Imagine surviving in a wilderness that is on the tip of a salty wetland in monsoons and a blazing hot rocky desert for most part of the year!
Amidst all the rapid construction activity, in converting the road that links the Kandla port with Ahemdabad into a four-lane highway, masquerading as the pompous symbol of the post earthquake reconstruction and the campaign of ‘Vibrant Gujarat’, titanic trailers, trucks and lorries, passenger buses – bucolic state transport buses and the sleazy lit sleeper coaches and private vehicles make a brisk traffic along the NH 8 as it passes through undulating rocky terrains with numerous diversions. 1500 crore rupees already spent for the development of Kutch and another 2500 crore in pipeline…reads a financial daily.
In the Rapar taluka, narrow metal roads or gravel tracks branch off from the NH 8 into the awesome stillness of the wilderness… to the vands (hamlets) of Kolis.
This rocky desert with its skyline broken by ranges of hills is interspersed with isolated hills and mounds, the guardian spirits of land. Numerous crevices, small and big, serve as deeply cut streams and rivers that are bone dry at every time of the year except during the rains. Rainfall is scanty (less than eight inches a year), highly localized and droughts are not uncommon. Over the years these tracts have been rapidly colonized by bawar (Prosopis juliflora) whose bushes seem to have spread its tentacles everywhere you look around. Near the more tamed agricultural lands the soothing jaal trees and the robust Thors (cactus) trees break the monotony of the bawar. The vands of the Kolis dot the boundaries of the little Rann of Kutch in the vagad region in south east Kutch bordering Sind and Rajasthan.
The sun and wind battered faces of the Koli men and women tell a tale of bravery and perseverance, of survival amidst hardships, acute water scarcities and food crisis. Eighty years old Jhuma ben from Chaksari vand remembering the hardships during the drought of V.S. 1996 tells how they had to survive on whatever husk and stubble got collected by wriggling and rolling in their fields. She rattles off the names of places in Sind where they used to migrate for doing work. We used to cut grass from the bajario doongar near Gagodar and exchange it for grains in the market and this had to be used for three four days and we used to eat only once a day, tells Navi bai from Bhurani vand. We used to get empty sesame pods from the oil presser and used to dip them in water and pass our time tells another Koli woman.
Located far away from the main villages, the Kolis have long survived in cooperation with the ‘wild’ habitats. They have mastered the techniques of utilizing the scarce and sudden spates of water, when the water gushes down with enormous velocity carrying off the top soil, denuding the surface before falling into the salty marsh of the Rann. They have ceaselessly worked on the most barren lands, cleared the rocky surfaces and converted them into soil laden agricultural fields. And they are deft at making Kolsa (coal from burning wood) from bawar bushes. Planted in the 1950s and 1960s to check salinity ingression the bawar bushes have spread in the last thirty forty years. Since then making Kolsa, done for almost eight months barring the summer season from April to July, has been the most common livelihood practice among the Kolis.
After the macabre Bhuj earthquake in 2001, the Kolis have their own saga of post earthquake reconstruction to tell. In contrast to the glittering displays of capital investments in the reconstruction of Kutch, theirs are tales of pure physical labour, ingenuity, cooperation, ceaseless efforts, qualities they have inherited from their pioneering elders. They have made ponds, waste weirs, different kinds of check dams, cut out trenches and sunk open wells to tap water to meet their drinking water needs as well doing some irrigated farming over small strips of farm land.
Mansinghbhai and Savitaben from Chakasari vand near Kidiyanaagr in Rapar pointing towards the regal mound that presides over the settlement narrate the tales of their brave ancestor who ventured out alone, around hundred and fifty years back, to make the jungle around the mound habitable. Today they are a compact settlement of twenty houses. Together they have made three ponds over the last four years. And that has eased off the drinking water crisis to a great extent. In fact last year everybody had got water to even irrigate small portions of their farms. Bhuranivand, located 4 km east off the NH 8 at Adesar assumed the character of a settlement of twenty houses only in the years after the earthquake. Earlier all of them had a nomadic existence, scattered as they were in and around the little rann. Drinking water had been a crisis. Water had to be got from Adesar at Rs 300 for a 600 litres tanker that used to last for five to seven days with water mostly used for drinking. NGOs have helped them construct houses as well a pond that has solved their drinking water problem for at least eight months in a year. Mohan bhai at the Java Vand proudly shows the embankment they have built to catch water in a saucer shaped pond that provides water them as well as the livestock that come to graze and even droves of wild ass from the protected Sanctuary the coveted possession of the unique ecology of the little Rann of Kutch.
