The Bull and the Boulder

Salman Rashid started this story at Musa’s rock with the hole and the roof

Through the night the gusting wind kept at it. At sometime after five the sun broke through the shackling layers of gray haze and appeared as a pale yellow disc levitating just above the horizon. It was time to take the short walk to the crest of the ridge of Bail Pathar.

 

I am no mountaineer and though I’ve been in some high places, I have never actually climbed a real peak. But one thing I know: even insignificant peaks, simply by their very nature of being peaks and therefore higher than the surrounding ground, offer something more than just great views. It was here where long before the dawn of history primitive man placed his gods. Peaks were sacred. Whether it be the puny Miranjani near Nathiagali; or the 4800 metre Deo nau Thuk (Peak of the Jinn) on Deosai; or Musa ka Musallah in Kaghan; or Ilam in Swat; or Kutte ji Qabar (The Dog’s Grave) in the Khirthar Mountains; or Takht e Suleman, they, one and all, were revered places. Those were places for man to approach in worshipful and reverent state of mind, perhaps with an offering or two for whatever gods man believed in.

These gods were created not as man regarded the peak from the base. They were created only after our ancestors were driven up by that curiosity that made them human as distinct from the other primates. Upon the mountain, at the apex of human endurance, the excitement of the panorama those primitive eyes beheld was paled by the heightened consciousness of man’s own place in the great scheme of things. This realisation then as now is not of grandeur and supremacy, but of inconsequence and paltriness – man’s real station in the grand scheme of things. This is the light that removes the last swagger from lowly humans. On some hilltops (Tilla Jogian near Jhelum, for example) this awareness is higher than on others. And so it was that high places the world over became the seats of gods.

If this is the marvel insignificant peaks such as I have named can work, surely the highest places on earth would do the same many times over. Alpine and mountaineering clubs should therefore bear the motto, ‘Discover thyself.’ And if you ask me, that is the reason women and men have climbed whatever mountain is available – not ‘because it is there.’

Immediately below us to the east right where our camp was spread out was Sahib Talab – the Sahib’s Pond, glinting in the dull light of the hazy morning. Far beyond that was a blue-gray ridge and then the plains. On clear nights the lights of Dera Ghazi Khan and Taunsa, and on clear days the silver ribbon of the Sidhu River could be seen, we were told. To the west a wide valley, scoured by four dry streams, spread at the foot of our mountain. Beyond, rose a khaki ridge and on its other side Balochistan was spread out all but unseen in the dust haze. To the north were more hills and to the south a round knoll, the highest part of the Bail Pathar ridge, blocked further view.

Risaldar Yaqoob Shah of the huge pot-belly, the trencherman of this journey, had earlier told us the story of the bull and the boulder: once upon a time a Baloch came up this mountain with his bull. Tying the animal to a boulder, he went about some business and when he returned he found the animal dead. Since that day the boulder was considered possessed and if anyone tied their animals to it the animals died. End of story.

As stories go this one was the most banal and unimaginative, even rather stupid. Neither is a boulder called pathar in Balochi, nor a bull a bal. Furthermore the first part of the name is clearly pronounced ‘Bail’ and not ‘Bal,’ consequently the story could not be true. The origin of the name is lost in the mist of time and in the tradition of all self-styled thinkers who invent heroes (sometimes events) to match place names (Kamalia and Qabula are two pertinent examples in Punjab), some moron thought up this yarn. I hotly debated the point until Yaqoob Shah lamely said since ‘bail’ in Urdu was an ivy or creeper, it might be that there was a stone on this hill that was carved with such a form. The poor man got no respite and this notion was shot to pieces very quickly. How could it be, it was asked, that a whole mountain was named after some rock or the other and no one even knew where the rock was?

But back on the top of the ridge Rehmat Khan had arranged tea for us. We sat in the blustering wind and drank the sweet brew as he told us of the angrez woman. It was about thirty years ago that a white woman was found wandering about near a village at the eastern foot of the mountain. The man who first found her, being a true Baloch, asked her to wait in an otaq (guest room) and went off to fetch someone who could understand her language. When he returned the woman was gone. Disappeared. Therefore, it was swiftly deduced, she was a spy. Moreover, the woman had shown the man a map with the Bail Pathar school marked on it. The school with its roster of one teacher and ten pupils on a map! That was sufficient for anyone who doubted her being a spy to now be fully convinced.

The following day, the woman turned up in Rehmat Khan’s village on the west side of Bail Pathar. She must have been one hell of a walker to have gone up and down the desiccated hill without succumbing to dehydration. Word, travelling by the Baloch tradition of hal-ahwal, had already arrived and folks were about waiting for her. She was quickly bundled off to the authorities at Dera Ghazi Khan. Raheal suspected she might have been the good Dr Ruth Pfau, guardian angel for lepers in Pakistan, hunting for unreachable lepers, but Rehmat Khan put on a saturnine countenance, lips down-turned, and nodding gravely said, ‘ No question. She was a spy.’

