AROUND a decade on since A Stone in My Hand hit the stands as a bestseller novel depicting plight of Palestinian Muslims, followed by a popular rock number on stone pelting, a stone in hand, is again in news. This time in a new avatar: a musical remix with video of street protests in Kashmir –doing the rounds on internet and mobile phones.
 The four odd minute video is going popular with those interested in Kashmir.

THE VIDEO
 The video, is a fusion of street protests in Srinagar with the Stone in My Hand – a 2008 number by Erik Schrody (better known by his stage name Everlast), a Grammy-Award winning Irish-American rapper and singer-songwriter.
 “Stone in my hand, stone in my hand
 I’ll be waiting with the stone that’s in my hand
 Stone in my hand, stone in my hand
 All the love that’s in my heart and the stone that’s in my hand.” Goes the lyrics, which, as per the media experts, is well gelled with the video footage presumably edited by some professional.

 The author seems to have tried giving special effects by mixing sloganeering, teargas and gunshot sounds in his creation accessible on URLs like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80SyE997smc.

PALESTINE REFERENCE
 Interestingly, the stone pelting in Palestine made it to a novel in 2002 when US based writer -Cathryn Clinton- published her fiction: A Stone in My Hand.
 The 192 page novel, which became a bestseller revolved around a Palestinian family, with the following plot:

 Eleven year-old Malaak Abed Atieh lives with her mother, her older sister Hend and her older brother Hamid in Gaza City. It’s been a month since their father left to look for work as a mechanic in Israel, only to disappear. Every day she climbs up to the roof and waits for him, imagining that she can fly to the prison cell where she is convinced he’s being held. She hardly speaks to anybody except her pet bird Abdo.

 As tensions mount between the Israelis and Palestinians, Malaak realizes she can’t remain in her world of silence anymore. Each day becomes a struggle for her when her mother tells her that her father is dead. It gets even harder when Hamid tells her that he and his friend, Tariq, have become involved in a hate group. When the rest of the family finds out, they know he’s in danger and try to get him out of the hate group with no success. Their worst fears are realized when Hamid gets shot in the head one day and has to go to the hospital.
 For the past few years the stone pelting in Kashmir is being related to the Palestine as Srinagar’s volatile hubs like Maisuma and Nowhatta are referred to as Gaza in some news reports.

OTHER VIDEOS
 Besides the Stone in My Hand number, several other videos on Kashmir issue like the Zamanay Paouk Nah Hamdamm are turning fad.

TECHNOLOGICAL SOLIDARITY
 Observers term the net trend as “technological solidarity.”

 “Technology is getting into sentiment,” says prominent columnist and political analyst, Nayeem Akhter.

 Referring to roadside protests, he says: “There’s a similarity of sentiment on the street and the web… One echoes the other.”

 Akhter opines that the contemporary medium has always been used by the Kashmiris in protests.

 “There was an era when drums would be played as a mark of protest. Then came a time when poster campaigns overtook other mediums. Now internet is the latest.”

 Akhter links the web work with the tech-savvy attitude of the younger generation.

 “Obviously people are devoting time. They have the know how… Moreover almost everything is available on the net, they just have to club the bits and bytes.”

IDLE MAN’S BRAIN
 But the younger generation belonging to ruling National Conference isn’t willing to buy the popular version on the protesting youth.

 “Such videos are nothing but the creation of an idle man’s brain which have no other work to do amid continued hartals,” said former City Mayor and NC man, Salman Ali Sagar.

Salman who is the son of state’s Law minister Ali Muhammad Sagar, said the videos were the “handy work of propaganda mongers who want to glorify somebody’s tragedy for personal gains.”

Lastupdate on : Sat, 11 Sep 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 11 Sep 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 12 Sep 2010 00:00:00 IST