All Things Considered

About 5-6 kms from the Khuri village, the sun goes down without much ado behind the warm dunes in this stark expanse, making way for the first crescent of the moon. The dark sky is still a mix of grey and blue, and there is enough light to still see those handful of tiny birds that have been hopping around for sometime now. One of those tiny ones, called the Horizon Headed Bird (In all my zero years of bird-watching I’ve learnt that all bird names need to be atleast three words long), rests shortly on the collected firewood and then does what it is expected to do – heads to the horizon.

Ratan and Bikram , the camel drivers-cum-cooks, light some firewood and set a place to make dinner. By the light of the firewood I can see the solitary camel limp around in the background and I can hear the rustle of desert shrubs when it picks off a few leaves with its strong teeth. Once the sun goes down, the dunes cool down instantly, almost by magic. I move closer to the cooking fire for some warmth and watch Ratan and Bikram conjure a wonderful dinner out of almost nothing without me having to lift as much as a finger. As we settle down to have food, Ratan patiently handles my volley of questions on desert life – how was life a decade ago when there was no electricity, how do you get by a drought, how much does a kilo of bajra cost, for long can the well feed the villages when the rains fail, how long do sand storms last , yada-yada-yada.

An hour later, Bikram spreads a sheet on the sand and tell me that my bed is ready. A few years ago I was in Switzerland during summer, where I spent a few nights in a barn. Those hay stacks had been the softest bed that I’d ever slept on until that time. But this silky desert sand beats it all. As I lie down, the bed of sand quickly takes the shape of my body, putting me at comfort and  Kurl-on to shame , simultaneously.

As the night progresses, the activity around is settling down. Ratan has gone to his bed and Bikram to his bidi. The infant moon has set too, leaving a star-bright sky behind. The Hunter has occupied his usual prominent place on the night sky. The camels have stopped snorting. The wind has busied itself in its super-important exercise: Transporting fine sand from one dune and depositing it on another a little farther away. It blows a chilly sandblast on the face of everything that is on it’s way, especially on those who question the purpose of its activity. Except for the crackle from the dying embers, you could have heard a pin drop. I have nothing worthy to add to this serenely still setting. May be I should go to sleep too.

**

I awake to the tinkles from the bells of the grazing camel. It must be well past midnight , for right above on my head in the sky is Bootes - flanked by Leo Major and the unmistakable crown of Corona Borealis. The long tail of Hydra snakes and bends past Crater & Corvus and leads my eye to the head of Scorpio (whose own long tail winds and twists crookedly, before disappearing into the south horizon ). I hug myself hard as I realize it was not those gentle clinks that woke me, it is the cold. I tug at the rucksack to pull out my jacket and the star dial falls out. It is a sign. Or perhaps not. But it is hard not to be enamored by the cloudless star-studded desert sky. My night is packed.

I’ll never know what ensued the next couple of hours was a dream or was for real. I drifted between the shifting sands and the scintillating sky watching the stars move in a procession across the surreal sky. Against the crystal clear dark background, the stars take on an unreal brightness. So bright that they felt perilously close. So close that I could have practically touched them.

In this mesmerizing drama of shooting stars and shining planets, the names of constellations and stars soon start to lose their relevance. All that seemed to matter was that there were those twinkling dream-like galactic diamonds and there was me, until there were just those diamonds…

A solitary camel at the dunes. Thar Desert, Rajasthan