We can't study properly. Nor do we feel like having fun. He and his friends now spend all their time searching for an occupation outside Kashmir. They are openly envious of Mushtaq, a second year medical student who dropped out to get a job as a cosmetics salesman in Kuala Lumpur. There was a time when the cafes and street corners of Srinagar used to bustle with political debate.
Today there is sullen silence.
Nor is there any display of insurrectionary zeal that marked the start of armed insurgency spearheaded by the youth in the early 1990s. With shadowy foreign mercenaries steadily edging out local insurgent groups from militant politics, few want to get involved. Frankly, we are scared to get involved. Yet, despite the growing apathy of the youth with the politics of insurgency, some get inadvertantly sucked into the cycle of violence. The most recent example of this is the mysterious suicide bombing by 18-year old school student Affaq Ahmed Shah.