One wonder, though, what some crazy white woman should be spying for in the parched wastes of west Punjab hill country. But more than that one wonders what the building that everybody thought was a school was actually being used for to have been so prominently marked on the spy’s map. Now that was something either straight out of an unlettered man’s mind or very, very mysterious indeed and worthy of the files of our intellgence agencies.

The story of Sahib Talab, on the other hand, was cannier. Howard, a Deputy Commissioner of the early 1940s, once visited this mountain. He found it dry and barren, perhaps because of a drought, and local shepherds greatly distressed. The good man ordered the pond to be excavated that has ever since been called the Sahib’s Pond. In the worst years of the drought that now seems to be coming to an end, the pond had run dry only a couple of times. But the nearly continual rains since December have filled it up besides generally greening the region.

We returned to camp in time for breakfast. Over the meal we discovered that Rehmat Khan was not permitting departure without lunch. That would mean travelling during the hottest part of the day and, worse, another roast lamb. But no amount of pleading worked. We resigned, asked him to have the blue and orange canopy put up again and sat back under its shade.

The Inspection Book was produced and Raheal showed me a past entry. Dated the last day of June 2001, it recorded Raheal’s first visit to Bail Pathar in the capacity of Political Agent. He is a strange person, this Raheal. I know for a fact that as Political Agent he was the first one since 1947 to visit some places in his jurisdiction in the tribal outback of Dera Ghazi Khan. Having travelled with him before I have seen Inspection Books inscribed by officers of the Raj in 1947 and then by Raheal. In the intervening half a century no Pakistani official had deemed it fit to visit those areas!

The point of interest in the notation from June 2001 was that having enjoyed his trip to Bail Pathar, Raheal had ended his note saying he would like to return to the mountain with me. His wish, he said, had come true. The visit back then was work for Raheal had cases to dispose of. This time around it was just something we had to do together. Meanwhile, word had got around that Raheal was visiting the mountain and soon a delegation of liberally turbaned Baloch elders arrived with their entourages. These latter were perambulatory arsenals and could have started a small war on Bail Pathar. Solemnly the elders sat cross-legged and presented their petitions to the sahib.

Having come with supplies Raheal, a trained medical doctor, had turned his earlier visit into a medical camp. Scores of women turned up to be treated for night-blindness He had distributed the necessary vitamins and we now learned that nearly all his patients were cured. As a result women unable to attend that first camp were asking for treatment and Raheal promised to return with medical supplies. Men travel to cities and get their requirement of a varied diet. But women, the lower order of humanity in a tribal setting, eating only the leavings of their men, unacquainted with fruit and vegetables in a harsh land that produces nothing but some cereal, are seriously malnourished. Raheal had only discovered the tip of the iceberg. The sloth-afflicted officials of the Department of Health unwilling to undertake such hard journey find it easier filling in registers in the comfort of their offices while the poor and the unknown of Jinnah’s Pakistan living on the edge of the Middle Ages continue to suffer in silence.

Midmorning was lunch time on Bail Pathar and I hoped I was seeing the last roast lamb for several years. Rehmat Khan said it was impolite to turn down a Baloch’s hospitality and that men so spurned are known to have forsworn their wives if the guest did not relent and accept the proffered hospitality. The word is zan talaq and it is used as a sort of a binding not only upon the one who utters it to do or not do something, but also upon the corrival to acquiesce. That was something like the boys’ rhyme of the Lahore of the 1950s that made all those ‘son of a pig’ if they didn’t take up whatever challenge was thrown. For my part, in order to forestall the hazard of more roast lamb I loudly declared, for all to hear, that I would stand divorced from my wife if Rehmat Khan and his people fed us one more time.

This took everyone by surprise. Such a thing was unheard of among the Baloch. One never said zan talaq in order to ward off hospitality. But I had said it and I was standing by it. Nevertheless as we walked down the mountain every time Rehmat Khan mentioned the possibility of more roast lamb at his brother’s home, I reminded him of my avowal. That led to the story of the large-hearted Baloch and his stingy wife who were visited by the man and his naseeb.

We arrive in the village of Ugair where Rehmat Khan’s brother nicknamed Akhrote (Walnut, but I never got around to asking why such an impressive person was thus named) was awaiting us. Thankfully there was only tea with biscuits, but the man kept on insisting that he be permitted to take down a lamb. Someone told him I had sworn zan talaq against more hospitality and that finally put the matter to rest. It was already well into the afternoon and if we tarried any longer we would miss the visit to the shrine of Pir Gahno.

