Srinagar, July 29 -- By Mohammad Ilyas Bhat

I still remember the sting of that laughter.

Years ago, in a small Kashmiri town, my friends and I sat down early in the front row of an open-air stage, waiting for a drama performance that would later launch some of the valley's most celebrated artists.

Organisers ordered us to the back rows. Laughter followed us as we stood, and the humiliation cut deeper than the seating arrangement ever could.

Eight of us walked to a bicycle repair shop nearby. We gathered old tyres discarded on its roof, stripped out the wire rings, wrapped them in scraps of cloth collected outside a tailor's stall, and soaked them in kerosene.

By evening, while the drama unfolded on the main stage, we lit our own show...