The beauty of local languages is in the intimacy they evoke. The sounds, words and phrases are all a melody to the ear of the attuned. Cultural values, a people’s ethos and their prejudices are often not explicitly stated but rather, carefully handed down each successive generation through interesting proverbs and idioms. The ‘Dictionary of the Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings’ by J. Hilton Knowles is one such treasure that aims to capture this. A missionary in Kashmir, Knowles says he wrote it over “two long quiet winters” in Kashmir when the “air is most invigorating and the quiet is sublime”.
My all-time favourite remains: tul paezar te di buthi buthi. So expressive, so hard to translate, so full of Kashmiri humour!