Srinagar, Aug. 28 -- By Palveen Kour

Kashmiri families send their children to college with books, clothes and carefully folded hopes.

At the gate, parents repeat common advice: eat properly, study hard, call home.

Then the child leaves, and the family returns to a house suddenly missing one of its voices.

The student enters college somewhere between excitement and dislocation.

Hostel life replaces the sounds of home with unfamiliar rooms, new faces and routines that must be learned quickly.

A student accustomed to a mother calling from the kitchen, a father asking about breakfast or siblings filling the house with noise now eats, studies and sleeps among strangers.

At night, the phone becomes a small bridge to home.

Many students ...