Moving in Sand and Time : January 2014

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Sufiyana Qalam, Rohi Rang

sufiyana qalam gayaki continues to live in the interiors of Thar where ordinary desert denizens keep it alive

in tribute to two great ustads of sufiyana qalam gayaki in Pugal, Bikaner, Rajasthan

Mir-i-Aalam Ustad Allah Basaye Khan, Pugal, Bikaner

Maulvi Nathu Khan Sahib, Pugal, Bikaner

“Know that hearts and consciences are treasuries of secrets and mines of jewels. Wrapped within them lie their jewels just as fire is enveloped in iron and stone, like water is concealed under dust and loam. There is no way of extracting such hidden things save by the flint and steel of audition to poetry and music (Sama), and there is no entrance to the heart except by the ante chamber of the ears. So musical tones,measured and pleasing, bring forth what is in it and make evident its beauties and defects.”

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali,The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din) (d. 1111 CE)

Read More About the Mesmerizing Mir Singers
Festival of Arts, The IIC, Delhi Experience 2006

Gerbils: the compulsive diggers

Gerbils, also called sand rats, are rodent-like creatures of the desert. Most desert animals evade the stifling heat by leading a nocturnal life. Gerbils though, thanks to their unique adaptations, are happily diurnal. They are truly compulsive diggers, ready to burrow at a moment’s notice. Existing in large groups, gerbils collaborate to create, modify and actively maintain their living spaces in response to ever changing winds.

Surviving in the heart of the Thar, assiduously digging, ever searching, and ceaselessly communicating, the gerbils are the inspirations for this blog.

The attempt here is to understand the multiple intersections and contestations of culture, meaning ensemble of practices and ways of life of communities, with the discourse and practices of ‘modern development’. In particular the effort is to understand the travails, tribulations of lower levels of society that mostly remain either invisible or are assumed as mute variables to be acted upon and transformed through the dominant discourse of ‘modern development’. Here it needs to be mentioned that the rustic yet life reinvigorating celebrations of these marginal communities are sought to be understood and experienced. The threads of posts that weave together this tapestry of blog seek to understand and narrate experiences of marginal communities in their effort to negotiate their lives in the ever expanding enterprise of modern development in Thar.

These excavations into collective memory of history and everyday lived consciousness seek to resurrect subaltern and rustic experiences buried underneath the dusty layers of Thar, layers that contain within them the prodigal mass of longue duree history of the Thar. It is an effort to make sense of contemporary times marked by rapid escalation of assertions and claims of development by state and private, corporate and non- profit entities.

The boundaries between rural and urban life are increasingly getting blurred. This is evident in the changes that are coming in the morphology of human settlements. Rural urban continuum is ever expanding its boundaries, its gushing hold taking more and more of life under its sway.

New inter-dependencies are being created and age old inter-relationships between town and countryside are waning away and getting reconfigured like possibly never before.

These contemporary changes in Thar have much in common with similar processes in other fragile ecological regions. Gerbils of Thar occasionally get an opportunity to communicate about these bio cultural traditions undergoing such transformations.

In such an dynamic context impregnated with numerous possibilities, the blog strives to collect, reflect and communicate issues relating to well- being of fragile ecology of Thar, improvement in quality of life and livelihoods of communities especially those at the margins. In doing so the effort is to generate a dialogue regarding the importance of their cultural traditions of survival, regeneration and deep veneration of nature.

This blog is intended as a medium for silent meditation, like a mole burrowing deeply, never wanting to abandon its subterranean tunnels, attempting an empathy to surface phenomena.

Resurrecting experiences of change is about deciphering of multiple and intertwined relations between man and biosphere in Thar.

Contact for further communication:

to.rahulghai@gmail.com