Apart from being a conflict zone, a place of watchful skies, uncertainty, perpetual siege, disputed militarized area and much more, Charar is also a home, a birthplace, a neighborhood to children who deserve an ordinary life.

In Charar-e-Sharief, a small town in Kashmir, the sky is watched more than it is admired. The pages ahead carry poems, drawings and writings created by children from Charar-e-Sharief. These are not stories of conflict. They are stories of being — of existing, feeling, and creating, even when the world around them feels constantly under siege. There is no intention here to reduce these children to what they have survived; rather, the purpose is to amplify what they have to say.

Here, you will find no grand narratives, no exaggerated portrayals of pain. Instead, you will find the ordinary — the things that children anywhere would draw or write about: friends, homes, dreams, and love. The difference is that here, ordinary is extraordinary. Every act of drawing or writing in a space of occupation is an act of resistance.
This public notebook is not asking you to feel pity. It is not asking you to sensationalize their stories. It simply asks you to listen. Because the sky is not just watched — it belongs to them too.