When You Take Away Hope…

This desert story from India is almost surely apocryphal. I heard it a year ago, but it has stayed with me. I heard it from the venerable Aruna Roy when she was speaking at the Pushkar Literary festival, in Rajasthan. She's given up her life of comfort to live and work among the people in that part of the desert. She shared this story with the audience to illustrate the sustaining power of hope.
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In the western Thar desert in Rajasthan, life is hard. Many families face an acute shortage of food and water. One family of five occupied a small hut, among a cluster of similar huts. The father and mother were both itinerant migrant workers, and they barely earned enough to feed their three young children and themselves.

One summer, the drought was so severe that there was no work to be found in the village. So the couple made a tough decision – they decided to let the kids remain in their hut while they went to other villages in the desert to search for work. They knew that their neighbors would look after the kids until they came back.

Before setting out, the couple gathered the children. "You see this mud pot?" asked the dad. "It has laapsi. It is the only thing we have, but we can't have it now." Laapsi is a sweet wheat porridge dessert, and it is prized as a delicacy by those who reside in the desert. "I am going to dangle it from the hut's roof. When your mother and I come back, we will all feast on it."

Then the couple went away to look for work.

The three kids managed by themselves, with the neighbors helping out a little. Even if the neighbors wanted to, they couldn’t give much to these children because they didn't have much for their own family.

On some nights, the eldest brother would tell the other two, "We don’t have anything for dinner. We only have some water left. But look up there! When papa and maa come back, we can feast on that laapsi!"
"What does laapsi taste like?" his little sister asked.
"No dish tastes better than laapsi," her brother told her. "It will be so sweet and filling!" That night, the three kids sipped some water and went to sleep hungry.

This way, the kids managed to scrape by for several months.

Eventually, their parents returned. The kids were so happy in rushing to welcome them that they didn’t read their body language. They hadn't found any work. The parents had no strength left to do anything.

"Papa, let's have the laapsi now!"
"Kids, let's wait a few more days."
"No!" The kids were adamant.

So the father was forced to bring down the pot that had been hanging from the roof. Very reluctantly, he showed it to the kids. The pot was empty.

The laapsi that they had been dreaming about for months wasn’t there. Within a week, one by one, all three kids died.
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Sometimes, when I hear someone expressing false hope I have this urge to contradict them. But remember this story and hold my peace. When hope is the only crutch someone has left, we should pause before kicking it away.

Day Laborers in Jodhpur

I was out wandering in Jodhpur one morning. It was just past eight in the morning when I crossed Sanjin Gate and entered the old city. The big square there that was full of men, standing and waiting. There were no women only men waiting. It was easy to see that these were day laborers waiting for work, and I decided to stay and watch since I had time.

Seeing me standing there, one man came over.
“Where are you from?” he asked, making conversation. He spoke in a mix of Rajasthani and Hindi and I could only follow him partially. Another man, his hair tinged with orange due to henna, also walked over.
“You are not looking for laborers, are you?” he asked. Before I could respond, the first man said, “Maybe he too is looking for work!” and they both laughed good naturedly at the idea of me doing physical labor.

Spotting me talking to the two of them, some thought that I was looking to hire people. Many laborers rushed over. Suddenly, I was surrounded by over a dozen men, desperate for work. They hurled questions at me in Hindi, and it was a little scary.
“What kind of work do you have?”
“Tell. What is it that you want?”
“How many people do you need?”
No, I am a tourist and I am just watching, I explained. Most of the men lost interest and walked away.

Every few minutes, someone in a motorcycle would come up to the square. Men rushed towards these motorbike hirers. There would be a quick conference that lasted just a few seconds, and a few men would be selected and they’d start walking away from the square. The actual mechanics of the selection was never clear to me.

The man with the orange henna hair stayed with me. He was in his late twenties, wearing a short pant and a shirt, both of which were very dirty. He was walking around bare feet, no shoes or sandals when he worked.
“Is there work in Bombay?” he asked me. (I had told him that I had come from Mumbai.)
I told him that from what I knew, it was very difficult to get work there as well.

There were about 200 men in the square. “Will all of them get work?” I asked.
The man, surprised by my naivety looked up as if to see if I was joking. “Not even half of them will get work today.”
“What will the rest of them do?”
“They will go home. What else can they do?” It was a simple case of over-supply and thus a hirer's market. Those who hired the laborers got to pick and choose. Though I have never been a fan of labor unions, it occurred to me that a little bit of organization among the men would help them all.

I then asked the man what the daily pay was.
“200 rupees per day.”
“Has it been 200 for many years?” I was curious if laborers also got an inflation adjustment.
“No, it was increased recently. Five years ago, it was 150 Rupees. Then it became 180 and now it is 200. Sometimes, we can even get 250 a day. And this is for the common mazdoors. If you are a skilled worker, you can get 400 or more per day.”
“Is it for 8 hours of work?”
“Yes, 8 hours. We get tea at 11 o'clock, then 1 hour for lunch, a few minutes in the afternoon and work till 6pm. It is tough, but we are happy to get work.”
“Why don’t you look for regular employment? Maybe in a shop somewhere.”
“They won’t pay us well. If you don’t get at least 3000 a month, it is very difficult. Even if they pay 2800 a month, it is not enough. That’s why we look for daily work.”

“Is 200 rupees enough to get by?” I asked him a leading question.
In reply, he pointed towards a woman in a colorful dress was walking by with a big bundle of wood balanced on her head. “Even firewood costs five rupees a kilo. Just to get the stove going! And you know what the prices of dal and atta and vegetables are.”
He was silent for a few seconds. “Actually, 200 rupees can be quite enough," he said. "There are some men who are even able to save some money daily after all expenses.”