This was another story related by Rehmat Khan as we were coming down the hill. Some years ago while visiting the tomb of ancestor Gahno; he got into an argument with his cousin who minds the shrine. The burden of the argument lay on the poor quality of food that had been served up to our Rehmat Khan. The argument dragged on with the cousin defending himself as vehemently as Rehmat Khan attacked him until our man pronounced zan talaq: never again was he to avail himself of the hospitality of the side of the family that kept the ancestor’s shrine. Time flew and soon Rehmat Khan was invited to a wedding in that family. He said he could not attend because that would necessarily mean partaking of his cousin’s hospitality and he would automatically stand divorced.

This was serious business. Family pressure mounted: as an uncle (and a maternal one at that) of the bride and one of the family’s decision makers Rehmat Khan had to attend the wedding. The ceremony needed his blessing. With the matter of zan talaq niggling at the back of his mind, he attended the party and, naturally, dined with his cousin – an act that automatically affected his divorce. Therefore, to keep matters in legal order a mullah had been imported from Taunsa to officiate over the second solemnising of Rehmat Khan and his wife’s nikah. The needful was done that same evening and by the mullah’s decree the new marriage between the old couple had to be consummated within ten days. With a glint in his blood-shot eyes Rehmat Khan said he had come through colours flying high.

There was one setback, however. Rehmat Khan’s wife was no dodo. As soon as the divorce became effective, she demanded her alimony. The man was flummoxed. Five thousand rupees was a good deal of money. But his wife would have it no other way. She had been divorced and she wanted her pound of flesh. Rehmat Khan paid up before he could be re-married.

Pir Gahno’s shrine, like Granddad Musa’s, was again an unpretentious cement block cubicle with a single satin-draped burial inside. The obligatory peelu tree with its multitude of coloured cloth bags containing the first shaving of sons born by ancestor Gahno’s agency was right outside shading the cubicle. It suddenly shone on me: two Buzdar ancestors, Musa and Gahno, revered as miracle-working saints. If this wasn’t ancestor worship it was nothing in the world. Why, I wondered, hadn’t any anthropologist ever considered working on ancestor worship among the Baloch?

Baloch lore gives them Arab origin – as if that isn’t the case for all Muslims in the subcontinent. Serious research shows however that a very long time ago, much before the advent of Islam, they came from the shores of the Caspian Sea to spread out into the desert regions of eastern Persia and what is now western Pakistan. They descend therefore from an ancient Parthian bloodline. Long centuries ago and far away under the shadow of the Elburz Mountains Baloch religiosity perhaps centered on ancestor worship. The practice appears to have persisted even after conversion to Islam. Where others were encumbered with the invention of Syeds whose tombs could be worshiped for sons and wealth, the Baloch simply continued to venerate their own ancestors.

The last item on the itinerary was Khan Mohammed Buzdar. Three years ago while travelling through here with Raheal we had overnighted at the BMP post of Hingloon. They had shown me the slightly bent bars of the jailhouse and told me how one minute Khan Mohammed was locked up inside and the next was outside beside the free men. I had wanted to meet with the man and Raheal dispatched some of his staff to get him. But Khan Mohammed was away in Taunsa and I had to come away without the interview.

This time around, Raheal had sent word to Hingloon in advance that Khan Mohammed was to be made available. With ordinary build, gentle face and grey beard he looked like no Samson. He also spoke very softly. It was in 1962 or thereabouts, there had been a gunfight, said Khan Mohammed. He had shot and killed one of the rivals’ number which landed him in the lock up. Outside, his brother Taj Mohammed waited with some men of the other party. Shortly after the last prayer of the evening, he heard a gunshot and the shout that Taj Mohammed had been shot.

‘I was beside myself with emotion,’ said Khan Mohammed. ‘My brother had been shot and perhaps killed. I called upon Pir Gahno and before I knew it, the bars were bent wide enough for me to get out.’

The BMP men present in the courtyard restrained Khan Mohammed. Quickly he was hand-cuffed and shackled and returned to his cell. Meanwhile, it was also known that Taj Mohammed had only received a flesh wound and was out of danger. The bar-bending superman was once again human.

On our first visit one of the witnesses who had seen it all had told me he heard this almighty roar of ‘Ya, Pir Gahno!’ The next thing the man knew Khan Mohammed was standing beside him. Everyone was convinced it was Pir Gahno’s blessing that the man was able to bend half-inch thick iron bars. Khan Mohammed himself believed that as well. When I asked him if he could reenact the long ago feat, he said with great simplicity that he could not have done it then without the saint’s help and he couldn’t do it now.

