Turtuk: Garden of Apricot

Food for thought to begin with: Turtuk is probably the only village where  grandfather was in Pakistani Army and a grandson in Indian Army.

When somebody dreams about an ideal village, he sees water stream flowing down and bisecting the village in two beautiful parts, smiling faces, clean alleys, fruit bearing trees, water flowing in small canals along with the alleys, kids playing while coming back from the school, men and women working happily and so on.

This is exactly Turtuk or perhaps Turtuk is beyond this. It is the northern most village of India. Every second tree here is an apricot tree where one can pluck the ripe apricots and eat them to their satisfaction. As of now locals don’t mind visitors eating their fruits as the number of people visiting Turtuk is still less. There are few homestays where one can stay and couple of restaurants as well. This place is not about luxury. People get electricity only for 4 hours in the evening. The methods and means of daily chores are still very traditional because of absence of electricity as it is redundant to get the appliances from far off cities like Leh or Srinagar. Leh is the closest city which is 225 kms/10 hrs away.

Local language is Balti as Turtuk is part of Baltistan. Baring 2-3 villages, entire Baltistan is part of Pakistan. During 1971 war, Indian Army pushed their Pakistani counterparts few villages back to regain the control of Turtuk which they lost in 1948. The villagers live like a closed knit big joint family and sometimes also sadly remember their other relatives which were left behind in Pakistan. With farming as their main source of livelihood, they cannot afford to visit their relatives. The people of Turtuk see irony in the fact that Skardu, the main town of Baltistan region is closer than Leh (and don’t even have to cross any mountain pass either) but probably they will never visit it again.

Balti people want to marry their kids in Balti families only. Although the entire village of Turtuk follows Islam yet they don’t want to marry their kids in Srinagar or other Islamic parts of India. Still it is very hard for them to preserve Balti culture. In coming decades when this culture would extinguish, the people responsible would be those who don’t want peace between India & Pakistan. There actually is little or no difference between the villages on either sides of the border. Be it the language, food, culture, religion, traditions or warmth in the heart.

As told to me by local tailor, Turtuk has never seen any crime till date. The kids prefer going to Army after 12th. Being so close to the Pakistan border, this part of J&K hardly sees any militancy and the village is very co-operative with the Indian Army.

The one thing which remained with me the most is smiling faces of men, women and children of Turtuk. That smile is not an ordinary smile, it reflected the peace and happiness in the lives of these people which can only come from the content-ness and satisfaction they have with the way they are spending their days in this land which is perhaps one of the most beautiful part of India.

I left a part of me in Turtuk and filled that vacancy with the love, kindness and happiness I got from Turtuk.

Sometimes I ponder what if there would have been no partition and India & Pakistan would be the same country. To start with we would have solid cricket team, we could visit more exotic places in Gilgit, Baltistan and rest of the Kashmir, the fertile land of this region would boost income levels of the locals, billions spend on the war could have been used for development, families would be together, more people would be alive who lost their lives in partition and war and the heaven on the earth would just get bigger.

A lot can be said about what could have happened and I want you to think a little more about it and in the end just add few lines of Ali Sardar Jafri:

Tum aao gulshan-e-Lahore se chaman bardosh,

Hum aayen subh-e-Banaras ki roshnee le kar

Himalay ki havaaon ki taazgee le kar

Aur iske baad yeh poochein ki kaun dushman hai?

(You come from the garden of Lahore laden with flowers,

We will come bearing the light of a Benares morning

With fresh breezes from Himalayan heights

And then, together we can ask, who is the enemy?)