TANGDAR (Occupied Kashmir): A is for AK-47, B is for Bomb, C is for Curfew — that is how children in occupied Kashmir learnt the alphabet for many years.

Two weeks after guns fell silent on the Line of Control (LoC), hundreds of war-weary children living near the highly militarized region are returning to regular schools to resume an education interrupted by years of shelling.

“Earlier, we used to attend school for one or two hours once or twice a week because there was a lot of shelling going on,” said Rehan Ahmad, a nine-year-old in the tiny town of Tangdar.

“But since Eid we have been going to school every day. And we hardly need to use the underground bunkers at home.”

The children of Tangdar are not alone.

Life is slowly returning to normal for thousands of Kashmiris, who were trapped for years in the crossfire as India and Pakistan exchanged fire every day across the 740-km LoC.

And the simple things that most people in the rest of the world take for granted are what delight Kashmiris most.

“Opening my shop daily... It is a dream come true,” said Mohamed Shamim, a grocer in Tangdar, nestled amid lofty snow-covered peaks about 190kms northwest of Srinagar.

“It is such a good feeling, I can’t explain.”

GHOST TOWN: A nervous calm has returned to the area after India and Pakistan, who stood on the brink of war last year, declared a ceasefire on the LoC in efforts to rebuild confidence.