Paanido barsade re

Main kad se khadi udiku

Mhara sookha hai talaab

Paanido barsade re

(Give us water, clouds

I’ve been waiting so long,

My ponds and rivers are dry

Give us water, clouds)

Jaisalmer in May is as close as you can get to hell’s fury while still alive. In the last week of the month, the temperature is 48°C and at 11 am, when I alight from the air-conditioned capsule of the railway compartment, the sun is so blindingly bright and the hot wind whips so painfully at my skin, that I have to stand still for a good minute while my brain wraps itself around this shocking contrast. The shade of the platform roof is merely a few metres away but even that short walk is a long lesson on how impossibly difficult living conditions are when a town is bordered by a desert. The week before my visit, television channels showed jawans of the Border Security Force roasting papads on the hot, desert sand. It’d made me guffaw. Now, feeling quite like that papad, humour evaporated rapidly.

For all this, Jaisalmer is not the hottest place in the country. That honour belongs to neighbouring Palodhi, which touched 51°C in May 2016. But Jaisalmer is a city whose obsession with the rain is even more special. It is the driest place in India. (Zanskar valley gets the distinction in some years, but even so, with 100 times Zanskar’s population, Jaisalmer’s dryness is a more lived agony.)

For more than a third of the year, like a desperate lover, Jaisalmer longs for an errant rain, uncertain about its temperament, yet pleading for a torturous, distant pleasure. The dry desert heat starts in March and builds up rapidly over the next few months. In May, the temperature touches 50°C. Everything is dried to a husk; sand creeps in and lodges in the cracks on your lips and under your eyelids; there is nowhere to hide and nothing to be done. The tourists have long fled and the cafes are closed. The lone musician sits under the shade of a verandah and sings for rain.

Towards the end of July, when it begins to feel like there would be no salvation at all, and perhaps this is the end of the world, the clouds finally roll in. Even so, it is for a short burst. The inappropriately termed monsoon “season” lasts a few weeks — technically, till September — but the rainfall is meagre. Towards the sand dunes of Sam, where tourists go on camel safaris, the combined rainfall of the season will not exceed two hours. Often it’s over before it even begins, a weak cloud that drips for 10 minutes, teasing the children who come out to play and hold their dry faces up to the cool spray.

In an average year, Jaisalmer gets 8.25 inches of rain. To compare, Mawsynram, the wettest place in India, gets 467 inches. Mumbai city gets 88 inches, Chennai gets about 55 inches and Kochi, about 118 inches.

Every three years or so, the rains skip the city altogether. And even though the ektaras play the Megh Malhar raga and optimistic desert peacocks dance in their iridescent glory, the clouds simply float by, leaving them woeful, in the whirl of angry sands.

Yet, the driest place in India is actually pretty wet. Water has always been a revered commodity in the desert. In the times of the Rajputana kingdom, some 600 years ago, marking sources of water was a primary function of governance. Limestone pillars, carved with various symbols, stood next to wells and ponds to guide walkers and wanderers towards them.

While the mythical river Saraswati is the source of most legends related to groundwater in the area, every large well comes with its own back story.

From the tiny roof of the Mirage hotel, where an air-cooler battles uselessly against the heat, the only view is of a pillar marking a water source and a large well now sealed shut. Legend has it that Arjuna and Krishna were travelling through the desert when Arjuna felt horribly thirsty. There was no sign of water anywhere. Krishna then used his Sudarshan chakra and made a well right there. Further, he predicted that one day this land would be ruled by one of Arjuna’s descendants. “Usually wells are made inside a fort. This fort is unique because here it was the other way around. The fort was made here because of this well. Rawal Jaiswal, who is a descendant of Arjuna’s clan, built his fort here and ruled the kingdom of Rajputana on the strength of the water source created by Krishna,” Basawal Dan, local historian and business owner, tells me.

Although there are no modern symbols of access to water, barring the occasional water tankers plying down the narrow roads, the veneration of this most indispensable element continues even now. About six years ago, Varun Singh, a long-time resident of the city, tells me, after a particularly good spell of rain the local municipal corporation had decided to supply water daily to homes in the city. This enraged its citizens. A large posse of them, led by the older members of the community, demonstrated outside the municipality office and demanded that the water supply be reduced to once every two days as before.

“It is important to not change the habits of people,” Singh says, “if people become used to getting water every day, they will become used to wasting more water every day”. The municipality quietly reverted to the pre-bumper monsoon system. In summer, even now, municipal water is available once in three or four days in some parts of the town. People store as much water as they possibly can, and then teach themselves to use just that much.

Further away from the sprawling fort that is the heart of Jaisalmer city, towards the desert, water is the central force around which all lives revolve. Here, under the leadership of a few good men, a new-found assertion of old beliefs has meant that despite the pitifully low level of rainfall, even the arid stretch can be converted into an oasis.

