April 2, based on real events and inspired by the themes like—conflict, corruption, unemployment, love, and the emotional burden of being young in Kashmir. Adil and Aaliya serve as fictional stand-ins for real youth navigating these harsh truths.
The sun of April 2, 2007, rose with a sense of promise. It wasn’t just the beginning of spring in Pulwama—it was the first day of college for hundreds of students, and among them, Adil stood quietly near the gates of Government Degree College (Boys), his heart thudding in a rhythm unfamiliar even to him. He was stepping into a new phase of life: graduation. But he didn’t know that this day would mark the beginning of something far deeper—something that would shape his next ten years.
She walked in at around 10:05 AM. Aaliya. Wearing a pink suit that glowed gently under the shy sun, she carried a quiet elegance, the kind that didn’t shout to be noticed but couldn’t be ignored. There was a softness in her smile, a mystery in her eyes, and a silence that spoke louder than most words. She was assigned to the same class and same section as Adil. Fate had signed the first chapter.
The first few weeks were filled with awkward smiles, stolen glances, and accidental conversations. Teenage love, in all its purity and intensity, began to bloom. Adil and Aaliya sat next to each other during lectures, exchanged notes, laughed at silly jokes, and slowly built a world of their own amid the chaos of campus life. Adil was serious, thoughtful, sometimes lost in his own silences, while Aaliya was observant, intelligent, and radiated warmth without trying. Their understanding grew not just from shared classrooms but from unspoken gestures—a hand held out when one stumbled, a note passed during a dull lecture, a comforting gaze during exam stress. It was more than a crush. It was love, raw and real.
They began walking to class together, sometimes arm in arm, careless of who watched. Adil would wait for her every morning at the gate, a smile blooming on his face the moment he saw that familiar pink dupatta in the crowd. Mondays became his favourite days just because of how it all began.
But not everyone was happy. Adil’s own friends warned him. They said she would be a distraction, that college was not the place for such emotions. “Leave her,” one of them had told him bluntly. Adil had looked him in the eye and replied, “I’d rather lose friends than lose her.” That was Adil. Loyal. Intense. Unafraid.
And so their story unfolded in the quiet corners of GDC Boys Pulwama—in the classrooms, under the chinars, in the long walks between lectures and library visits. It was a love untouched by the noise of the world. At least, for now.
But like all real stories, this too would be tested—by time, distance, fate, and forces far beyond their classroom walls. This was just the beginning.
Part 2: After the Spring (2010– The Storm Breaks)
Graduation ended in 2010, but the real tests began only after the college gates shut behind them.. The conflict in Kashmir had taken a darker turn. Young lives were caught between protests and promises, between dreams and disappearances.
Adil, armed with his degrees and idealism, stepped into the uncertain world of unemployment. He applied for government jobs, took coaching, and even cleared a few preliminary tests. But every door he knocked on was guarded by invisible hands—corruption, nepotism, and the black money machinery that ran deeper than qualifications.
Aaliya, meanwhile, had grown quieter. The girl who once found joy in conversations now spoke less. The reality of adulthood had started settling in her bones. Her family—fearing the instability around—began insisting on security. For a girl in Kashmir, love was never enough. Aaliya, though still fond of Adil, voiced her first real demand:
“Can you get a government job?”
It wasn’t a rejection—it was fear wrapped in concern. A job meant respect, safety, and a future, especially in a place where tomorrow was never promised. Adil understood her. But her words felt like an unintentional wound. His pride battled his pain.
Days turned into months. Protests erupted. Internet shutdowns became routine. Armed men and armored vehicles patrolled their dreams. Adil kept trying—filling forms, preparing, meeting officials—but everywhere he turned, he was told the same unspoken truth: “Without money or connection, you are nobody.”
The system wasn’t broken. It was built this way.
Frustrated, Adil began attending local resistance meetings—not out of politics, but out of suffocation. The movement wasn’t just on the streets now; it was inside him. He wrote poetry that no one published, essays no one read. The fire that once kept him warm now began burning him from within.
And between all this, the distance between him and Aaliya grew. They spoke less. Messages remained unread. And though neither had said it aloud, the warmth they once shared began fading under the weight of survival.
It wasn’t betrayal. It was reality.
In a land where peace was a myth, even love had to surrender.
The years rolled on, slow and unforgiving. Kashmir remained frozen in uncertainty, not just in terms of weather or politics, but in opportunity. There were no private industries to absorb the growing tide of educated youth. The private sector was almost invisible, and the government jobs, though few and coveted, were like distant stars—visible but unreachable. Amid this silent chaos, Adil and Aaliya tried to hold on, but life had other plans.
Aaliya, once the soft-spoken girl in the pink suit, had begun to change. With every passing semester, her ambitions grew sharper, her expectations clearer. What had once been teenage affection was now confronted by harsh realities. She had started speaking openly: “Adil, this won’t work unless you get a government job. There’s no future without it. No job, no relationship. No job, no marriage.” Her words weren’t harsh, but they were final. She didn’t say them with anger, but with the cold logic of someone who had decided their worth.
Adil, hurt but not defeated, refused to let go of her that easily. With limited choices and no access to white-collar employment, he chose dignity over despair. He picked up labour work—helping at construction sites, loading goods, anything he could find that paid. His hands, once used to holding pens and books, were now blistered with effort. He believed love would understand, that effort would speak where circumstances could not.
But Aaliya had started drifting. She no longer waited at the gates. Her eyes, once warm and glowing at the sight of Adil, now turned away as if trying to forget something inconvenient. She began avoiding his calls, replying with cold, one-word answers. The signs were all there—her silence, her shifting moods, her subtle displays of superiority. She had begun to look at Adil not as the boy she once loved but as someone she now considered baroozgar—jobless, unworthy, beneath her evolving sense of status.
Adil watched the change with quiet pain. She had once walked arm in arm with him through the college corridors; now she walked past him without a glance. Her ego had grown silently, fed by the society around her that worshipped government status and economic security above all else. Love, it seemed, had an expiry date in the face of unemployment.
By the end of the decade, they were no longer a couple—no longer even friends. Aaliya had moved on, convinced that love without a job was a burden she could no longer carry. Adil, left with nothing but memories and scarred hands, stepped into a loneliness he had never imagined. Their love story, once full of warmth and hope, had become another casualty of Kashmir’s broken economy and a society obsessed with status.
Ten years after it all began, what remained were only questions, echoes of old laughter, and the ache of a love that couldn’t survive reality.

Email:----------------alikhilal71@gmail.com