An Encounter With Zareef Ahmad Zareef
He is An Iconic Kashmiri, a Mobile Library, and a Living Archive of Untold History.
Dr. Fiaz Maqbool Fazili
A First Encounter in Prang-There are encounters in life that leave a mark deeper than many years of acquaintance. My meeting with Zareef Ahmad Zareef was one such. I did not know him personally before. Like many, I had heard of him—through Kashmiri vlogs, friends’ anecdotes, and his fiery public interventions that often carried the weight of centuries. He had always intrigued me as someone more than a poet or social commentator. People call him a “mobile library,” a walking archive of Kashmir’s oral history and cultural memory.
It was during a family outing to Prang that destiny arranged a meeting. My cousinsister, a teacher, introduced us. At first it was an ordinary exchange—an elder asking about my family roots. When I mentioned our ancestral homes in Gurgadi Mohalla and Dabtal, his eyes lit up. It turned out we shared ancestral origins. The conversation deepened further when he inquired about my “Pirzada” background. “Are you the son of Professor M. Maqbool Fazili of S.P. College, “Magga Sahib”, who was popularly known by that affectionate title?” he asked warmly, referring to my father. Recognition brought familiarity; suddenly the distance of years dissolved. When I spoke of my Medina Munawara background, another bond was struck through our common connection, the late Dr Professor M. Yasin Bhat. What began as a casual introduction became an unforgettable dialogue on family histories, cultural continuity, and the responsibilities of a concerned citizen.
Zareef sahib is not merely an individual he is a nostalgic voice of Kashmir’s cultural soul” a timeless envoy of Kashmiri heritage too. In an age where many hesitate to speak in their mother tongue in public, he wore his Kashmiri identity with pride. His communication—delivered in a rich Kashmiri dialect, flavoured with wit, idioms, and sharp historical allusions—had an unmatched charm.
He carries with him a living theatre of Kashmir’s past. Sitting with him is like entering a time machine, where dynasties, poets, and unsung heroes all spoke again through his memory. Unlike the formal historians who write footnotes and citations, Zareef sahib speaks from the heart, weaving together folklore, oral traditions, and his vast reading. His knowledge is not confined to books but embodies conversational, and accessible. This is why ordinary Kashmiris love him. He belongs to them, and he speaks in their idiom.
To call him a “mobile library” is no exaggeration. He can recall centuries-old anecdotes with astonishing precision—dates, names, incidents, all rolled out with an orator’s ease. But more than the facts, it was the spirit of history he transmitted. He narrates not just events but emotions—how people felt during famines, how rulers-imposed taxes, how poets resisted tyranny, how Kashmiris survived cultural erosion. In a society where much of our history remains murky, distorted, or unwritten, his memory is a parallel archive. He preserves what was untold and unshared, stories passed in whispers from one generation to the next. In doing so, he rescues an entire civilisation’s memory from the abyss of amnesia.
To my knowledge (stand for correction), though he has not aligned with any one civil society group, Zareef sahib embodies the spirit of an apolitical crusader. He raises his voice against environmental degradation, social decay, and moral corruption with fearless wit. Whether it was the disfigurement of Dal Lake, the vanishing wetlands, or the moral corrosion in our everyday dealings, he speaks out with the authority of conscience.
This is where I felt an instant connection between his worldview and my own reflections in columns like “What Makes a Civil Society Member a Concerned Citizen.” Both of us, in our own ways, believed that silence in the face of rot is complicity. He uses oral culture, humour, and poetry; I use essays, analysis, awareness and policy critique. But the spirit is shared: to be a concerned Kashmiri is to be restless until things improve.
The Art of Communication; One of his most striking qualities was his presentation. In an age of autopilot PowerPoint slides and polished media studios, Zareef sahib needed none. His stage is the gathering of friends in a hujra, the cultural mehfil, or the roadside meeting where chance conversations blossomed. His “mic” is his Kashmiri dialect, sharp yet lyrical, often laced with proverbs that carried more weight than lengthy arguments. He has the rare ability to make complex history intelligible to a labourer and simultaneously profound for a scholar. His words are never empty; they carry humour, satire, and sting. He could ridicule hypocrisy without being cruel and celebrate heritage without being nostalgic. Communication, for him, is not performance; it was communion with his people.
Every society has its “official history,” written by rulers or dominant institutions. But beneath it lies another layer—the untold, unshared histories-stories of ordinary people, their struggles, their resilience, their betrayals, their small triumphs. Zareef Ahmad Zareef specialised in this second layer.
He reminds us of the half-forgotten artisans, the folk singers, the resistance poets, and the communities that gave Kashmir its plural cultural richness. He spoke of mohallas and their rituals, of vanished trades, of communal harmony that once defined our lanes. For those of us searching for our own family roots, like I was that day in Prang, he provided not just genealogical detail but the atmosphere of lived memory.
Zareef sahib himself had a way of pointing out such contradictions in Kashmiri society with both humour and sting. Let me help you frame this in your op-ed voice: In one of his videos, Zareef sahib spoke about the old “Shuda Takiyas”—literally places where drug addicts would gather. The synonym itself was enough to sting the conscience. But what baffled me even more was his narration of a peculiar custom: whenever sickness or calamity struck, families would send food as “Sadaqat”,to these addicts’ dens, believing this would ward off trials. It reveals the strange paradoxes of our culture—on the one hand, generosity in giving on the other, misdirected offerings that fed self-destruction. For me, that example carried more than satire. It was a reminder of how societies often turn noble concepts like charity into empty rituals when conscience and wisdom are absent.
In a globalised world where identities blur, we need figures like Zareef sahib to remind us of who we are. He is not a politician seeking votes, nor a bureaucrat seeking files. He is a people’s intellectual, a cultural mirror held up before society. His memory is a bridge to our past that connects us with our history. His legacy is not only for historians to study. It is for citizens to cherish. He reminds us that knowing our history is not a luxury; it is survival. Zareef Sahib spent his life ensuring we did not walk blind into that abyss. He deserves to be appreciated and remembered.
A Personal Closing Reflection-In one of his videos, Zareef sahib mentioned with pride that he had planted 42 chinar trees. What a noble contribution—anyone who plants a tree earns lasting virtue, for trees are not only shade and oxygen but living monuments of continuity. Beyond that chance encounter in Prang, I do not recall meeting him again or knowing him personally, except through his videos and podcasts. Yet somehow, his presence, his memory, and his words lingered with me. He impressed upon me the truth that some people live in such a way that they do not need repeated meetings to leave an imprint. Zareef Ahmad Zareef was one such man—he deserved, without doubt, a place in my pen.
