Srinagar, May 18 -- It was during a wedding in Srinagar few winters back that I first noticed it, not the lavish trami or the crackling kangri, but the absence of something quieter, more invisible.

The children running around the hall weren't speaking Kashmiri. Their voices, sharp with excitement, carried the rhythm of Urdu and English instead. Even the elders, while serving the Rogan Josh with the care of centuries-old ritual, often replied to their grandchildren in halting urdu, as if trying to meet them halfway across a cultural gap that had quietly widened.

This scene is neither unique nor unexpected. It is the sound of a world in transition, a world where globalization in all its promises and pressures is quietly reshaping the iden...