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Fading culture: Kur Kota: a heart of a Waziristani home
- Updated: August 23, 2016
People were satisfactory and straightforward. They did not trust in restricting women. PHOTO: AFP
DI KHAN: The heart of a Waziristani residence lies in a Kur Kota or a executive room of a residence where elders of a family live.
Unlike a hujra, that creates a order between group and women, a Kur Kota allows women a leisure to acquire any guest that creates their approach into a house.
In a Waziristani Pashto dialect, Kur means home and Kota means room. Thus Kur Kota is a room where both a family and a visitors feel during home. The room is where all critical decisions are done within a residence and critical rituals, like weddings and burials, start from.
Even in terms of architecture, a room is in a centre of a house. The structure of a room is rectilinear with an in-built fireplace. The bedrooms are furnished with Qashkai, a locally-woven carpet, and Bolashts, that are special pillows.
Often, these houses have a series of families vital in them and a Kur Kota is where they all come together, generally in a winters with fires blazing splendid in a room’s angeethi or stove. Guests, and family members alike, lay around a glow and speak about critical issues. Sometimes, a matters are after taken adult in jirgas, ensuring that women are partial of a decision-making process.
However, that is not all that happens there. The room is also used as a assembly place, where a whole family huddles in a winter to tell folk tales about adore and bravery. Rounds of tea are served on these occasions and both group and women also sing Ghyriwalla Tapay and Sandarah.
“When runner makers primarily visited Waziristan from Afghanistan, they were welcomed into a Kur Kotas of homes and were treated with hospitality. They were served abounding normal food and given camp in a Kur Kotas,” says Waziristani local and PhD academician on a region, Gul Marjan.
“Waziristani multitude has not evolved. Its expansion was stopped by opposite factors. Had a healthy expansion not been stopped, we would have been looking during a Waziristan totally opposite than a one in front of us today,” Marjan adds, articulate about a demeanour in that eremite radicalism has influenced a enlightenment of Waziristan.
Sadly, with a conflict of pardah rewaj, a mindset of people altered and a hujras outward a residence took a place of Kur Kotas. Male guest are now perceived by a group of a family, directly in a hujras as a women are not authorised to be in hit with them.
“It was a good tradition, though it is quick vanishing. It has turn formidable to say it currently with a change in mindset. Kor Kotas have now turn unsuitable as they are in contrariety to pardah rewaj,” Gul Marjan concluded.
Talking to The Express Tribune about a tradition, an aged Waziristani woman, Nai Gula, says, “There is a favoured purpose that Kur Kotas play — it is sad. Kur Kotas gave women leisure to attend in activities. we feel contemptible that a days have passed. People were satisfactory and straightforward. They did not trust in restricting women.”
Kur Kotas still exist in each Waziristani residence even now though their duty is minimal. Even still, a tradition lives on in some genealogical homes tucked divided in a mountains, inexperienced by radicalism and a new mindset. These distant off homes keep a age aged tradition alive and still give value to it. Women there are not cut off from multitude and still have some magnitude of freedom.
Published in The Express Tribune, Aug 24th, 2016.