AMRITSAR, Apr 28: India's Daoke village is fenced from Pakistan on three sides and 65-year-old resident Hardev Singh, who has lived through multiple wars between the arch-rivals, knows the drill if another erupts.
"All women, children, cattle and most younger men moved back to safe shelters in 1999 and 1971," Hardev said, referring to two of the worst outbreaks of fighting between the neighbours.
"We couldn't go to our fields," he said, adding that it was only the village's elderly men who "stayed back to ensure that our homes were not looted".
Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing the deadliest attack in years on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22.
Islamabad has rejected the charge, and both countries have since exchanged gunfire across the de facto frontier in contested Kashmir, diplomatic barbs, expelled citizens and ordered the border shut.
Residents of the frontier villages in India's Punjab state say nothing has changed on the ground yet -- but there is a growing anxiety about the coming weeks.
"The barbaric attack on the civilians in Kashmir was tragic, but no matter what, the lives lost are not coming back," Hardev said.
"Any war would push both our countries back by many years, and there would be an even bigger loss of human lives."
A border fence patrolled by troops slices in two the farmlands near Daoke, home to around 1,500 people.
Gurvinder Singh, 38, recalls the last major conflict in 1999.
Fighting then took place far from Punjab -- in the icy Himalayan district of Kargil -- but the sun-baked fields around his village did not escape unscathed. "AFP
