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Kashmir - the Wounded Beauty

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I grew up listening, reading and watching in movies about the wounded land of Kashmir. Recently, on my very first tour, I got to experience the tension. From what I gathered from the locals, the issue I witnessed wasn't directly caused by terrorism, but was a byproduct of it, much like the side-effect of a life-saving medicine. It was a clash between the locals and the soldiers placed there to protect us against terrorism. It started like this - a few days before I arrived in Srinagar, the reason that has been all but forgotten now started a riot. A young Muslim man got killed in the firing opened by CRPF Jawans. The angry crowd returning from his funeral attacked the CRPF posts and a couple more died. And it set off the chain reaction that was about to blow out of proportion. I was given to understand that the reason behind this animosity between the guardians and the guarded had been building up for a decade. When a locality of simple residents who feed on common tr