What do you do when protection turns into violation? A violation of your privacy, a violation of your dreams, a violation of your LIFE! This sadly is the situation that many young kids face in the Kashmir valley. A child here grows up seeing long hartals(bands), unnecessary beatings & killings and stones retaliated by bullets.  Fake encounters, bomb blasts and riots become a part of their day to day lives. These are some of the elements that paint this melancholy picture. Unmarked graves, half widows and frequent disappearances of young men just add fuel to the fire.

 

How does all this affect the psyche of a young kid you may ask? Long hours of idleness during curfews turn in days, which turn into weeks, which turn into months. Politics is served along with tea, kids being conditioned to think in a certain way. The major sentiment: hate. Hate towards those who confine them, their dreams and their desires. The army, the government, the country.  Education comes to a standstill. Hours are allotted each day so that civilians can move out to buy food, or move out at all. The highway remains blocked, a majorly non vegetarian population lives without meat for months together, the rare sight of chicken comes as a treat to their eyes.

 

 Out of sheer boredom, out of absolutely nothing better to do, out of frustration from sitting idle, a kid picks up a stone. He (mostly boys) may not know what the meaning of it is, but you need to while away time, and recreation comes in rather weird ways. And so the saga begins…

 

Of course this doesn’t happen always but when a fire is ignited, every spark emitted leads to a new chapter in their lives. What starts the fire? A little fuel like when a young boy like Tufail Ahmad Mattoo(17) is killed while returning home from tuitions for no apparent reason. This incident spirals out of control and the valley remains in deadlock for months together. I myself having seen this in the summers of 2008,09 and 10 can say from experience that it’s not all that fun, being cooped in your house with having nothing constructive to do. Many kids make it out of this stalemate and make their lives better, but some don’t, some can’t, the trauma still haunts them.

 

And the stone remains where it was. In their hands…