Gesturing towards the laborers in the square he said, “But most of the men here, they drink it away. Me, I have 4 children at home. So I give a little money to feed the children.” He then laughed. “The rest, I drink away.” He emphasized that by taking his thumb towards his mouth.

Daily Roti Guaranteed

Traveling in Rajasthan and looking at the sights, at the good roads, all the mobile phone shops and the unending mineral water stalls, it is difficult to believe that there is very much poverty in the state.

One afternoon, we were wandering around the small town of Kolayat with its lotus-filled lake ringed by temples in the scorching sun, when I saw a big yellow sign painted on a wall.

The sign on the wall was actually an advertisement for the government’s Rural Employment Guaranteed Act - NREGA. (Note: I have since heard a lot of drawbacks about the scheme, but this post is not about that.) For anyone who's willing to do physical work, the scheme guarantees a daily wage.

The yellow sign listed out in tables, the quanta of physical work that had to be performed each day, and the pay for that amount of work.

People were required to dig the earth and create ditches. Per day, each person was required to dig a ditch 10 ft by 5 ft by 1 ft deep. For this work, they would be paid a total of 100 Rs. ($2). 30% would be deducted as tax at the source. So each person ended up earning Rs 70 for the whole day.

Women laborers were expected to do the same amount of work and they were paid the same as men. When it came to hard physical labor, there was no gender discrimination.

For us, just staying in comfortable hotels and eating three meals a day with a little bit of sightseeing itself seemed very tiring. During the day, the dry desert heat was enervating. I couldn’t even imagine the hardship of digging a ditch in this heat. And for removing 50 cubic feet of hard packed earth, they got 100 Rupees. This translates to a rate of 2 Rupees (4 cents) for each cubic foot that they cleared.

And I had been naively wondering if poverty was still around in Rajasthan.

The Desert Train

In Rajasthan, we discovered that one very good way to view the desert was to take the morning train from Bikaner to Jaisalmer. From the comfort of our compartment seats, we were able to watch the train cut through the Thar desert. This is a relatively new line and was completed only a couple of years ago.

The train travels right along the desert shrubs and the sand. If you stare out long enough, you’ll see all the animals that you are likely to encounter in the desert – camels, dikdiks and all types of cattle.

There was just one drawback though. The blowing sand. No matter how much we tried, we couldn’t avoid the fine sand dust that got into our bags and clothes.

The Jaisalmer Express (Train 4704) at 7am from the Lalgarh station, which is a sister station to Bikaner. Perhaps due to a small bug in the railway reservations system, this train doesn’t show up when you search for trains departing Bikaner. You have to know enough to put in Lalgarh as the originating station, and I doubt that many try that.

Consequently, our train was practically empty. We had pretty much the whole compartment to ourselves, which is quite a luxury in a crowded country like India.

A Send Off in Bikaner

One night in Bikaner I noticed a procession. It was past 9 pm and we were traveling in an autorickshaw. At the head of the procession was one man in his sixties wearing a suit and a garland of marigold. Behind him were around 30-40 men and boys of all ages. A few feet behind the men walked the ladies. One lady in the lead was also wearing a garland of flowers. About two dozen other women and girls were walking along with her. It was a relatively quiet procession with no accompanying music.

“Where are these people going?” I asked our auto-driver.
“Haj, sir. That man and his wife are going to this year's Haj. The people of their community are going up to the railway station to send them off.”

The couple would go to Delhi by the night train, and then fly to Saudi from there. I was impressed that on a workday evening so many people had felt it important enough to walk along to the railway station because two of their community elders were off to Haj.

In a world where a lot of the romance has been squeezed out from travel, it was refreshing to see some people still celebrating a journey with such pride.

A Favorite Shirt

If you are the kind of person that gets attached to some of the small things you own (certain clothes or a particular pen, for example) you will understand this.

My wife pointed out that a few stitches were coming undone in my green striped Polo shirt, noticeable if one looked closely. Among my shirts, it was the one I liked the most. It had become a favorite and I took it with me on each and every trip. I knew what I had to do.

On the last day of this year’s Pushkar camel fair, I put the shirt in my daypack. In front of the Bramha temple, there were a number of people seeking alms. I hesitatingly took the shirt out the bag, because what they really wanted was money. But the elderly lady who took the shirt from me surprised me with her eagerness

Hopefully, the shirt will have a long second life.

Fauna in the Rajasthan desert

Being a city-raised guy, I only had stereotypical ideas of what animals there would be in the Rajasthan desert. Turned out that I was wrong about almost everything I had imagined.

First of all, there are no free ranging camels in the desert. They all seem to be spoken for and are now domesticated.

I also had no idea that there would be such an abundance of cattle (cows, buffalo, goats) everywhere we went. On a very tall sand dune, I once saw a cow seated perfectly still, looking down at us. It was surreal and looked like a PhotoShop image.

All over the desert, there are small deer that run fast. They looked like dik-dik. And I was surprised by the number of blue peacocks that were wandering about, mostly near where the humans live.

A town called Kheecan (near Falodi) has become a sanctuary for demoiselle cranes – birds that migrate down from Siberia and Central Asia to spend the winter months in Rajasthan.

Western Rajasthan Itinerary

Here’s our itinerary for the 3 weeks we spent in Western Rajasthan:

Mumbai – Mt Abu (the marble temples of Dilwara) – Ajmer – Pushkar Camel Fair (& Literary Fest) – Bikaner – Kolayat (Day trip from Bikaner) – Jaisalmer (+ 2 Day Desert safari) – Kheecan (Demoiselle cranes) – Jodhpur – Mumbai

If you have any travel questions about any of these places, just leave me a note.