Another child, Manzoor Hussain has a different definition -- ``War means when you listen big bangs everywhere around and people are killed''.

These youngsters who were involuntarily drawn into the vortex of this bloody fight just because they lived in the border areas, are proving to be quick learners.

Forced to flee their homes because of Pak shelling, they now attend school in a tent, erected in a field near Trespone village 15 kms from here. What are they learning there? The vocabulary of violence, the mathematics of military logic and the artwork of anguish and flight.

Ten-year-old Reyaz, who studies in class four is eager to prove hisknowledge when asked what a shell was. ``It is a thing that comes fast from behind those mountains and falls everywhere. It breaks into thousand pieces and kills people and mules,'' he replies. Reyaz's family fled their village Kanore as it was dangerous to stay there. They now live in a dingy room near Trespone, where floods of refugees come to escape the shelling.

`Pioneer Public School' - a privately run institution is trying to provide these students with as normal education as it can possibly offer. The effects of war are visible here too as the double storey building functions without a roof. However, the children seem unable to come to terms with the circumstances. The scars of the recent occurences are still fresh on their minds.

And the pain comes out in various forms. Children remember the incident when a shell hit the building of Suru Valley School killing one student and injuring three others. ``These children became aware of the danger after that incident,'' said Mohammed Iqbal, Principal ofPioneer Public School said. At a recently organised drawing competition, most of the images drawn by the children aged upto ten, were of the violence of war, said Mohammad Iqbal, principal of the school. ``A student - Sabmeet Singh of class three showed a huge shell fall on a mountain and injured villagers,'' he says and adds that the shelling, the exodus and the War was the topic of most of these drawings.

The teachers in most such schools are a worried lot. The children, they say, are extremely distracted. ``Their pick up has been affected,'' says Irshad Ahmad Bhat, a teacher. ``These children are not able to adjust to this sudden change while their parents also don't pay much attention towards them as they are overburdened with other problems,'' he explains.

As the fighting continues on the icy ridges and rocky mountain cliffs, disturbingly, the children of Kargil are learning to live with the violence. The war is fast becoming part of their lives.