Edible Shoots

It first rained on Rann of Kutch, the drought-stricken salt desert, on the day Fathima entered the village . Everyone still remembered that day and the girl who had brought rainclouds along into that Monsoon-forgotten hamlet. I recall the images I conjured up while reading The Love Across the Salt Desert by Keki N Daruwalla. No one dared to do the impossible by crossing the desert except those few who did so for “reasons of their own”. Nawab Hussain, for instance, made the journey for “the daughter of the spice seller; she who smelled of cloves and cinnamon”. Ever since reading that story I have romanticized the desert. Here I am now in a distant relative of the Rann of Kutch: Rubu’al Khali, commonly known as the Empty Quarter, a territory shared by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and  Yemen.          The silence, the clarity, the mystery, the remoteness, the vastness, the serenity, the eternity and the capricious nature of a wild, other-worldly desert! Rubu’al Khali, 650,000

"Now, I may look like an eyesore to many youngsters. But not so long ago, I stood tall, keeping an eye on the crop that sustained your grandparents. My presence marked the existence of a seemingly sleepy hamlet in every valley in the vast stretch of apparently barren land. I was all alone all the time, keeping guard. Kasaba, that was the name they called the cylindrical tower made of mud, wood and rock flakes that was me. "Kasabas were built in the same fashion as any adobe building where the people went once their guard was down.  A tubular structure that withstood the perils of the seasons, even though it was simply made of wooden logs, twigs, mud, and rock flakes. I have puzzled over how I survived the sandstorms, rainstorms and even hailstorms that were common before you all were born over here. "People used to mount the kasaba to stay watchful of the crops they were raising. By every growing field, every tribe used to have one or two, depending on the