Spoiling a fun filled Saturday trance night at a three level, vibrating dance floor discotheque are my sweating palms and heavy head. The whole evening updates on TV have been repeating the news of milk shortage back home in Srinagar and the same night, I see creatures of the dark gulping tequila shots one after the other. The good and the ugly of life seem to be like a same song in two different tunes. A bad remix. Pappu is too disturbed to dance...

There's still time for fellow urban Indian youth -living life king size, to understand pappu's unease on the dance floor. How does pappu tell the rappers around that rapping and recreation does help unwinding but not rub scars off your mind ? They plead, "shake that thing...shake that thing" but quite stunned, Pappu can't move an inch to match their rhythm on the floor. His every single move is hurdled by thoughts of the dance of death innocents in Jammu and Kashmir have been indulged into. Hearing of a dozen odd youth shot in a day and thousands of others out on roads every single day, Pappu envies his dance partners for a calm mind and smooth jiving. A fearfully abnormal childhood rather a non-disco upbringing in the almost two decade long turmoil hasn't just produced many Pappu's but has also betrayed Kashmiri youth of a basic joy of life.

Thousands of other Pappu's, now away from their violent home towns still can't synchronise to the tunes of peace. Rebellion in the word's of Pink Floyd's "we don't need no education" transforms into the peoples woes back home of "we do need some milk and medicines". It's the DJ's "raise your arms in the air" that provides some stumli. Quite symbolic of the protesting crowds, the smoky discos whole crowd points to the heavens. Eyes shut, fists tightly closed and sweating more profously now, to Almighty, pappu raises both his arms - may peace be upon all those innocents killed , he prays! I think it's living in Mirza Ghalib's Dilli for long that generates fantasy of maikhanaas in times of distress.

Glitz and glamour in a fast growing city such as the national capital soaks Pappu deeper into the comparisons over losses that Jammu and Kashmir has suffered recently. Pappu's sense of concern and exile inevitably crops up in conversations, irrespective of the occasions and the socio-political understanding of the people he's debating with. Curious queries of yaar whats happening at your place, doesn't just result in an account or answer but his emotional outburst.

Pappu is guilty of spoiling many outings, date dinners and trance Saturday's with gyan Kashmir. But slogans of a peace deprived generation is what he keeps hearing in every beat of any music form that plays till dawn breaks at the party.