The other story of young Kashmiris you don't hear much about
Barely a few days after a deadly encounter at Delhi Public School, Srinagar in June 2017, two of its students were appearing for an online interview for News Wiz Quiz 2017, a quiz show on India Today TV.
The smell of gunpowder smoke could still be felt on the ravaged school campus at Zaberwan hills, as Syed Taha, a Class 12 student, and his companion Baber Bilal, who studies in Class 11, sat before a computer in the bullet-riddled classroom, to try their luck at the contest. “I vividly remember that as we were interviewed for the quiz on Skype, bullet marks were visible all around in the classroom, a constant reminder of what had happened, but we gave it our best,” said Baber, who is studying humanities and aspires to be a lawyer.
A fortnight later, the duo got a call from India Today that they had been shortlisted for the quiz. Having defeated their opponents from across the country, they have qualified for the semi-finals scheduled to be held in the middle of November.
The journey to the semi-finals, the duo say, was “neither tough nor easy”. “Unlike school curriculum, there was no definite syllabus for the quiz and we had to keep track of news, everywhere from TV channels to newspapers to social media like Twitter. But I would say it was something normal because all of us want to stay updated,” said Taha. “Information is power and news is source of power,” he adds.
A medical student who has chosen to study sociology as an additional subject, Taha — who aspires to be a social scientist — said that the only difficult part is to make others believe that “we (Kashmiris) are normal”. “Coming from a sensitive state, we’re politically, socially and economically very vulnerable. With stereotypes, it is difficult to break it down to outsiders that we are normal.”
While these two students prove their mettle at the national-level quiz, Qismat Bukhari, an alumnus of DPS Srinagar, is bringing laurels to his alma mater with his writing skills. Qismat recently won the Amitabh Bachchan Scholarship for Excellence in Media for the year 2017 at Mumbai's Whistling Woods institute where he is pursuing graduation. He was the first differently-abled student at DPS Srinagar to get the opportunity.
While there is a general notion that only students of some leading schools like DPS Srinagar, Tyndale Biscoe School or convents, have excelled in studies and extra-curricular activities in this trouble-torn region, millennials like budding film star Zaira Wasim and kickboxing sensation Tajamul Islam have added more colours to Kashmir's success story.
Wasim made her debut in Bollywood with Aamir Khan’s blockbuster Dangal. After impressing the mainstream audience as a young Geeta Phogat in Dangal in 2016, this year, Zaira made a mark in the industry with her second film, Secret Superstar, which has minted more than Rs 36 crore and counting at the box office.
Zaira, who recently turned 17, told a news agency that she does not have a dream to achieve. Instead, she believes that destiny will guide her way.
In a similar vein, eight-year-old Tajamul Islam scripted history at the World Kickboxing Championship in Italy, where she made India proud by becoming the first player ever from the sub-junior category to clinch a gold medal in November 2016.
Such success stories are emerging at a time when some educated youth are picking up arms, and several others are taking to the streets chanting “Hum kya chahtay azaadi". In April 2017, the unrest in Kashmir took a massive turn when thousands of students, mainly schoolchildren, took to the streets, spending more time in protests than in classrooms.
While the government used brute force to crush the anti-India agitation by students, the protests continued for weeks together.Call it fate or coincidence, briefly, after a lull in student protests across Kashmir, an encounter broke out at DPS Srinagar. Two militants were killed and three soldiers injured in the 14-hour gunfight. Though the school was shut when the encounter took place, one of the buildings was extensively damaged in the shelling.
And just few days later, in one of those very ravaged classrooms, the DPS students scripted their success story. But then how do the students of such schools look at the Kashmir issue and the way the youth are contributing to it?
“Somebody is protesting, another pelting stones and still others writing... I want to study sociology to help my people — we don’t have too many social scientists for our society,” said Syed Taha, as he prepares for the next round of the quiz, eyeing the finals.
“If we make it to the finals, it will be great for Kashmir. Others will get to know people of Kashmir are just like them. We will do our best to bring home the trophy!”