All Things Considered

The hot brown sand stretches as far as one’s eyes can go, dotted only by a few desert cacti and thorny shrubs. The dunes further away shine in the heat-haze. In this forsaken land, only an occasional well or a tiny mud hut distinguishes one piece of land from the other. There is nothing to break the monotony of this dessicated vastness, except for a camel cart or the distant figure of a brightly-clad village woman usually heading to or back from a nearby well, performing the spectacular act of balancing the long column of heavy mud water pots on her head. It is still only March, but it is already scorching in the afternoons in this unfortunate arid land.

Summer ushered in early, they say: Even the demoiselle cranes have left a fortnight too early. The hot whirling wind from the desert blows continuously carrying fine sand. And when the wind is strong enough, one can even hear the sound of its circular breathing. Camels and humans alike have to break this eddy as they trudge forward.

To fancy a walk outside of a desert village in the afternoon ‘to check out desert life’ is as magnificent as a folly gets for the Bisleri-drinking bloody tourist! ;) It must have been about twenty minutes in the afternoon and even this simple action of walking around rhe small human settlements outside the village wears me down. I instinctively reach for the bottle of water and empty it out. But almost instantly, I feel better.

Water. Water is the key to survival in these lands. Something that these villages have very little of. Ratan, who comes from a nearby village where his parents continue to live until today, says there was hardly any water in his village when he was young. ‘Whenever there was , it was so murky that we had to strain it all day long in shade. And finally, the little water that was left was so salty that we had to add sugar to mask the taste’.

‘Ithna hi paani mein dhin ka pura kaam chalaathe the’. He cups his right hand to indicate the quantity – I stare in disbelief.

Likewise in Jaisalmer, a restaurant owner who had moved there about half a decade ago remembers his memorable childhood folly: Forgetting a bowl of water on the courtyard to the scorching summer sun, losing the water for the entire day to evaporation! Fortunately, now that his village has sufficient water to get by, he can laugh at the incident today.

Today, the scene isn’t as bad in Khuri. It has been much better off since the last decade,since the time desert safari scene picked up here: When the tourists started trickling in, with them came electricity. And consequently, a borewell that provides Khuri’s salt water today. All the rainwater is diverted into two wells that serve the village’s need for drinking water.

Most villages have electricity and have risen above the erstwhile state of despair for most part of the year, they tell me. But there are still small settlements outside villages for whom life is still a daily strife – A constant battle with the encroaching desert , raging elements and limited resources. Why then do they live outside the villages , I ask. Well you know , it is for these cattle – Living far out the cattle gets enough to eat (no depletion from over-grazing), which cuts the spending on cattle food significantly in summer months. A simple math on cattle maintenance is produced by Badal Singh, the man who runs the guest house I stay in: ‘Living within the village, during summer it costs 50 rupees to feed a cow. And I get 30 rupees worth of milk. A 20 rupees loss every single day during the summer months’. Fortunately for him, the guest house business brings him adequate money to see him through the year.

But even in villages like Khuri that are better-off, the visual indications of desert life are ubiquitous. Conservation and Recycling are the perennial buzzwords. The evening finds men twisting strands of waste cloth or camel fur into ropes to tie the goats with. Not fresh water, but it is usually the water that has been used a couple of times for cleaning that is given to the animals. The vessels are washed sparking clean ,not with water, but fine sand. Bajra, a crop that requires a mere 2-3 rainfalls to yield a good harvest, is their staple food. Curries and pickles alike are made out of the desert kher. People bathe in a quarter bucket of water standing on a huge big basin that collects the water from ablutions -and this collected water is then reused – Conservation has become a way of life. ‘But with sufficient rains in 2006 and 2007, these are good times’, I’m quickly reminded.

A village woman at Khuri

Almost all the food consumed, except probably for bajra and kher that is grown locally, arrives from the neighboring state of Gujarat. Fruits are a luxury and fresh vegetables non-existent. But,thanks to the tourism, there is enough buying power in the village. There is even some money to spare on education. Khuri has a government school, which is also plagued by the omnipresent problem of govt schools: Schools without teachers, atleast none at arrive before midday. But, it is a school nevertheless. There are two private schools too that offer better quality of education, but are these are only primary schools and students have to go to the government school for higher classes. But the free books from the state government scheme seems to have reached the students.

That day back at the guest house talking over evening tea, Badal Singh, a man who has never set foot in a school and has learnt all his English from visiting tourists, says: ‘My life is changing now. I have a lot of friends who first came here as travelers, who have become my good friends and well-wishers over the last 10 years’.

‘Without education, one is blind.’, he continues. ‘There was nobody to guide me. But atleast now I have people who can guide me on these matters’, he finishes in impeccable English !

And as we chat away in the front yard, Badal’s son, who was busy in the morning with science lessons, now sets out to take a few tourists to the usual evening sunset safari. Constantly juggling his time between school work and supplementing family income with a few camel safaris, it is a life of unquestioned contradictions.