Shaheena Akhter, 29, vividly remembers the field rigged with thousands of landmines laid on 8 March 2002 in Karmara, the last mountainous village in Jammu’s Poonch district on the Line of Control (LoC). Divided by Concertina wires, some of the best pastures, maize fields and forest slopes were on one side and the village on the other. Elders and children collecting wood and cutting grass had to tread cautiously along the safe path. However, they often accidentally activated the mines...

Neha Tikoo, 22, gazes at the pristine waters of the Dal Lake while her other mates discuss some serious issues pertaining to the vexed Kashmir issue in a park near the banks. She along with her ‘like-minded’ Pandit and Muslim friends is on a visit to the Valley as a confidence building initiative between the two buffeted communities.Twenty one years ago, a year after she was born in a Pandit household in south Kashmir’s Bijbehara, her family set out for a journey to the point of no...

In a congested alley of Reshi Bazar in south Kashmir’s Anantnag, Infad Hakeem, 15, adjusts polythene over a few dozen oranges and bananas on his handcart, amid spring showers. Normally, he would spend this time of the year in school. Instead he toils on the streets to keep the pot in his kitchen boiling. Meanwhile, his father Rafiq Ahmed Hakeem battles to get his older brother Faizan Hakeem, 16, out of Jammu’s Kotbalwal Jail, where he is lodged under the Public Safety Act (PSA) for past...

The Indo-Pak clash in the cricket World Cup semi-finals has raised the cricket fever, like the rest of sub-continent, to a fervent pitch in Kashmir. Mouths wide open in nervousness, twitched eye brows, tension in the sitting rooms, all eyes glued to the Television screens,  keen to not miss even a single moment of the clash.

Not at the house of Aisha in Bana Mohalla locality of old city's Fateh Kadal area.

Up four stairs from the main door is a small room on the right, where she lies on...