The Jammu We Are Losing

A TCN literary column on the changing life of the city, its markets, conversations, neighbourhood ties and the responsibility to preserve what still matters.

The city one carries away

A hometown is never only the place printed on a birth certificate. For people who leave for education, work or family responsibilities, it becomes a collection of directions, shops, voices and ordinary customs. The road to a relative’s house may remain precise in the mind even after the shops at the turning have changed. A neighbourhood may be remembered through the sound of a vendor, the position of a temple or the route taken to school. When a returning resident comes home after many years, the difference between the remembered city and the visible city can be startling.

That difference does not mean the earlier Jammu was perfect. Nostalgia is generous to the past. It edits away congestion, hardship and inequalities that were there all along. Yet memory can identify something useful: ways in which a city once allowed encounters that are harder to arrange today. The task is to distinguish genuine civic loss from the discomfort of discovering that time has passed.

The street as an informal meeting place

Older commercial streets held a kind of public conversation. A purchase could lead to a discussion about a family, a festival or a neighbourhood problem. Shopkeepers often recognised customers across years. The familiarity was not always equal or universally welcoming, and it should not be romanticised. But local commerce could generate a social continuity that was larger than the transaction itself.

Modern retail brings advantages of choice, convenience and price transparency. Digital payment and delivery have changed what people expect from a shop. Nothing requires Jammu to reject those gains. Still, a city should ask what happens when public life becomes a chain of isolated purchases undertaken from a vehicle or a phone. Where can people remain in contact with neighbours without needing to buy something? Markets, parks, libraries and accessible streets answer that question in different ways.

Markets as records of a city

A historic market is a living archive. Its buildings record changes in construction, commerce, migration and taste. The people within it preserve knowledge that rarely appears in formal histories: which trades once occupied a lane, how goods arrived, why a shop acquired its name, and how generations adapted to changing customers. A newspaper interested in local history should record these accounts before they disappear, while checking recollections against documents wherever possible.

The danger is to treat heritage as a decorative facade. A market cannot survive as an exhibit if traders cannot load goods, drains fail and emergency access is blocked. Preservation and practical improvement must go together. Fire safety, waste management, signage and pedestrian access are not enemies of historical character. Properly designed, they help a market continue to function and give people reasons to return.

The language of everyday Jammu

Cities carry language in accents, jokes, bargaining rituals and the names people give to familiar corners. Jammu’s speech and cultural life reflect encounters among Dogri, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and other languages of the region. In one conversation, words can cross those boundaries without being announced. A city loses something when younger residents begin to feel that the language of their grandparents belongs only at home or on ceremonial occasions.

Cultural preservation is strongest when it remains ordinary. Songs should be heard and performed, books should be read, and young writers should be encouraged to use the language that expresses their world most clearly. Schools, libraries, publishers and broadcasters can contribute, but informal conversation matters as much as a festival stage. A language remains alive when people can use it for present arguments, humour, business and affection, not only to describe an idealised past.

The changing rhythm of neighbourhoods

Residential areas change as households grow smaller, people travel farther for work and new apartment buildings replace older forms of housing. These shifts can improve privacy, sanitation and access to services. They can also reduce the incidental encounters that once occurred in courtyards, lanes and shared neighbourhood spaces. The changes are not uniform. Some communities maintain strong local networks while others struggle with isolation or the effects of rapid construction.

Planning has a role here. The design of a neighbourhood determines whether people can walk to a park, whether children have a safe place to play and whether older residents can reach shops without crossing hostile traffic. Public benches, trees and maintained pathways may seem unimportant beside large infrastructure announcements. Yet they provide places where civic life can happen without appointment or expense. A street should be judged partly by the ease with which its residents can inhabit it.

What newcomers contribute

It is easy for discussions of change to turn into a complaint against people who arrived later. That is a mistake. Jammu has always been shaped by movement, commerce, education and exchange. New residents bring skills, customs, businesses and demand for better services. They also participate in the city’s future and have a stake in its history. No group possesses exclusive ownership of an urban identity.

The more constructive question is whether the city provides ways for long-established and newer residents to share public spaces and responsibilities. A market association can include new businesses. A neighbourhood meeting can welcome tenants as well as property owners. Cultural events can make room for many traditions while giving local languages a confident place. When growth is governed fairly, the result need not be the dilution of belonging. It can be a broader understanding of what it means to belong.

