I got a call in the middle of the week from a friend of mine. I thought it better to let it ring out and call back when I had less on my mind. I was, after all, living in the rough and tumble of Karachi.
He was from the small town of Nagarparkar, in the eastern district of Tharparkar, where tasks and responsibilities couldn’t possibly be so tiring. Us urban folk have a knack for such mindsets.
His name was Magan Rajiv. He eked out his living driving his kekra (a converted military vehicle from the World War II era that looks like a jeep) along the Pakistan-India border, shuttling tourists around the hidden sanctuaries that Tharparkar had to offer.
Magan had called me with his usual warmth and compassion, but there was an underlying sentiment of concern. The rains had well and truly ended, and tourists had stopped frequenting the town.
He had to run repairs on his kekra, and he didn’t have any money to spare. He was between a rock and a hard place.
This stung me hard, and left me with a sense of sadness for his situation.
We were from different walks of life, but had maintained our friendship against the odds. I had to help.
All photos are by the author, thumbnail by Manoj Kumar
I first met Magan in August, 2015. It was the Independence Day long weekend, and what better way to celebrate the birth of the nation, than to be at its border.
Over the eight-hour drive from Karachi, we saw the landscape change from apartment complexes and ring roads, to informal settlements of slums and shanty towns, and finally to the rich expanse of agricultural land.
There were crops such as wheat, rice, sugarcane and cotton, along with major horticulture crops such as mangoes, bananas, and chilies.
Being seasonal pursuits, some of these crops had been replaced by in-season plantations. As we moved further east from Karachi, these changes ebbed and flowed, till we reached District Tharparkar.
The landscape suddenly changed, with light brown grains of sand swirling in the air, as if to delineate a rite of passage. The land wasn’t all sand dunes though, as it is most of the year.
The famous Tharparkar rains had transformed the arid and desolate landscape, into a green and lush expanse of cacti, acacia and neem trees.
The land being extremely fertile, had soaked in the rains, and made itself ripe for grazing for the over 4.5 million strong livestock - donkeys, camels, goats, cows, sheep and mules - the main source of livelihood for Tharparkar’s population.
Peacocks could also be seen roaming the hilltops, their quest for sustenance aided greatly by the rains.
A shot of the Karoonjhar ranges, early afternoon.
We broke journey in Mithi, the capital of Tharparkar district, and a convenient location, for us to break bread and rest for the night, before the much-awaited trip to Nagarparkar the next morning.
As the crack of dawn hit, there was no call to prayer from the muezzin, but gongs from the temples. Pakistan has, sadly, over the years, pushed out its religious minorities through institutional and social bigotry.
Tharparkar, being a district with a large presence of Hindus, is the final frontier where vibrant narratives of acceptance and plurality are still found.
