A COUPLE of months ago, a few kilometres from the Pakistan-India border in Nagarparkar taluka in Sindh’s arid Tharparkar region, seen from the sand-track between the villages of Oan and Mao, came the sight of a solitary man under a tree next to the granite-filled hills.
A team of volunteers returning from the launch ceremony of a new water resource construction project in the nearby village Ramji-jo-wandio alighted to meet Misri, a gentleman from the Hindu Kohli caste, a resident of village Kheepoda. About four years ago his beloved wife Bhaiyan passed away, leaving him alone and desolate despite their seven children comprising four boys and three girls.
So deep was Misri’s love for Bhaiyan and so lonely has he felt since her demise that he decided to sit by her side forever. She was cremated at a spot a few feet away from where his charpoy is now placed. Her ashes were buried in the ground over which a white deri, a small conventional structure measuring about eight feet in height, was constructed as a monument to her life and to their love.
Of the 10 acres of arid land on which he now sits, he has marked off five acres in Bhaiyan’s memory to be used only for grazing animals whenever rain causes grass to grow.
Now aged over 70, Misri recalls that he saw Bhaiyan of village Adhigaon for the first time only on the night of their wedding about 50 years ago. He was about 20 years. She was about 15. He gave her silver jewellery worth about Rs7,000. She gave him devotion and affection, looking after all his needs. Not once does he recall a quarrel between them nor her ever being stern with the children. She exuded so much love that it sustains and binds him to her even after her body has departed. “I may meet her in my next lifetime,” he says.
While he readily answers our questions, there is also a distinct sense of privacy and dignity in his manner even as he stays out there in the open, visible to all, yet protecting some part of his life with Bhaiyan from the scrutiny of passing strangers.
After the last rites, when the time came to host meals for visiting mourners he sold the wedding jewellery he had given her in order to meet the cost of hospitality. But their remarkable bond remains the real jewel: azure and pure, come high hot noon or dark cool desert night, it is always aglitter, an imperishable source of love that truly lightens the harshness of the drought.
A COUPLE of months ago, a few kilometres from the Pakistan-India border in Nagarparkar taluka in Sindh’s arid Tharparkar region, seen from the sand-track between the villages of Oan and Mao, came the sight of a solitary man under a tree next to the granite-filled hills.