All those who know of Khan Mohammed’s exploit, believe it was Pir Gahno who did it for him. He had called out the saint’s name and the saint came to his aid. I tried to tell them it was the saint, the superman that lived within Khan Mohammed and indeed within all of us as well. But that made no sense to them. It was useless to tell them how karate experts, having discovered through training the superman within, can use his powers at will. And how a shout focuses these powers to a single point to help them achieve the seemingly impossible feat of smashing a pile of kiln-fired bricks.

Khan Mohammed’s Pir Gahno had bent thick iron bars for him – but just one time. The Pir Gahno of karate experts does the impossible for them every time they wish. It is only for humans to discover the superman that lives within. My lecture made no sense. Neither to Khan Mohammed nor to the BMP men. Tolerantly they heard me out.

We left under a lowering sky. Sheets of lightning flashed on the southern horizon and I dreaded being caught up by a swollen stream. It was all right for Rehmat Khan who promised us more roast lamb if we could stay. Promising to return in case of a flood we finally bade him farewell. Thankfully it rained only lightly that evening.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of several books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Riders on the Wind, Between two Burrs on the Map, Prisoner on a Bus and Sea Monsters and the Sun God. His work - explorations, traveling and writings - appears in almost all leading publications.

Hanjarwal - Lost from view

Salman Rashid

From very ancient times, this land was traversed by roads, roads and roads. There were arterial highways like the Rajapatha that connected Bengal with the Afghan highlands. We hear of it from the chronicles of the 4th century BCE and know that this was the very road that we eventually came to know as the Grand Trunk Road. There were others that stretched between important cities.

One such was the highway connecting Lahore and Multan that we today call National Highway 5 (N-5). Though this highroad had existed ever since time began, in the Middle Ages its importance grew when the peaceful years of the Mughal Empire spurred all-round growth. While Lahore in the north became a much favoured city as an alternate Mughal capital, Multan once again thrived as a rich centre of trade and commerce. It was one of the richer subas (provinces) of the empire during the reign of the third Mughal king, Akbar the Great.

To facilitate the passage of trade and travel, the old road connecting Multan and Lahore received a good deal of attention. Among other road furniture, new caravanserais were built where existing ones were falling to pieces. Now, distance between serais was dictated by the day’s travel which in those times was between twenty-five to thirty kilometres. Thus leaving the walled city of Lahore the first serai on Multan Road was at Hanjarwal. A victim of unplanned growth, this serai has long since disappeared.

Lost from view, overgrown with the ugly warts of unplanned rural architecture, Serai Chhimba sits amid blocks of agricultural land some thirty kilometres south of Hanjarwal. Lying a kilometre west of N-5, Serai Chhimba marks the alignment of the old road from the Middle Ages.

We know of Begum ki Serai adjacent to Attock Fort; Serai Kharbuza, midway between Taxila and Rawalpindi; Rewat, east of Rawalpindi and Rajo Pind just outside Rohtas Fort that are all believed to be fortresses. In truth, these are serais, fortified so that they could be locked up for the night to hold robbers at bay. Indeed, this was no deviation, but standard serai architecture all across Central Asia, Iran and the Indian subcontinent.

So too was Serai Chhimba built like a fort with massive walls and two gateways, one each in the direction of the rising and setting sun. In the interior, along the perimeter walls, was a series of sunken rooms with domed ceilings and thick walls to keep out the heat and cold. These were the residential rooms for passing travellers while their pack and riding animals were tethered in the broad enceinte.

The gatehouses on both sides are massive and have bulky arched openings which, going by their style, are clearly Akbari. While the western gatehouse is now occupied and turned into a residence, the one in the east serves as the only way in and out. Until a few years ago the timber leaves of the gatehouse were still in situ, but with the rise in street level, they became unserviceable and one day disappeared. Local gossip has it that the expensive teak was appropriated and sold by the keeper of the spurious shrine inside the serai. So much for those who pretend to be descendents of a worldly man turned holy post mortem by the accretion of yarns.

While the gatehouses mark east and west, the other two cardinal points are scored by massive vaulted structures. These and the gatehouses are each topped by two square towers rising to ribbed domes starkly reminiscent of Samarqand and Herat. None of them retains any of the coloured tiles that may have once adorned them. To emphasise its defensive strength, each corner of the serai has an octagonal turret.

The compound where travellers once tethered their animals is now choc-a-bloc with haphazardly placed houses bisected by streets. Houses along the perimeter wall incorporate the sunken rooms of the serai into their design: as bedrooms these are cool in summer and warm in winter. Everywhere there are signs of disturbance to the original structure of the serai in order to add rooms.

