Khurati and Toki

Gul Dahur

Research Data

Khurati and Toki

Description

During winters, when the water supply was cut off, the young men would go to the forest to collect chir pine wood. My father was a carpenter, and so was one of his brothers. They would cut the wood and make small wooden channels for water flow (khurati) from it. When the water would start flowing again, we would go to a place where these khurati were installed to fetch water. At that time, there weren't many pots, so we used to cook food in [soap] stone pots balosh and also fetch water in it. Similarly, for fetching water we used containers toki from a gourd-like crop that, when dried, becomes hard and leak-proof, making it ideal for water transport. We used to bring these toki from Haramosh Valley and fill 5-6 toki with water to use them at home. In those days, tea was a luxury, made only by the relatively well-off; people like us couldn't afford it. We kept one cow, while some didn't even have that. Until the month of nos we fetched water this way, and after nos, we started the practice of Nasalo. Until the festival of Eid Nouroz around 20-40 women would go together, carrying their utensils to fetch water from the khurati. After Eid Nouroz, when the water flow increased, people started irrigating their fields. Later on, a pond was built there and taps were installed. At that time, there was no oil or dalda but instead we used animal fat for cooking. Ever since dalda came into use, various diseases followed, like paralysis, cancer, and stomach issues. During winters, we used to grind wheat at the traditional water mills yori. Wealthier people would grind about 20 mounds (approximately 800 kg), while we, the poorer ones, managed about 12 mounds. My father and uncle each had a yori, whereby in our area there were a total of four yoris. The wealthier folks would prepare a wooden boxes atun for storing flour dishaki with 20 mounds of flour, while the poorer ones would have 12 mounds. Back then, diseases were rare. Neither our children nor we, nor our elders, ever got fevers. There were no medicines; if someone got a fever, they would make a small cut on the forehead to let a bit of blood flow out, and it was believed that the "bad blood" was removed and the person would recover. That was the extent of our ail-ments. During winters, due to heavy snowfall [and little available water], it wasn't possible to visit the yori often, so we would grind about 10-15 or 20 mounds of flour in one go and store it. Besides this, we used to drink butter-milk and milk. We had many goats, so we would get butter and buttermilk from the grazing lands, and we drank that.

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2.5.6.1