Back to Life

“We had forgotten how to live,” says Mohammad Maqbool. “All these years, the only thing on our minds was how to survive. The rain of shells and bullets and war was the only truth. We’d count our dead and injured when we returned home. Now we count profits.”

The first sign of change can be heard from a distance. As soon as our car slides over the narrow lane which clings to the meandering path up towards the Haji Pir mountains in Uri, the road suddenly comes to a dead end at a steel bridge. And though Silikote, where the army stands guard at the last Indian post on the Line of Control, is a 30-minute climb, the thrumming of drums and local folk songs resonate through the deep gorge.

“This is happening for the first time in 15 years. The farmers are now moving freely and working in their fields during the day,” says Mohammad Jamal Chalkoo. “The ceasefire has changed our lives.” He points towards the ridges across the Telawadi, a clear, fast-running stream. “That is Sanjiwad village in Pakistan. And there too, the villagers are harvesting their first maize crop after years… and celebrating,” he says. “The echo of the drums comes from there.” The crop in Silikote is a bit delayed. “But the entire village will celebrate it in a big way.”

“We now know what peace is,” says farmer Habibullah Joo. “Earlier even the air smelled of explosives.” Joo recalls his own story. “I had several very narrow escapes. It is a miracle that I am still alive. I was caught in shelling thrice.” Once the guns fell silent, Joo became an army porter. “I earn Rs 85 daily and I know it’s safe. I can now think about the future of my children.”

Joo says he and his village wants to erase the past from their memory. “We don’t want to remember the times when a walk during the day was an invitation to death from across. Then the nights were out of bounds because of the curfew. We had created hidden paths that were not visible to the Pakistanis.” But the remnants of the past are scattered everywhere.

Irshad Ahmad holds a walking stick and is the first to greet any visitor to Silikote. The army has erected a barbed-wire fence around the village after the ceasefire to prevent militant infiltration. And entry to the village is now through a gate manned by soldiers. Ahmad, a porter, has been employed to help check the identity of villagers and screen visitors.

Twenty-year old Ahmad’s story illustrates the pains of the LoC villagers. In August 2000, Ahmad lost his mother, Saja Begum, when a Pakistani shell hit her. Then he too was hit and lost a limb. “I had passed all the tests to join the Army and was preparing to leave for my training. The day I was to leave my village, shelling started and I was hit by a shrapnel. I lost everything to this war—my mother, my life. I always pray for this peace to last for ever. What happened to me should not happen to anybody ever.”

The rolls of the primary school have gone up to 30.The shelling had left it defunct for years as villagers were scared to send their children to school. “The rolls are gradually increasing,” says Mudasir Ahmad, the teacher. “There is no fear now. Students can concentrate on their studies, and play.” The Army has donated a toilet block to the school and is planning to install computers in a neighboring school.

Things have not only changed for the villagers but for the Army as well. The troops too relax and walk around in daylight—something inconceivable earlier. We meet a senior officer of a neighbouring battalion who is visiting the village along with his guards. “Earlier all our focus was the enemy. But now as the situation improves, we can focus on development work,” he says. The Army has already built a library and additional rooms for a school and is currently laying a bridge.

In fact, the Army is now planning to commission a mini hydel power project for Silikote. “We want the village to get 24-hour electricity,” says an officer. But perhaps the most profound evidence of Silikote’s changed fortune is the miserable condition of its 12 underground bunkers that the government had specially helped construct to shelter the villagers from the shelling. “Nobody uses them anymore,” says a local, “And we don’t even want to need them. Ever.”