Only a few days before my visit in mid-February, the owner of the house adjacent to the east gate had pulled down one of the two domed towers in order to add a room on his roof. The debris of ancient Mughal bricks and lime mortar had still not been removed. It was his home and he felt he could do whatever he pleased with it – the historic monument be damned. Indeed, the two similar structures on the south wall had gaping holes: used as rooftop kitchens, the openings in the roofs served as chimneys. In the north wall only one of these towers remains. Inmates do not know what became of its companion but they have broken a large opening in it and use it as storage for cow dung patties. Its exterior serves as the post where the patties are dried.

Sometime after the advent of train and motor transport Serai Chhimba fell out of use as a way station. During the Raj when people were more than aware of the presence of the government, this historical inn would not have been appropriated for private residence. With independence two things happened. First, in the hands of incompetent politicians, the new state of Pakistan began to cede authority from the very first day. Secondly, in the absence of any settlement policy, the huge influx of refugees pouring in from across the newly-drawn border took over whatever they found handy.

Serai Chhimba, built about 1580 and therefore a protected historical monument, fell victim to this takeover riot. For some years after partition, it may have retained its serai atmosphere, but galloping population growth quickly smothered it with ugly and unplanned housing. For these refugees from Karnal and Rohtak, this is apparently still not home. They have no feeling for the land, its culture and its history. It is something to be appropriated and destroyed. Sadly, this is no aberration; this is the norm in this blighted land.

Looking at the whole lot of Pakistani people, this utter disregard for our own heritage is our only unifying national trait. Surely this must be the only country in the entire world where a citizen can destroy any historical building without fear of persecution. We see it happening in cities like Lahore, Bhera, Shikarpur, you name it. It is happening in Serai Chhimba as it happened at Hanjarwal where no more than part of the serai gateway now stands. Only some miles away to the east of Serai Chhimba, Dera Chaubara, another 16th century monument and exquisitely beautiful too, has been laid waste by treasure hunters (Herald April 2003). This same breed of ignorant philistine is destroying the hilltop monastery of Tilla Jogian in Jhelum district. This list is endless.

In another country where the writ of the state exists, such wanton destruction of the national heritage would cause uproar. Heads would roll, especially of those entrusted with the upkeep of national monuments. But in Pakistan we let things be. In another few decades, monuments that should have drawn ordinary tourists and students of history and medieval architecture to this land will be no more than heaps of rubble. And not because of age and natural causes, but because of our national indifference for our own heritage.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of eight books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand.

Cholistan in Lahore

 

"It is an island of tranquility only an hour away from home. It surprises me that so few people in Lahore or Kasur know of it. Such a place in India would have been swamped with visitors on weekends," says Salman Rashid. 

Do you have any idea where? Read the story by Salman Rashid here.

Tomb of Bhuman Shah

Salman Rashid

A quarter century ago, driving from Dipalpur to Haveli Lakha in Okara district of Punjab, I passed a gateway with a couple of human figures in terracotta. If memory serves, there were some more peering down from niches in the wall. Pausing, I learnt that this was the ‘tomb of Bhuman Shah’ in the village of the same name. Bhuman Shah, so my young informant said, was a great saint from even before his grandfather’s time – which in the vernacular means a very long time ago.

I looked in and noticed a building with an impressive façade flanked by octagonal turrets with a central gateway on my right. Straight ahead, at the end of the street could be seen another building with an octagonal turret. To the left, a battered dome that I took to date from the early 18th century reared up behind a wall. The young man invited me to look in on what he said was a fort, but it being just about sunset I declined hoping to return another time.

It took me twenty-five years to get back. The figures in the wall were gone, and only one remained in the gateway. Inside, the street seemed to be more crowded with houses and the building on the right with the pretty façade was fronted by ugly cubicles all but concealing it. Going up the street and turning left at the foot of the second turreted building, I was surprised to find the domed building all spruced up with a fresh coat of yellow wash. The tomb of Bhuman Shah had been restored, and furnished with booklets in English and Urdu encapsulating the man’s life.

Born in 1687 to Rajo Bai and Hassa Ram of village Behlolpur near Dipalpur, Bhumia is said to have been a miraculous child whose birth was not attended by the customary labour pains. Three hundred years is a sufficiently long time to veil his life with a mist of the usual formulaic miracles that are the staple of all saints. But if one were to sift through the murk, even as a teenager Bhumia was smart enough to have developed an impressive discourse on eschewing materialism and mortifying the soul through hardship to attain oneness with god.