The public institutions we overlook

A city’s cultural record depends on mundane institutions: municipal archives, libraries, schools, local newspapers and museums. These rarely receive the attention given to a new road. They are nevertheless essential for identifying what should be conserved and for allowing residents to learn how their neighbourhoods developed. A photograph with a verified date can settle a dispute about a building. A shop register can reveal a business lineage. A library preserves arguments that might otherwise be forgotten.

Jammu would benefit from a publicly accessible programme to collect oral histories with consent, digitise appropriate archival material and document changes in streets and public buildings. Such a project must respect copyright, privacy and accuracy. The purpose would be neither to freeze the city nor to produce a flattering official story. It would be to make the city’s many pasts available for careful discussion.

The cost of careless modernisation

Not every new building is progress, and not every old structure deserves preservation at any price. A dangerous building may need strengthening or replacement. A road may genuinely require reconfiguration. But public decisions should explain what is lost as well as what is gained. Demolition without documentation can erase evidence of local craft and shared experience. Construction that ignores drainage, footpaths or public access may exchange one difficulty for several new ones.

The answer is a process rather than a sentiment. Historic value should be assessed by qualified people, property rights respected, adaptive reuse considered where feasible and alternatives disclosed. Residents should know when consultation is possible and what decisions have already been made. The city’s character will change regardless. The question is whether change is thoughtful enough to retain what remains valuable.

The idea of a shared civic evening

One of the less visible forms of urban change concerns how people spend their evenings. The ease of moving between neighbourhoods, the existence of well-lit public places and the comfort of meeting outside the home influence whether a city feels generous or closed. An evening walk, a bookshop visit or a conversation over tea is not a grand cultural institution. It is nevertheless part of the social life through which people learn that the city belongs to more than their household.

A good city offers these possibilities to women, older people, families and people who cannot afford expensive recreation. Safety, maintenance and access matter. A lively square is of limited value if a visitor cannot reach it or safely return. Cultural life should not be confined to a few private venues. Public programming, libraries, parks and pedestrian streets can create low-cost ways for residents to meet.

Recording the everyday before it changes

The Continental should build a continuing local-history desk that invites readers to send photographs, personal accounts and documents about Jammu’s markets and neighbourhoods. Each contribution would need context and consent. Dates should be checked where possible. Claims about a landmark or a public event should be compared with archival records. A memory should be valued as testimony without automatically being treated as a complete historical record.

Such a collection could become more useful than a series of nostalgic essays. It might help young residents understand the origins of streets they use daily. It could connect families across cities and generations. It might also reveal that a place remembered fondly by some was inaccessible to others. Honest history includes those tensions. A civic archive should give them room rather than eliminate them for the sake of a sentimental story.

The inheritance we can still choose

There are losses no city can reverse. A family shop closes, a familiar face is gone and a route once travelled on foot becomes an entirely different street. We are tempted to call each change evidence that Jammu is disappearing. That language is too final. A city is made by living people, and its identity is constantly renewed through their choices. People can preserve a language by speaking it, support a market by using it and protect a public space by insisting that it remain accessible.

The inheritance is therefore not a list of buildings alone. It includes habits of mutual attention, respect for diverse neighbours and an expectation that institutions answer public questions. To preserve Jammu is not to demand that every shopfront look as it did decades ago. It is to ensure that growth does not destroy the conditions that made neighbourhoods worth remembering. This calls for judgment, investment and ordinary civic involvement.

A city worth coming home to

The person returning to Jammu after years elsewhere may find that memory and reality no longer match. Some changes will be welcome. Better services, new opportunities and improved connections deserve recognition. Other changes will invite grief or criticism. The returning resident has no special monopoly on the meaning of the city. Those who remained have lived through the compromises and costs of every year that passed. Listening to them is the first responsibility of someone who comes back with a strong opinion.

The Jammu we are losing is not a single vanished city. It is a set of connections that may weaken unless they are deliberately renewed. A library can reopen. A market can be made safer. A footpath can bring neighbours together. A young writer can record an elder’s recollection, then test it against history. A language can remain useful tomorrow. None of these acts makes headlines every day. Together, they decide whether the city’s future will be recognisable as its own.

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