Srinagar, Nov. 28 -- Ubaid Manzoor's earliest memory of public speech is the sound of his pulse.

The microphone in the school courtyard waited thirty seconds while the twelve-year-old tried to push air past his teeth.

A teacher finally shattered the silence, "Louder, boy, this is not a funeral," and the courtyard obeyed: boys clucked, girls giggled, and the day moved on.

Ubaid's cheeks burned so hard he tasted iron. That taste became a calendar.

For the next decade, every morning assembly, shop-counter transaction, or ticket-window query carried the threat of similar fire.

His father, Manzoor Ahmad, carried rebar instead of opinions.

Each dawn, he walked to the Lal Chowk construction circle, waited for a contractor to point, t...