When the boy saint was about thirteen and visiting an ashram at Pakpattan, he is said to have been recognised as the reincarnation of a great saint of the past. The keeper of the ashram, himself an accomplished monk, initiated the boy into monk-hood. There Bhumia learned the secrets of the Udasi order of monks who believe that true spirituality transcends religious division. When he was ready to set out to put his world to rights, his mentor suggested he take the name of Bhuman Shah.

Legend has it that he arrived near the village of Kutb Kot and camped by a well in the forest where Hindu, Muslim and Sikh alike came to seek his benediction. Among the seekers was the mother of Lakha Wattoo who was then serving time in the jail in Lahore. The woman petitioned the saint to bring her son back and Lakha was home in a few days. The yarn being that Bhuman Shah has appeared in his cell led Lakha through solid walls and within moments brought him back to his mother’s hearth. To show his gratitude, Lakha ordered his entire tribe to vacate the village and donate it lock, stock and barrel to Bhuman Shah. The chief’s word was law and Kutb Kot became Bhuman Shah as it is known to this day.

And so the saint who abhorred worldly wealth of a sudden became lord and master of a vast estate. With this newly acquired affluence, Bhuman Shah now had a headquarters where he began a kitchen that daily fed all comers regardless of caste or creed. By 1747, the year of his death, Baba Bhuman Shah had a large following. The body was cremated, the ashes buried at the very spot where saint spent his time in meditation and a domed building raised above it. Though he died unmarried and with no heir to inherit his holdings, Bhuman Shah passed on his mantle to one of his disciples and that remained the more: as he lay dying each man nominated a successor to lead the cult of Bhuman Shah.

The cult grew and the free kitchen that daily fed hundreds of hungry mouths seems to have won admiration all round. The ‘official history’ of the cult records an unnamed British divisional commissioner adding three thousand acres to the Bhuman Shah holding in appreciation of the good work being done. In 1910 with increasing numbers of followers resorting to Bhuman Shah for the four annual festivals, the magnificent edifices with the corner turrets were paid for from earnings from the agricultural holding. The one on the right as one enters the complex called the sarai or Bhajan Mahal and the other the fort. During the festivals, attended by all religious denominations in united India, the fort housed the upper crust of devotees while the sarai was for the middle tier. Commoners, it is told, had to make do as they found best.

The free kitchen continued to function until 1947 when the Hindu population was exchanged with Muslims. Finding the two buildings handy, refugees moved in and portioned them out according to their individual needs. The samadhi complex was spared only because it afforded no reasonable accommodation. As time went by and families grew, makeshift walls were raised to create courtyards until the once-grand edifices became virtual mohallahs. The cult’s agricultural land was similarly annexed by the new-comers.

Years passed, visa requirements stiffened and by the 1980s free travel between Pakistan and India became virtually unknown. The trickle of Bhuman Shah devotees that had continued after partition eventually dried out. A generation of Muslims grew up in Bhuman Shah without hearing bhajans and qawalis sung around the domed samadhi of the saint whose name their village carried. It was forgotten that Bhuman Shah had four annual festivals where tens of thousands of visitors congregated.

December 1992 saw one of the most shameful acts of all times: the razing of Babri Mosque in Ayodhia. Muslims all over Pakistan responded with the even more dishonourable deed of destroying everything that had anything to do with either the Hindus or the Sikhs regardless of the buildings’ religious or secular nature.

The occupation of Bhajan Mahal and the fort by dozens of families was a blessing in disguise for that held the vandals at bay. But the samadhi of Bhuman Shah was heavily damaged. Thereafter the derelict building became the refuge of drug addicts. Thus matters stood at the turn of the century. Meanwhile, easier visa requirements once again permitted some devotees to visit and locals were surprised to see Europeans among the visitors.

In 2005 Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) responded to appeals from the followers of the Bhuman Shah cult in India and elsewhere. The complex containing Bhuman Shah’s samadhi and yet another one as well as a large building known as Darbar Hall was restored. But when ETPB turned its attention to Bhajan Sarai and the fort, those who had taken over the buildings and destroyed their character resisted.

Under the Antiquities Act 1974 the two buildings, as well as the samadhi complex, are protected monuments. Though Pakistan is famous for mindlessly destroying perfectly serviceable built heritage, we do have the example of a priceless building being pulled back from the brink in Chiniot. That happened because of official interest. Now, owing to pressure from cult followers abroad, ETPB has taken the right line of relocating the squatters to take over and restore the two residential houses.

It is imperative that the sarai and the fort be reclaimed and used only for the purpose they were originally built for. Religious tourism is a big thing and the Udasi cult followers from India alone mostly belong to the moneyed class. Restoring the festivals at Bhuman Shah will not only bring Muslim, Hindu and Sikh together, it will also bolster the local economy.

