Reviving the Sacred Streams of Kashmir

Kashmir overall is a beautiful place, and it is quite popular throughout the world for its beauty, landscape, beautiful mountains, vast forests, green plains, lakes, and other natural features that attract people from all over the world. Everything has its own charm, and Kashmir is very unique in its beauty and landscape. Fortunately for all of us, we have abundant natural resources here. One of these natural resources is the streams that contain crystal-clear water flowing directly from the glaciers surrounding the valley. These streams pass through the valley from one end to another and are truly a unique feature. A large number of streams flow across the region, and that is why people settled in different corners of the valley in earlier times, mainly because of the availability of water and better chances of survival.

People used to live simple lives and considered nature sacred. They would regard adding any pollutant to it as a sacrilege. I still remember my childhood days when we used to drink water from the nearby stream that flows through my village and makes it so beautiful and pleasing to the eyes. We used to have no scarcity of water, no matter what the weather conditions were. There was abundant water even in dry seasons because of the perennial stream flowing through.

Now a time has come when people chase more materialistic things and ignore nature and other valuable resources that benefited us, even though they had no direct monetary value. They still carried huge importance, something that only the earlier generations truly understood. Today, being more materialistic and money-oriented, we hardly care about these things and are harming nature in every possible way. People who cannot find any place to dump waste products throw them into streams and rivers without thinking. They assume that floods during the rainy season will wash away the waste, without caring where it will eventually settle.

People also started dumping cow dung along the banks of streams and rivers because the riverbanks provided a lower space where vehicles could easily be parked, and the dung could be loaded into trucks with little effort. This has become another major pollutant, as the foul water flowing out of it mixes with the streams and makes the water even worse. People have become ignorant despite having much more knowledge than those who lived here earlier. In pursuit of materialistic things, we are losing nature and our precious resources.

Today, we cannot even use the water flowing through the streams for washing our hands or feet, and that truly feels bad. We were handed these resources by our elders in a pure form, without pollution, but now, in the pursuit of money, people are ignoring them, and this has cost us a lot. In the present time, when there is scarcity of drinking water during dry seasons, we truly realize the importance of the resources we once had. Even though the streams are still there in their original places, we cannot use them the way we once did, and that is quite a painful experience.

It is disheartening to see such things happening right before our eyes, yet people are still not bothered. At this moment, some youth have started forming groups and have taken the initiative to clean these streams. I myself feel quite enthusiastic about it. I am trying to motivate my friends to join in so that we can pool some money and arrange manpower and machinery to clean these streams and once again make them serve humankind in the same way they used to before.

Thank you for going through my post. Have a great time ahead.