With the big guns still silent along the Kashmiri front lines six months into a truce between the armies of India and Pakistan, once-traumatised children are slowly returning to normality in this frontier town.
"The end to daily shelling is good. Now schools function without breaks and we play without the fear of incoming shells hitting us," said 12-year-old Khadim Hussain.
Another scholar, Manzoor Ahmed, said he used to shiver and weep when shells hit the town as the armies pounded away at each other's positions across the de facto border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
"I have always lived with the fear that we will die of shelling. But now there is no such feeling," Ahmed told AFP on his way home from private tuition, trudging along a dusty street in this mountain-fringed town 140 kilometres (85 miles) north-east of Srinagar.
The first-ever full cease-fire since the neighbours first went to war against each other in late 1947, took effect on November 26 last year - six months ago - and has held so far. A doctor said the number of psychologically ill patients in the town has also dropped.
"We used to receive women and children who would complain of heart palpitations, severe headaches and other stress-related ailments," he said. "Since the cease-fire such cases have dropped considerably." Amjad Khan, a 12th grade student who wants to become a doctor, is using the truce to make up for the lost time.
"Crossborder shelling routinely used to disrupt our studies. Peace allows me to study hard to achieve my goal. There are no distractions now," he said, while rushing home from a college.
Bano said she is still broken over her husband's death but wants to live for the sake of her six-year-old son, Mohammed Salim.
Syeda Bano, 45, said the days of being constantly on the move to avoid incoming shells were over.
"We used to live like refugees before the cease-fire started ... always running for our lives," she said while fetching water from a small stream.
"My family and I can't believe there has been no crossborder shelling for the past six months," she said, adding the peace was "healing their inner wounds."
"I used to attend to my household duties but my mind used to worry about my farmer husband and my school going children," she said.
"Now there are no more worries, and same should be true about those living on the other side of the border." Years of cross-border exchanges have claimed thousands of lives on both sides of the de facto border.
Another mother, Atiqa Begam, said she was enjoying the freedom of allowing her three children to run about freely, without fear that they could be hit by shells.
At the same time she was wary.
"Now everyone is happy and enjoying the peace, but you never know what is going to happen tomorrow."
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