Life on the
Line of Control

Most people know Poonch the way they know most border towns- as a name on a map, a dateline in a news ticker, a place that appears only when something goes wrong. But for those who grew up there, it is simply home. And like any home, it is complicated, beautiful, and entirely ordinary in ways that would surprise you.

This is not a story about tragedy. It is about what it looks like to live a full life : to study, to dream, to laugh, to live - when your backdrop happens to be the Line of Control.

01Education Under Uncertainty

Going to school near the LOC means learning to study through interruptions that most students never have to think about. Internet shutdowns, sometimes lasting days or even weeks, are a routine part of life, triggered by infiltration alerts, security operations, or tensions that flare without warning. Assignments, online classes, and exam preparation all bend around these blackouts.

Exams get disrupted. Study schedules collapse. The playing field is not level, and very few people outside the region seem to notice or care.

02The Rhythm of an Uncertain Life

Curfews here are not abstract civic inconveniences. They arrive suddenly, often at night, and they mean that you do not step outside. Markets close. Schools shut. Plans dissolve. You learn from a young age to keep essentials stocked, to never assume tomorrow will look like today, and to hold your plans loosely.

There is a particular kind of mental recalibration that happens when uncertainty becomes the default. You stop being surprised. You adapt. Weddings get postponed. Job interviews get missed. Life continues, because it has to.

03When Violence Arrives Next Door

The hardest part to write about is also the most important. Attacks happen nearby. Not as abstract events, but as things that happen to people you know- your neighbours, shopkeepers, someone's father, someone's son. You grow up learning that loss is not always something that happens to strangers.

There is no good way to describe what it does to a community to grieve in this way, repeatedly, and then simply continue. Schools reopen. Shops reopen. People go back to their routines, not because they have forgotten, but because continuing is itself an act of will. It is resilience, though nobody here calls it that. They just call it living.

04What the Rest Don't See

The narrative around J&K in national media is almost always political, always about conflict. What rarely gets told is the texture of ordinary life here.

People here are not defined by the conflict around them. They are students, farmers, teachers, entrepreneurs, writers. The border is a fact of geography, not an identity. And the resilience of people living here is not a feel-good footnote. It is the main story, if anyone is willing to tell it.

05Resilience is Not Passive

There is a tendency to romanticise the resilience of people in difficult circumstances as though endurance alone is enough. But the people of Poonch are not simply enduring. They are building. Young people are qualifying for universities, starting businesses, creating things. Families are investing in education precisely because they know how much access matters, and how little of it they have been given.

It deserves to be recognised as the achievement it is.