Keep the kids Out of this:

I was on my way to Srinagar and when I crossed the Jawahar tunnel, I felt so good. I always felt blessed to be born in this part of the world and cherished my summers spent in Kashmir. I was busy acknowledging the beauty of Kashmir when my phone buzzed. One of my friends called me up to inform that there might be a curfew in Srinagar, One more boy got killed. He told me to be careful.

It brought me back to reality. I looked out of the window and could clearly saw what lied underneath this beauty. The vale full of blood, Wails, laments, dead bodies. The next hour of travel was more tiring and I kept asking myself when wills this end. The driver of my cab might have over heard my silence when he answered without any expression on his face “never brother, not in your or my life time”.

I reached Lal Chowk at 10 P.M.It was more alive than I have ever seen in the last few years. Quite a few shops were still open. There were few tourists enjoying their Ice cream and few were strolling with a gait as if, they are in some foreign land. I still wanted the killing news to be a rumor; I knew rumors travel really fast in this city.

My Dad came to pick me up and confirmed the news was true. He was aghast that this seventeen year old kid had to die so cheap. There was undeclared curfew in the interiors of the city and Dad assured me that I would be fine and should stop worrying.

This calm demeanor reminded me of a young leader’s recent words “Death is a mere statistic in kasmir”.It surely was just a number. There were number of kids who died in the same fashion. I knew, this time it won’t be different. There would be protests again till they kill one more kid and give the nation a good enough reason to protest. No body had the answer when this will end.

There were reports coming that security forces are involved in the killing. I wondered if there were any other forces except security forces that were responsible..

The tear shells wills never stop, it may turn into firing sometimes, but they will carry on doing what they are good at. However, if this ‘Kani Jang’ continues I can assure you,the next martyr of this freedom party will be a sixteen or seventeen year old kid, may be a younger one.

I hope and pray Kashmir gets what it wants. However, we need to stop this ritual of sacrificing school going kids and turning them into martyrs for the freedom.

For God/freedom sake, keep the kids out of this ‘jang’.