In the bargain, ETPB will have preserved two fine examples of the built heritage of Punjab.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of several books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Riders on the Wind, Between two Burrs on the Map, Prisoner on a Bus and Sea Monsters and the Sun God. His work - explorations, traveling and writings - appears in almost all leading publications.

Which country?

Salman Rashid

Once upon a time when ‘urbanisation’ had not yet caught on, this was another country. Outside the urban centres, this was a land of wide-open vistas of swaying fields of wheat, rice or sugar cane as weather permitted. This was a land of spreading banyan trees that, I was learn much later, figured on one-inch army topographical maps as ‘survey trees.’ And this was a country of fine stands of shisham and acacia trees, roadside ponds ablaze with red and blue lotus flowers and fresh water streams alive with tortoises and fish.

In those days of the late 1950s and through the following decade, when the family drove up the Grand Trunk Road to Rawalpindi or took the N-5 down to Multan, the ride was through a marvellous landscape. The Degh River just a few kilometres north of Lahore was a clear water stream whose banks were lined with anglers – especially if it was a Sunday. Gujranwala was a tiny little town where we swept past only a handful of stores and several lovely old town houses.

Similarly for Gujrat, while Jhelum was remarkable for the church that came into view as the car entered the old Jhelum River bridge. In those days the church stood in a wide-open meadow where buffaloes grazed. One thing that did not escape even us children was the very frequent spreading banyan tree shading a pond that could either be brick-lined or just plain. The sole surviving tree is the one near Sohawa (on the left side of the road as one motors towards Rawalpindi) whose accompanying pond is now sadly dry. All the others have been sacrificed to the ever-widening roads.

On the other side, along the N-5, my memory of passing Okara is not, I repeat, not seeing any habitation. An older cousin who was then an engineer told me that British road builders had ensured that all intercity roads pass one mile from habitation and were connected to it by a link road. Today passing through Pattoki, Okara or any other place that does not have a by-pass is nightmare.

In 1979 I moved to Karachi and for the next ten years travelled extensively in the interior of Sindh and Balochistan. Super Highway actually began at Sohrab Goth and ended in the wilderness outside Hyderabad. In its entire length of 160-odd kilometres, the only sign of human intervention was the Nooriabad Industrial Estate with its chimneys. Similarly, the old N-5 connecting these two cities via Thatta passed through the loveliest countryside imaginable. The Gharo River meandering through acacia and mesquite bushes was a sight and Thatta was a right lovely little town with its badgirs (wind-catchers) looking in open-mouthed wonder to the southwest

In the interior country roads such as what is now known as the Indus Highway (connecting Hyderabad and Shikarpur via Sehwan and Larkana) was truly magical. On the one side were occasional glimpses of the Sindhu River beyond patches of cultivation and on the other of the tortured, barren hills of the eastern-most offshoot of the Khirthar Mountains.

But the most magical of all places was Balochistan. It was the only land within this country where one could actually be with one’s self for mile after mile after mile. Even as recently as the mid-1980s, the drive from Karachi to say Lasbela or Kalat along the RCD Highway was remarkable for its loneliness. In the early 1980s I drove several times between Karachi and Lasbela and once all the way to Quetta and on all occasions I halted frequently simply to savour the peace and solitude of the land. For long minutes, perhaps even as much as half an hour, no traffic passed as I sat by the road to watch dozens of dust devils waltzing in the distance against misty blue hills.

In Makran there were no roads at all. The journey along the seaboard from Karachi to Gwadar took two days and one arrived with a goodly portion of the desert deposited on one’s self. It took a long, long bath to wash the dust away. The dirt road between Gwadar, Turbat and on to Panjgur passed through the most remarkable landscape of dry, broken hills and riverbeds that saw water only rarely when rain fell.

A handful of kilometres from Gwadar on the west bay the hills of Pishukan, completely unpopulated and waterless were the most fascinating place ever. Seen against a low sun they looked (and still do) like the skyscraper-filled skyline of some modern city. Now with Gwadar being turned into the next Dubai (or whatever else they plan), urbanisation has hit this region in a big way. Sooner than we know, west bay will be choc-a-bloc with concrete monstrosities that will block out the beauty of the Pishukan hills.

In recent years I have seen Karachi expand all the way to the Hub River both along RCD Highway and on the tree-shaded and peaceful Hub Dam Road. Along the former we have an industrial estate and its auxiliary residential areas as well as the shanties that were bound to happen. On the latter the sprawling Hamdard University has taken away the magic. Within years of the establishment of the university, Karachi began to encroach in that direction. Today as one drives up to the dam, one is never alone. And if I am not wrong, a lot of trees, mainly acacia and tamarisk, have been destroyed in the bargain.

