Rakesh's mother, Dolkar, is anxious. Her daughter, Babli, said she had a bad dream about her son last week, and has been crying ever since. The family lives in Kulu and also owns a small shop in Leh.

In more peaceful times, the women visited Kargil occasionally to peddle their stones. But, for the last two years, they stopped coming here for fear of Pakistani shelling. Now destiny has brought them back amid battle.

Kargil has virtually become a town of lost people. The local families have disintegrated due to forced migration to safer places. Now soldiers here are desperately trying to get through to their families in Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu or Maharashtra and wait for hours at STD booths. Like Rakesh'sfamily, everyone feels cut off and confused amid this undeclared war. As the women roam from village to village, with sacks of turquoise and other stones on their backs, they find that many of their best customers are soldiers who buy the stones as mementoes of their time in the war zone.

Ironically, the culture of war is stamping itself on Kargil in a thousand small ways. Soldiers have fashioned rings of rifle cartridges, doorsteps are decorated with flowerpots made of 105 mm shell casings. Even bomb splinters have become centrepieces in living room almirahs, army barracks, and just about everywhere.

For Rakesh's family, the itinerant peddling of stones is also an excuse to look for his regiment and inquire about him. ``It was only yesterday that we came to know he is up somewhere in Batalik, perhaps fighting in some icy place,'' says Babli.

Her 55-year old mother takes a long breath. She stares at a jawan outside an STD booth. Pointing towards the soldier in his combat fatigues and camouflage helmet,she says, ``My son, Rakesh, looks like him. Somewhere, his mother will also be anxious like me.''

Rakesh's mother says she does not want her son to leave the battlefield but she can't help worrying. ``I am a mother and mothers are like that. I couldn't bear any bad news about him, God forbid,'' she says. In the STD booth nearby, another jawan manages to get through to his family after an hour-long struggle. Their brief conversation echoes loudly over a speaker.

As soon as he hears ``Hello'' at the other end, he shouts, ``Ma!'' It is his mother on the line. Though he is speaking in Marathi, the tone expresses his emotion. As if by a slip of the tongue, he mentions that he is calling from Kargil. At the news, his mother's voice breaks. The jawan's voice softens as he reassures her he is in no danger.

The five-minute call, the first he has been able to make since being transported to the war zone, costs him Rs 300. The Government's claims that satellite phones have been sent to troops in the Kargil sectorseems a farce.As the jawan strode out of the booth and fixed his helmet on his head, his hand brushed his eye.