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Thar when it rains
The ditches by the road had water; the dunes looked a darker shade of grey and the vegetation all the greener… Seeing rain in Thar for the
first time
By Salman Rashid
My friend Dr Khatau Mal sent a text message from Mithi about the rains this monsoon — rains that had filled up the ponds of Chelhar in the Thar Desert. Shortly afterwards, I was on a whirlwind trip from Mirpur Khas to Nagarparkar and back.
The weather was priceless: dark clouds across the sky, cool wind in the face and the call of peacocks not only resounding in the villages but springing out of the bush. Driving around Mithi on the bypass, we even heard the koel. I have been to Thar so many times that I have lost count. I have been there in high summer in the heat of May; in winter and during the monsoon months. But I had never seen rain in the desert.
Though I have experienced heavy overcasts and shivered with cold in the gusting wind of August on the crest of the Karonjhar Hills outside Nagar, there was no rain. Friends have pointed out shallow gullies cut across the sand dunes where, they said, rivers had flowed in past rainstorms. They told me, too, of the verdure that bursts forth from the grey dunes after the merest sprinkling of rain. But for me it never rained and a verdant Thar was always a dream.
Overnight in Islamkot a glorious sunset led into a still and muggy night. Far away in the west, sheet lightening ripped across the lowering skies and having commandeered the only mosquito net on the premises, I went to bed under the veranda so as not to be disturbed by the rain at night. The others slept on the terrace. With no power to turn the fan and not a breath of wind, it was a ghastly night. And when the rain came a couple of hours before sunup, it only just cooled the temperature, doing very little to subtract from the general discomfort.
We drove out for Nagar against a cool, gusting wind to the calls of unseen peacocks. The dunes were indeed greener than I had ever seen them. Admittedly, Thar is not a desert as barren as the Takla Makan or the Sahara for here we have grasses of a dozen different kinds and several species of trees as well. But this was actually the first time I saw a veneer of green across the dunes.
We hurried on to the 16th century mosque of Mahmud, the king of Gujarat. On my first ever back in the early 1980s, I was told it had been built by Mahmud the robber Turk of Ghazni. The man sweeping the courtyard in those years of drought said something peculiar when I asked him why there were no worshipers for the afternoon prayer: “Times are bad, there is little to eat because of the drought and men have forgotten their Lord.”
I chided him for being a man of god on a full stomach. He looked hard at my wife and me and told us it was easy for us to say such a thing and we ought to live in the desert to know what life in the drought meant. This time around, too, there was a man with a broom in the courtyard but I did not make any inquiries regarding worshippers.
Behind the mosque, concealed by its high banks is the famous pond of Bhodesar. Legend has it that Bhodaee, the king of the bygone and once fabulous city of Pari Nagar, despairing of the chronic shortage of water in his kingdom was advised to sacrifice his son Narundas to appease the gods. The prince was killed and buried where the pond now stands. They say thence the pond was indeed never destitute of water.
Until the drought of the 1980s, that is. We saw a dry pond, its clayey surface cracked in a maze of squares and rectangles curling up at the corners. Bhodaee’s sacrifice, it seemed, had been in vain.
But now the rains had washed the pink ridges of Karonjhar a deeper shade sprinkled. The slopes were flecked with the deep green of monsoon vegetation that was set to sharp advantage against a speckled sky of blue and white. This was a prospect I had longed for.
We entered Nagar to the calls of more peacocks and koels. With our work done, I went into town for two reasons. The one to meet my old friend Nawaz Ali Khoso, the keeper of a hundred tales of the desert, and the second to see, once again, the bazaar with its pitched roofs.
I spotted Nawaz Ali in a teashop. As I came in saying aloud my salaam, I sensed that my friend’s eyes were not what they used to be. He looked unseeingly in my direction. I introduced myself and recognition brought a smile to his face. We embraced and as always his first question was about Nusrat Jamil of Lahore who Nawaz Ali had met more than a decade ago and remembered. Though I hadn’t seen Nussi for months, I trusted she would be in good health and said so to our common friend.
Then the stories flowed. This time he spoke of the twenty streams that wash the slopes of the Karonjhar Hills and whose water he has watched most of his 86 years of life go waste in the sands. Twenty, he repeated for emphasis, all of which he had seen in his years having walked the entire length and breadth of the Karonjhar. Dams, said Nawaz Ali, were the utmost imperative. Then there would be enough water to turn the entire Thar green.
Two years ago when we had last met, Nawaz Ali had said, “My papers are ready. Any time now my marching orders will come.” These were his exact words and he said them in the way of a man who had lived a satisfactory life. He had no regrets other than the fact that no one listened to his plea for dams in the Karonjhar. He instructed me to put it in the papers and I laughingly told him that even if I did, it would not be read. Who reads English in this country? I said. Least of all people who matter. But Nawaz Ali Khoso was serious. He held my hand and said I had to. I promised.
Every time I leave my old friend in Nagarparkar, I dread of hearing of his passing away. His word about his papers being ready always gave me a sense of foreboding. This time however the good man did not sound the knell. But as I left him, a sense of dark apprehension filled me up. Is this the last time I am seeing this teller of the most wonderful tales, a true keeper of the historical record of Nagar?
I had wanted to check out the main square of Nagarparkar town. Friends had told me some of the beautiful buildings with pitched tiled roofs had collapsed in the earthquake of some years ago. I am sorry to report that damage truly has been done. The teashop in the square was a double-storeyed building which has lost its top. A few other old buildings near the bottom end of the bazaar too were missing. Other than these, the bazaar still reminded me of houses I had seen in Tuscany years ago.
The trip rounded off well when we ran into a huge rainstorm outside Mithi. The ditches by the road had water; the dunes looked a darker shade of grey and the vegetation all the greener. This was time I should have been in Chelhar to check out the ponds as Khatau Mal had said. But the making of a living leaves little for leisure and we hurried back to Mirpur Khas.