmiris question shrine traditions, reject the sanctums their elders revere and regard gatherings such as Milad through a more skeptical lens.
Halima’s story therefore contains a larger generational tension: an older Kashmir still drawing strength from inherited faith while some of its young people search for other ways to understand themselves and the world.
Hazratbal displayed a vivid view of that divide on Wednesday.
Among the worshippers was Showkat Hussain, a man in his late 50s who had travelled from Pattan. He spent the previous night at the shrine, immersed in prayer and what he described as spiritual solace.
Getting there had taken effort, he said, because members of his family have increasingly turned away from shrine gatherings.
Some relatives who travelled to the Gulf returned with different views about such practices. Hussain said that left him feeling increasingly alone in preserving a tradition he still considers central to his life.
He spoke of a generation that, in his view, had become more hot-headed and self-assured while losing some of the humility associated with older Kashmiri religious culture.
“These places keep you grounded,” he said. “They make you realise the ultimate truth of life.”
Hussain sees Milad as part of a wider spiritual inheritance that once helped Kashmiris withstand years of upheaval. The gatherings brought people together, he said, and reminded them of goodness, humility and their connection with something larger than themselves.
The experience of the pandemic gave that belief another dimension.
A caretaker at Hazratbal recalled the period when Covid-19 restrictions emptied the shrine and other mosques and sanctums in the valley. Regular visitors, particularly people from the older generation, suddenly lost a place where they had routinely prayed, shared their worries and felt connected to a higher power.
The caretaker said many became agitated and emotionally unsettled.
The point, he explained, was never that God existed only inside a shrine. “Devotees viewed such places as sites associated with the Prophet’s beloveds and with blessings that believers had sought for generations,” he said. “The physical journey to a shrine gave that faith a human and communal expression.”
That expression remained visible on Eid Milad.
Misbah Rashid, a 28-year-old university student, stood among the worshippers. Her presence complicated the idea of a simple generational divide.
She belongs to a younger Kashmir that has inherited new ideas and questions, while still finding value in old sacred spaces.
“Places like these make you humble, calm and soulful,” she said. “That’s what actually matters at a time when there is a lot of uncertainty around you.”
She also spoke of the sense of community created by such gatherings.
People who might otherwise live separate lives came together around prayer, shared belief and the memory of the Prophet.
Nearby, a young man named Saqib Mir wept during the prayers.
His terminally ill mother could not come to Hazratbal. He had come on her behalf, praying for her recovery and asking God to grant her shifa.
She had once attended Milad gatherings at the shrine herself, he said, and he wanted to stand in her place.
His prayer was one among thousands.
Some worshippers came seeking relief from illness, others prayed for children, family members or personal struggles.
The shrine became a gathering point for private grief and public devotion, with thousands sharing a space where individual worries could sit alongside collective faith.
That may explain why Eid-e-Milad continues to hold such significance in Kashmir.
The day has become a celebration for children and families, with lights, prayers and festive gatherings filling the shrine precinct. But beneath that celebration lies a deeper social function.
“Kashmir has endured turmoil, trouble and trauma,” says Imran Ali, a scholar part of Milad gathering at Hazratbal. “Its older religious traditions gave many people a language through which they could process suffering, seek solace and remain connected to their communities.”
The young, he said, are changing that inheritance. “Some question it, while many reject it.”
But others, like Misbah, are finding their own reasons to remain within it.
Halima’s prayer for her granddaughter captures that tension with unusual intimacy.
An illiterate grandmother and a highly educated granddaughter inhabit the same family, while faith provides one language and skepticism another.
At Hazratbal, their worlds briefly meet.
Halima still returns to the shrine after more than five decades because she believes there is a greater power beyond the limits of human understanding. Her granddaughter searches for explanations in a different vocabulary.
On Eid-e-Milad, thousands of Kashmiris stood between those two impulses: questioning and believing, analysis and surrender, individual struggle and collective prayer.
The relic, meanwhile, was displayed. Hands rose, and tears fell.
And for a few hours, an old Kashmir gathered around the faith that had helped it endure the years when so much else had become uncertain.
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