Amidst all the rapid construction activity, in converting the road that links the Kandla port with Ahemdabad into a four-lane highway, masquerading as the pompous symbol of the post earthquake reconstruction and the campaign of ‘Vibrant Gujarat’, titanic trailers, trucks and lorries, passenger buses – bucolic state transport buses and the sleazy lit sleeper coaches and private vehicles make a brisk traffic along the NH 8 as it passes through undulating rocky terrains with numerous diversions. 1500 crore rupees already spent for the development of Kutch and another 2500 crore in pipeline…reads a financial daily.
In the Rapar taluka, narrow metal roads or gravel tracks branch off from the NH 8 into the awesome stillness of the wilderness… to the vands (hamlets) of Kolis.
This rocky desert with its skyline broken by ranges of hills is interspersed with isolated hills and mounds, the guardian spirits of land. Numerous crevices, small and big, serve as deeply cut streams and rivers that are bone dry at every time of the year except during the rains. Rainfall is scanty (less than eight inches a year), highly localized and droughts are not uncommon. Over the years these tracts have been rapidly colonized by bawar (Prosopis juliflora) whose bushes seem to have spread its tentacles everywhere you look around. Near the more tamed agricultural lands the soothing jaal trees and the robust Thors (cactus) trees break the monotony of the bawar. The vands of the Kolis dot the boundaries of the little Rann of Kutch in the vagad region in south east Kutch bordering Sind and Rajasthan.
The sun and wind battered faces of the Koli men and women tell a tale of bravery and perseverance, of survival amidst hardships, acute water scarcities and food crisis. Eighty years old Jhuma ben from Chaksari vand remembering the hardships during the drought of V.S. 1996 tells how they had to survive on whatever husk and stubble got collected by wriggling and rolling in their fields. She rattles off the names of places in Sind where they used to migrate for doing work. We used to cut grass from the bajario doongar near Gagodar and exchange it for grains in the market and this had to be used for three four days and we used to eat only once a day, tells Navi bai from Bhurani vand. We used to get empty sesame pods from the oil presser and used to dip them in water and pass our time tells another Koli woman.
Located far away from the main villages, the Kolis have long survived in cooperation with the ‘wild’ habitats. They have mastered the techniques of utilizing the scarce and sudden spates of water, when the water gushes down with enormous velocity carrying off the top soil, denuding the surface before falling into the salty marsh of the Rann. They have ceaselessly worked on the most barren lands, cleared the rocky surfaces and converted them into soil laden agricultural fields. And they are deft at making Kolsa (coal from burning wood) from bawar bushes. Planted in the 1950s and 1960s to check salinity ingression the bawar bushes have spread in the last thirty forty years. Since then making Kolsa, done for almost eight months barring the summer season from April to July, has been the most common livelihood practice among the Kolis.
After the macabre Bhuj earthquake in 2001, the Kolis have their own saga of post earthquake reconstruction to tell. In contrast to the glittering displays of capital investments in the reconstruction of Kutch, theirs are tales of pure physical labour, ingenuity, cooperation, ceaseless efforts, qualities they have inherited from their pioneering elders. They have made ponds, waste weirs, different kinds of check dams, cut out trenches and sunk open wells to tap water to meet their drinking water needs as well doing some irrigated farming over small strips of farm land.
Mansinghbhai and Savitaben from Chakasari vand near Kidiyanaagr in Rapar pointing towards the regal mound that presides over the settlement narrate the tales of their brave ancestor who ventured out alone, around hundred and fifty years back, to make the jungle around the mound habitable. Today they are a compact settlement of twenty houses. Together they have made three ponds over the last four years. And that has eased off the drinking water crisis to a great extent. In fact last year everybody had got water to even irrigate small portions of their farms. Bhuranivand, located 4 km east off the NH 8 at Adesar assumed the character of a settlement of twenty houses only in the years after the earthquake. Earlier all of them had a nomadic existence, scattered as they were in and around the little rann. Drinking water had been a crisis. Water had to be got from Adesar at Rs 300 for a 600 litres tanker that used to last for five to seven days with water mostly used for drinking. NGOs have helped them construct houses as well a pond that has solved their drinking water problem for at least eight months in a year. Mohan bhai at the Java Vand proudly shows the embankment they have built to catch water in a saucer shaped pond that provides water them as well as the livestock that come to graze and even droves of wild ass from the protected Sanctuary the coveted possession of the unique ecology of the little Rann of Kutch.
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