Are There Trees?

 

 

It was January 1987, when I made my first trip to Rajasthan with three of my friends. We started our journey from Howrah by Kalka Mail in 3-tier (now sleeper class). During that time journey by AC coach was not so popular. Moreover, it was also in the mindset of common people that journey by such a coach was meant for rich people only. It was also my first long journey by a beautiful train (of that time) like Kalka Mail. In all respect it was a very nice journey for us.

We were in Agra for two days, and thereafter went to Jaipur by bus enjoying almost a day long road journey. The purpose of my writing this small article is not to give any vivid description of our tour to Rajasthan or to say any thing about the beautiful palaces etc. spread over the whole state. Because, there is no dearth of good articles and books on different aspects of Rajasthan. Here I want to share my experience over an issue that made a deep imprint in my mind.

After visiting different tourist spots in Jaipur and Jodhpur we reached Jaisalmer in a beautiful morning, also after performing a train journey. We did not come booking any accommodation in any of our visited places, as advance booking for staying at a place of visit was a difficult task at that time. However we could secure our rooms in the popular RTDC hotel at Jasalmer without much difficulty. On the first day we visited the local places at the town including Sonar Kella, with delight and satisfaction.

Then, with much eagerness we started counting our hours for seeing sand dunes at Sam, about 45 km away from Jaisalmer. A prominent display in RTDC hotel, ‘SAM IS NOT THE SOME’ increased our curiosity further. As planned, we started for Sam the next day after lunch by a hired jeep, arranged by the hotel and reached the spot well before the sunset.

After reaching Sam we took two camels for moving onto the sun dunes, to acquaint ourselves with a real desert and watch the spectacular sunset there. On my part, instead of mounting a camel, I preferred to go on foot for about 1.5 km, upto the view point for sunset. I had two purpose, firstly to walk on sand and secondly to talk with a camelman about their life and livelihood.

I was not good in Hindi and his accent was also different. But we did not find much difficulty in communicating with each other. I could come to know from him that during winter he was used to come to Sam from a distant place regularly. He did not get customer daily. A camelman like him were required to pay half of their earnings to the middlemen. Normally they might complete only one such trip a day. To my understanding, the rate of a camel ride was also moderate even with regard to the price level of 1987. While we were walking the man also asked me from where I had been. When I told him the name of my place, he quickly placed another question, “Udhar ped milta hai (Are there trees)?”

His question made me bit perplexed. I gave him an affirmative response and tried to describe how a city like Calcutta looked. Other than the idea of the tree, he could not understand anything about a city. He could not visualize a building, a street, a river, a railway station – nothing. He had never seen anything like a city, he was not aware even of any movie show or the like, that might help him develop some knowledge about a city-life. 

Finally, I asked him whether he had ever visited Jaisalmer and his reply was ‘no’! So, my all efforts to make him understand what did a city mean turned totally fruitless. The above tale may appear to be a fruit of my fancy imagination, but it was a fact and cent percent true.

My friends thought my decision to keep walking on sands just to for some talk with a camel man as strange, but I had the thirst to know something from a true desert man. The inability of the camelman to visualize a city aroused a question in my mind as to why he failed to do so! In course of time, on thinking over the issue I have come to the conclusion that our knowledge becomes a limiting factor to our power of imagination. The life and livelihood of the man was only confined to sand dunes, thorny plants, camels, Sam, and his own folk. A deaf and dumb person can not imagine the melody of a flute, a blind man can not visualize the beauty of sunset. With the same analogy it occurred to me that the camelman with his life restricted to limited parameters, could not visualize a city.

After our Jaisalmer trip we came back to Calcutta within a couple of days after visiting Udaipur, Mt. Abu and Ahmedabad during our return journey.

I visited Jaisalmer again in January 2007 with my children. But Sam did not appear attractive to me as before. The place became more crowded with enough dust and sound pollution. The bright golden appearance of the sand dunes found to be dark with dust like less splendid grains of sands. Because of the widespread use mobile phones, digital cameras and prevalence video halls, I did not think of finding any person having no idea of a city. The sight of scattered plastics and empty water/wine bottles littered here and there made me sad.

I returned to Jaisalmer in the evening with a heavy heart. Sam, that survived in me as a prized place of visit  vanished all of a sudden! I decided not to visit that tourist destination again.

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