Jethu Singh Bhati is one of these water warriors. Under the aegis of the Thar Integrated Social Development Society, Bhati has been invoking indigenous methods to conserve water in the desert region for a couple of decades now. In the evening, I ride pillion on Bhati’s scooter to go see Khadero ki dani, a tiny hamlet 22 km from the city. Even though the sun’s ferocity has abated a little, the wind is a howling, whipping being which, at one point, blows Bhati’s cap right off his head; he stops the scooter while I go darting between trucks to fetch it. We turn off the main road near Damodra, and follow the odd tyre track to the village. A camel ride is the ideal way to reach Khadero ki dani, but we sputter on till the track disintegrates into cushiony sand and the scooter tyres whirr but fail to take us forward. I hop off, bag and camera hanging from my shoulder, and push the scooter, while Bhati awkwardly manoeuvres it with one foot, half-pedalling, half-pushing. It is only when the scooter topples over and Bhati jumps off that I notice he has only one leg. Somehow, after a seemingly long trudge, during which we push the scooter like an errant buffalo, a cluster of ramshackle homes appear in the distance.

About a hundred metres from the village are the wells that Bhati made. Called paar , these wells are simple water conserving systems employing the basics of physics. The shape of the land is such that it forms a natural catchment area for rainwater. This is kept garbage-free and simple tracks are made on the ground to channel the water. Gravity pulls the water into the small wells — holes on the ground, really — fortified by natural stone. “There are three types of water,” Bhati explains, “ palar paani , which is surface water; rajani paani , which is seepage water; and patali paani , which is groundwater. The system is built in such a way that it conserves all three. When the surface water is exhausted, the seepage water is tapped. And finally, by April or May, when the seepage water reserve is exhausted, the groundwater is tapped. This way the water table does not deplete and the villagers are not dependent on the government for water supply on most days.”

We walk past lush green berry trees to reach the paar , and despite the fact that sand dunes rise mere metres away from it, the slightly sunken stretch until there is almost verdant. Children are playing around the wells, all of them holding tiny glasses filled to the top with the sweet berries from the trees around. A green-plumed bee eater flies in for a few dips in the water and pea fowl amble around aimlessly. Camels appear atop the embankment and walk in for a drink of water. On both sides of the wells are stone troughs; even as the children demonstrate how they draw water from the well, they are careful not to spill any into the sand as they tilt the bucket into the troughs. These are for the birds and animals. Not a drop is wasted; even when they rinse out their glasses, six- and seven-year-olds run all the way back to the trough to throw the water in, rather than pour it on the ground.

Bhatti built two of the paars and then requested the local panchayat to add more. They agreed, and now with five paars and one deep well that dips into the groundwater, Khadero ki dani is mostly self-sufficient in its water needs. The villagers have to perform some basic maintenance activities, keeping the catchment area clean and de-silting the wells once in two or three years.

Every few minutes, women emerge from the village, balancing water pots on their heads and carrying small children on their hips. Maro, who has been living in the village for over 30 years and whose five children were born and raised here, is here with her sister-in-law and nephew. “Before the wells, we had to go about 20 km for water. My husband’s brother would go on camel to fetch water, which would last us for two days. Bringing water was a full-time job for one man in every family,” she says. Now she makes the short walk to the paar about thrice a day and fills up two or three pots. That takes care of the cooking, cleaning, bathing as well as feeding the livestock the family owns. The men are free to work — conventionally as goatherds and, more recently, as security guards in the windmill factories that have sprouted nearby. “In the drought years, when the wells dry up, we have to call for the tankers. We pay ₹1,500 per tanker and use the water for as long as possible, usually stretching for a month,” she says.

By 7.30 in the evening, the light has dulled to a golden orange and the small oasis seems like something from a dream. Camels gallop around, while crows get a free ride perched on their humps and heads. A peacock that was lazily strutting around suddenly embarks on a vigorous dance, plumes held mightily aloft, and the village children — free from worries of school and homework on their summer break — dart around chasing one another. Where some surface seepage has occurred, even the ground breaks away from the brown desert colour palette to a dark, mossy green. It is hard to believe that this is an arid zone. Bhatti rubs the stub of his leg and explains the phenomenon simply. “Nature is not a PDS (public distribution system),” he says, “we cannot say Kerala has so much water, we also want to use that much. We have to live with what we have. That is our tradition. And this is where tradition is important.”

Back in town, at night, the main bazaar is busy, filled with locals buying sweets and haggling over sari prices. In a corner, a lone, turbaned, mustachioed folk musician sings even though no one stops to listen. His name is Rashid Khan, he tells me. We talk about the heat, and the wait for the rain. I tell him about the full wells of Khadero ki dani.

“Water is important for the body,” he tells me before breaking into song, “but the soul, the soul needs rain.”

Aabhe maathe adangiyo

Samdariyo bhariye

Chod yiyal marwaad re

Halo re yiyal marwaad re

(The skies over Marwar are filled with clouds

A heavy rain is falling

The ponds are filling up fast

The animals can’t wait, they are hurrying towards Marwar)

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