The government’s decision to secretly execute Guru just days before Maqbool Bhat’s death anniversary — Bhat was a symbol of Kashmir’s resistance against what many in the state believe is India’s claims over the region, who was also executed in the same Tihar jail 28 years ago — seems to have touched a raw nerve, especially among the youth of the Valley.

While this may be of little concern for people in other states, the parliament attack convict’s hanging could have serious repercussions for the common Kashmiri.

Let’s jog back a few hours of Saturday to look at a couple of samples of that ‘reaction’ to understand the situation better. Minutes after I heard about Afzal Guru’s in the morning, I started calling my parents, relatives and friends back in Kashmir. Each one of them sounded concerned, and in a way each was trying to prepare himself/herself for what might follow. 

My mother told me that cable TV connection had been snapped and the streets were deserted since morning. She also gave a series of instruction on how I should conduct myself — at least for the day. 

A call from a friend from Srinagar came a few minutes later. Unlike usual, there were no pleasantries exchanged this morning; the seriousness in his voice was quite evident even as we spoke. He started off saying curfew has been imposed. “The CRPF personnel have been placed at every nook and corner, and tyres are burning,” he said, ending the short conversation.

This added to the predicament in mind.  I have seen those tyres burn before, and they are anything but bonfire-ish. They fill the sky with a dark and dreary smoke, and they turn the Valley into almost an uninhabited planet, where only men in khaki with their automated rifles and young men with stones in hand and no fear of death in their heart are to be seen on the streets — almost pitted against each other.

These tyres have been burning in the Valley for as long as I remember — they may be ‘mere’ rubber tyres but once they catch fire they keep looking for more and more innocent blood until they are charred.

For me, the memories of that fateful summer of 2010 are still vividly clear and alive in my head. More than 115 Kashmiris, most of them between 10 and 26 years, died after thousands of young men and women from the Valley  took to the streets to protest and express their anger after a 16-year-old schoolboy died — the victim of a teargas canister shot from close range.

Stories like this and many more raise the fear in every Kashmiri that those times would be back to haunt us.

As the afternoon gives way to evening, I wonder why the government decided to hang Afzal Guru now, without even informing members of his family. Guru was sentenced to death years ago; so why this kneejerk reaction now, just as the Valley was trying to find its feet and look for peace?