Ah! The life in Kashmir, the life at home was so interesting some years back. Lot of work to do, lot of cricket to play and lot of beating to be had at home for all carelessness in studies. But today it is 2010 and people say I am grown a bit young, a bit mature, a bit more in height. I have nothing to do these days except to spend time watching idiot box or just sleep and sleep more. Its July and for the last few days I have been sitting at a one place as if for being a “Kashmiri.” I  am subjected to solitary confinement. In Delhi I long to be back home but here I long I am better there. Better in the sense that there I can breath freely, can move out freely, can speak more freely. Here I have to follow what is best put in this phrase, “In Rome, Be like Romans.” The mobile phones at our place are dead as if Kashmiri people are a cattle that don’t need to socialize, the internet doesn’t work as if it’s only for the social networking sites people use net. Every time a strike is forced on common people the worst affected are the people confined to home. The curfew is not for the so-called “stone pelters” but for the people who prefer to remain indoors. The best thing that happened to me these days is that I have beaten by previous best of “my sleeping record.” Sitting in my room looks like as if I am at a camp in the battlefield, where the noise of explosives, ammo (live or dead) always reminds me that next it may be you.
 My heart bleeds when I hear about a 9 year old boy killed in firing during the protests. Our head of the state says its “war of the ideologies” but what has a nine year kid to do with the ideologies, for him even to understand the basic “plus minus” concept is hard to understand. Who is to blame for his death? May be the bullet, may be the mob, may be the separatists, may be the mainstream, but as I look the more to be blamed are his parents who could not keep such a tender baby at home. Where his arms strong enough to throw a stone at the security forces that will hurt them? The answer is a “BIG NO.” If you can’t control your small kid from jumping in the well of death, you have no right breeding them. As I write this piece, I find my little brother dancing before my eyes who is also just 9. And I weep in the hearts of my hearts because my brother is just out with his milk teath, same might have been the case of that killed 9 year old kid. A group of our leaders are only busy to find ways of “creating martyrs” in Kashmir because then they will have more chances of weeping the crocodile tears and more chances of calling for a “shutdown”, but for me it’s just a way of “shutdown of innocent lives”.

It is solitary confinement, with just four walls to listen to me, with no network connection is what is the state of we Kashmiris who don’t venture out to play the so called “kani jang.” For me it’s not a right way to protest, so I call it a “game” between the ruler and the ruled. On the night of 30th June on Times Now Kashmiri protesters earned a new name for them, a name which is too hard to digest, a name that is false to its core, a name that even white american thought was a disgrace, the epithet used was “Lynching Mob.” Lynching mob means, “Putting a person to death by mob action without due process of law.” Did the protesters put any so called security forces to death? I believe the anchor had his statistics wrong that day. He wanted to make the nation believe that the protesters trashed a security personnel and he drew the conclusion, “pictures don’t lie.” But may I ask the anchor where he had the pictures of the other side. It’s universally acclaimed fact the a coin has two sides. He was busy in showing the one side of the story and may I ask you Mr.Anchor what about the other side of the story? What about these innocent killings? You didn’t want to demoralise your security forces but those killed didn’t want other Kashmiris to be killed. The “lynching mob” included a 9 year old kid, a 16 and 17 year old teenagers and the lynching mob included the mourners who are drawn violent. Is the life of Kashmiri youth so cheap? If the media can give much hype to the youth who suicide in a school in Kolkata then why this double standard when it comes to Kashmir. Kabil Sibal was forced to give a statement about the suicide of that that boy of “La Martine” school but about our Kashmiri youth. Is bullet the only answer for the Kashmiri youth? These questions will haunt me. I wish the leaders come up with some really good ideas to protest and not the flop and plagiarised ideas.

(Sameer Hilal is B.A (Hons.) Political Science Jamia Millia Islamia,New Delhi)

Lastupdate on : Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST