Daura was written in one euphoric flow and was as much about nature and the consequences of destroying it, as it was about the myths and beauty of the desert of my dreams. After completing the story, I returned to it again, like a criminal is drawn to the scene of crime, for wasn’t completing the story also ending it?
I refused to accept that the story ended and continued to tinker with it, adding, deleting, over-writing, till my wise editor took the matter out of my hands and Daura was published in 2019. However, the story kept playing in my head whenever I paused to listen to it.
During the lockdown, I revisited it for the comfort of exploring a familiar place. This piece is a result of the revisiting. I wanted to see if there could be a possibility of healing and redemption after the destruction at the end of Daura, whether nature would heal itself and give off her bounty if we got out of the way.
An update on the disappearance of the District Collector of ____District of Rajasthan
As told by a local Nat woman to our special correspondent
Six years ago a young and charismatic IAS officer disappeared mysteriously from a government Dak Bangla. The incident had led to a media storm and speculations ranging from paranormal happenings to foul play. Recently rumours relating to the incident have resurfaced. Our special correspondent returns to the scene in search of answers and interviews one of the key witnesses.
To cut a tree in the desert is to kill a tribe, Saheb, every child here knows this. Only Sarkar seems to be ignorant of the fact. First, SP Saheb cut down the tree and then, when the canal ran dry, he became angry. Where is the water, where is the water, you are telling lies, he’d shout, as if his anger would cause the canal to fill again. If only he would have paused to think it would have become clear to him that only the desert is thirsty enough to swallow all that water and not leave a trace. But instead he had all our men folk rounded up and beaten.
Water is not stolen goods that beatings would make a thief confess and show its hiding place. We pleaded with him again and again – it is the desert that has taken away the boon of water, Saheb. When the tree was cut, our Dev had nowhere to live. An abodeless Dev becomes weak, everyone needs a place of their own to draw their power from, even Devs.
A weak Dev cannot compel the mighty desert to yield its treasure of water. But he wouldn’t believe us, he would just get angrier and angrier, curse and threaten us. Don’t tell me your foolish stories he would shout… He was like the ghost of old stories who asks questions and is angry if the answer is not to his liking.
Why would we tell stories Saheb? You can ask anyone in the desert and they will tell you the same. Didn’t the canal run dry and wasn’t there not a drop left to wet even a chidi’s gullet? The big sahebs themselves came from the big cities with machines that buzzed like swarms of camel-flies and saw with their own eyes that there was no water anywhere. What more proof do you need? Those who do not wish to see are worse than those who are blind, Saheb.
In the end SP Saheb left. He went back to the city. We hear that he was transferred and sent to a place so far away that it takes two days for a newspaper to reach him. That was our Dev’s doing. However weakened, he is still a Dev, a god. How could he let the man who destroyed his thaan, thrive?
Everything changed after the Dev lost his abode. The years of prosperity we had seen under him, disappeared like mirage. We had a drought the year the tree was cut. The year after, a storm came hurtling across the dhors just as the crops were ready for harvesting and laid them low. The year after that locust swarms arrived.
Everyone said that the Dev was angry and was punishing us for not protecting his thaan. But we didn’t believe it, we know that our Dev is a benevolent Dev and he would never punish us for the doings of the Sarkar. The hardships came because he had lost his power and couldn’t protect us from them.
Life became hard again and food scarce. The Sarkar wound up the canal works and the train that brought people and machines stopped running soon after. You can still see the rusting tracks if you walk a few rope-lengths towards the west. Dust comes sliding down the rails now whipped by the wind, and scorpions nest in the fine gravel.
Many people began leaving for the cities, even my own sister and her husband.
Her husband is a slave of Sarkar, a naukar, and when there was no work left here, the Sarkar sent him to the city. My sister went along with him though she didn’t want to. He is my man, my place is with him, she said. That angered me. I told her that if he were her man, his place was with her, here in the desert. But she did not listen.
He works for Sarkar, she said, he draws a salary, wears a uniform, sahebs from the district office ask him how he is, there is nothing here except hardships and now our Dev can no longer protect us. I kept quiet after that. If she, who was born in the desert, was suddenly afraid of hardships, there wasn’t anything left to say. Tell me, Saheb, aren’t there hardships in the city? Do people not go hungry there sometimes or fall ill and die?
Of course, I didn’t leave. Neither did my mother and several of our tribe. We are from the desert, like the sand and the hot winds. Where would we go? Also, someone needed to stay back and pray to our abodeless Dev. He needed our offerings and prayers all the more.
Where would we pray except at the old thaan of our Dev? The woodcutters had left a stump when they chopped the tree down and the contractor was to return with a machine to pull it out along with the roots but before that could happen, the canal ran dry and everyone was distracted. We prayed at the stump, at the Dev’s ravaged thaan.
No, no one stopped us. Once the big sahebs left, no one came to the dak bangla any more, not even the new Collector Saheb. After Kanamal Bheel left, the dak bangla lay deserted, half buried under the sand that the wind brought. Sarkar only wanted the dak bangla because we prayed there. When we stopped praying, Sarkar didn’t care about it either, just like a child who wrenches a toy from another only to throw it away a moment later.
Kanamal? He left mere weeks after the tree was cut. Wouldn’t stay at the dak bangla though the new Collector Saheb himself asked him to. I have to go, he said, my eyes have seen all the good and bad there is to see, it is time to rest them. He wouldn’t tell us where he was going. All he would say was that he was so old, the only place for him to go was back in time. In the end, we gave him some baatis and green chilies and onions to eat on the way and bade him farewell.
At the beginning we prayed after dark. We didn’t want the folk at the tehsil to get wind of it. But they heard about it nevertheless. You Nat-banjara are up to your old tricks again, the Naib said to us, you don’t learn your lesson. That evening we went to the thaan fearing that the Daroga would be there to chase us away. But the only person there was, was our old Tehsildar.
Yes, Saheb, the old Tehsildar was a changed man when he returned from the city after his treatment. He was no longer full of anger, nor did he speak like he was ready to thrust a sword into you. He had become so gentle that even a goat’s kid would boldly steal the roti on his platter and he wouldn’t utter a word.
We saw him for the first time that evening after his return. He came every evening after that and joined us in our prayers. He also spoke with the folk at the Tehsil office to not interfere with us. Though he was no longer the Tehsildar, the folk at the tehsil still give him maan and no one disturbed our prayers.
Why did he help us? Because the Sarangiya told him to. He told us himself. The Sarangiya came one night, he told us that evening, he stood at the threshold of my house and told me to go, pray to the Dev and all my fears will vanish.
For you the Sarangiya might be dead, Saheb, for us he is alive. He was the soul of music, a kalawant like him doesn’t die. But you better ask the Tehsildar about him. The Sarangiya plays his sarangi at the shrine every moon-lit night and the old Tehsildar stays up all night listening to him. In fact, the old Tehsildar spends all his time at the shine now. He is our Dev’s priest. When the tree stump sported new leaves for the first time two years ago, we built him a small mud-hut there, in the courtyard of the dak bangla.
Yes, this is the third year since the tree began sprouting leaves. Last year some people came from the city. There was a woman with them too. She came to our dhani and spoke to us. She said she knew our Collector Saheb. She asked about everything – how did Collector Saheb become our Dev, who is Sarangiya, what happened after the tree was cut?
She cried when we told her how the Dev had visited us in our dreams and asked us to look after the tree. She promised that she will go to the big kachahari and ask the biggest saheb there to ensure that no one harms the tree now. I don’t believe in city people’s promises but I believed her.
Why did I believe her? Because I knew she too loved our Dev, she loved him and knew what it is to suffer.
No, she didn’t tell me this but not everything needs to be told, no one tells the bird when the fruit ripens or the bee when the flower blooms and yet they know. And I was right to believe her. A farmaan has come from the kachahari that the tree is sacred and Sarkar must let us worship it.
Yes, Saheb, you have heard right. There’s water here again but it is guptjal, a secret source that nurtures our fields and has eased our hardships.
We can’t show you the guptjal even if we try. You won’t be able to see it because you don’t really wish to see it, you only wish to prove to others that it exists. You have to look inward first, Saheb, before you can see guptjal.
Of course you can believe that which you can’t see. Seeing is not the only test of truth. You can see a mirage every day in the desert and can’t see the black bucks at all, yet it is the mirage that is the illusion, not the black bucks. You have to believe first and then you’d be able to see. That’s the only way.