Life on Edge: Sirens and Survival at Indo-Pak Border

Imagine tucking your child into bed, not with a lullaby, but with a whispered plan: “If the siren goes off, grab your slippers and run to the bunker.”

This isn’t fiction. This is daily life for thousands of Indians living along the tense India-Pakistan border. In villages etched into conflict zones—like Poonch, Uri, Rajouri, Samba, and Gurdaspur—peace is a luxury, and silence is never trusted.

The border that divides India and Pakistan isn’t just a line on the map. It's a breathing, twitching, unpredictable space. The Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and the International Border (IB) in Punjab and Jammu regions slice through farmlands, homes, even dreams.

Here, one moment you’re preparing dinner, the next you’re diving for cover. Sirens scream louder than prayer bells. Even the sky seems to remember war.
In a corner of Poonch, Rukhsana Bano sweeps the floor of her rebuilt home with a quiet grace. “It used to be pink,” she says, glancing at the now-gray walls. “The mortar fell near the kitchen. We found bits of my son’s toy truck in the rubble.”

Stories like hers don’t make headlines anymore. But they live on in scars, both seen and unseen.
Ask any child here what a bunker is, and they’ll describe it faster than they describe a park. These underground shelters, sometimes just big enough for four people crouched together, are their “safe zones.”

In Kathua, Savita Devi sleeps fully dressed, her emergency bag always near the door. “Inside it? Aadhaar cards, biscuits, a shawl, and my daughter’s asthma inhaler.”

She laughs nervously, then adds, “There’s no room for dreams in a bunker.”
For children like Tanveer, 9, the school calendar doesn’t run on months—it runs on ceasefires. “I missed my final exam because there was firing near the school,” he says. “But it’s okay. I’ll try again next year.”

Teachers try to maintain routines. But sometimes, learning stops for weeks. In art class, students draw not trees or animals, but soldiers and guns. It’s what they see. It's what they remember.
The land is generous, but the air is not.

Harbhajan Singh, a farmer in Gurdaspur, remembers sprinting through his mustard field as gunfire cracked in the distance. “You can’t farm in fear. You look up more than you look down. You wonder if the next step might be your last.”

Many farmers switch to crops that grow fast. Some give up entirely. “The land feeds us,” he says, “but now it demands courage, too.”
Gulshan Ara doesn’t flinch when she hears a loud bang anymore. “My body reacts slower than my brain now,” she jokes. Her husband is in Leh with the army. Her sons are in school. She stays, guarding home and hearth.

Women here are first responders, therapists, protectors. They wrap bleeding arms, calm shaking children, and light stoves even after a sleepless night in the bunker.

What breaks them, they don’t show.
Despite everything, loyalty here runs deep.

Ask villagers who they blame, and many won’t name the other side. They blame “politics,” “leaders,” “decades of promises broken.” But their love for India is undented.

Ashfaq Lone, who owns a small ration shop in Poonch, says, “We are not angry. We’re tired. But if the country calls, we will still stand up.”
The 2021 ceasefire brought some breathing room. For the first time in years, school bags replaced evacuation bags.

But no one here unpacks too much. They know how quickly silence can turn into sirens again. “We live in borrowed peace,” Kavita Devi says. “It’s like waiting for a phone call you hope never comes.”

So they live—quietly, cautiously, carrying both hope and habit.
In a dusty home near the fence, Sameer, age 14, writes stories in a tattered notebook. “I want to be a writer,” he says shyly. “But not about war. About what happens after.”
His mother wipes a tear when he says this. Not because she doubts him, but because she knows the strength it takes to dream in a place like this.

Here, even a schoolgirl's laugh feels like rebellion.
The civilians of India’s border regions do not wear medals. They do not march in parades. Yet every day they show a kind of courage that most of us will never understand.
They raise families under gunfire. They plant seeds in land that remembers war. They teach children how to hope in bunkers and smile through silence.


Let us not forget them.
Not just when there’s a skirmish.
Not just when there’s loss.
But every day.

Because peace, real peace, begins where they sleep—with one ear on the siren, and the other still listening for tomorrow.

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