Srinagar, June 5 -- There are days in Kashmir when the sky turns its face away, and nothing feels like home.

Not the chinar trees, not the azaan rolling over rooftops, not even your own name echoing back from the mirror.

You sit on your prayer mat, but your hands tremble too much to rise. You whisper questions to no one: Why is it always me? Why does every road feel like a dead end?

This, too, is life in the Valley.

Not just the beauty they paint in postcards, but the silence of pain stitched behind every smile. The kind of pain that presses against your chest in the dark. The kind that makes you wonder if you're really seen. If you're truly loved. If you're anything at all.

But let me ask you something: Who whispered that you're not...