Even the lonely RCD Highway has not escaped urban pressure as places as quaint and remote as Khuzdar and Wadh have encroached upon the road. This invasion is mostly in the form of glitzy restaurants and unseemly truck stops. Though I have not been on this road for nearly twenty years, friends tell me that no longer can one stop and savour the solitude of Balochistan for more than a few minutes at a time without being disturbed by passing buses.

In the case of Punjab and NWFP, the least said the better. Today one can drive from, say, Peshawar to Lahore or Multan or even all the way to Karachi and never be out in the country. Today the entire 1000 plus kilometre length of the N-5 is an endless bazaar. The views of swaying sugar cane or golden wheat along the road are a thing of the past. Now all one sees is an endless procession of grimy workshops and filthy restaurants. If it is not that, then it is a succession of equally unsightly factories.

Gone are the days of the wide-open vistas. Unchecked urbanisation has destroyed the magic of intercity travel. So few people today realise that as we once went tooling along the highways, we got to know this country; its rivers and trees, its birds and animals and all that grew on it that made up our food. Unchecked urban spread has not only deprived us of a landscape that my generation knew. It has defiled this land in more ways than one.

For one, vast tracts of farmland on the periphery of urban centres have been made over for housing estates. Indigenous trees were without fail the first casualty in this deal. All the wonderful, spreading banyan, pipal, mulberry, acacia and shisham were laid low to demarcate plots and lay out the grid of roads. In their stead, ignorant developers planted the water-guzzling eucalyptus and the only tree we now see is this accursed alien species. Secondly, unplanned urban expansion has destroyed dozens of fresh water streams. The Degh, the Aik and the Palkhu are just a few examples.

We now stand on the threshold of a new age where we will not know this country. In a few years most urban people will only know ugly concrete jungles, not spreading fields of wheat and paddy. Small wonder then that we are going crazier and crazier and ever more violence-prone.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of several books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Riders on the Wind, Between two Burrs on the Map, Prisoner on a Bus and Sea Monsters and the Sun God. His work - explorations, traveling and writings - appears in almost all leading publications.

Virtual Travel Communities

The virtual world is beginning to blend seamlessly with the real world. The social side of technology is making the World Wide Web much more localized by bringing like-minded people together and in the process creating closely knit online communities.

A combination of features like worldwide accessibility and instantaneous communication has made it possible for backpackers, globetrotters, and other adventurers from all over the world to join together at different online platforms to exchange information, experiences, and plans in their favorite pursuit — travel.

Subscribers range from the professional travel writers to hardcore travelers and adventurers and regular folks who are simply interested in reading online. Travel communities are accessible by millions of interested people all over the world.

Out of some major and lesser travel forums on the Web, I have had the good fortune to belong to a few and have been visiting some others for my travel information needs.

Exceptions apart, all virtual travel communities have some common features. Communities mostly provide a warm, trusting, and supportive atmosphere. When members share information, they do it with great care and responsibility. They rely on each other more than they do on outdated travel guidebooks or on second-hand and static information from conventional travel literature.

Visit any online community and one finds anything related to travel, along with flames and off topic comments, which are sometimes informative, sometimes funny, and occasionally annoying. The mutual exchange of information is not restricted only to destinations, affordable places to stay and dine in, security issues, maps, weather conditions there. and where to find the best bargains and how to find public restrooms or which Websites better describe any particular place (or which dress a female anthropologist going to study Kalash clan up in northern district Chitral should wear during her extended stay there). It goes much further to helping in finding work, selling and promoting each other in local markets.

“Travel forums have become hunting grounds for meeting fellow travelers and making new friends. You really do not require any other reason to join a community or two,” says Atoorva Sinha, who intends building up the travelers’ community at Mindzwine.

Carla King is a founding member of one virtual travel community called Wild Writing Women for female travelers. She emailed, “When we published 'Wild Writing Women — Stories of World Travel' (an anthology of women’s travel stories) — we got a lot of publicity. People wanted to know how we traveled solo and weren’t afraid, and just how we went about it. We started giving workshops. We also started giving writing workshops and hosted a free monthly literary salon. People just gravitated, and we accepted them. We made a business of it and formed the online community. So it’s a profitable business for us to expand the community, and also, happily, it’s close to our hearts.”

Members are slow to respond sometime. Chris Heidrich, the director of BootsnAll says, “One has to be patient in waiting for a response from members and insiders. It should be understood that it is a voluntary favor and some people do not come on board or check email as often.” Court, who is always found on board in the same community adds, “Some time they may be away traveling to yet another location.”

The recipients of information have to keep in mind that whatever comes is based upon individuals’ personal experiences or empirical observations. One member may have had different experiences than others. When I posted a query about virtual travel communities (for this article) at the BootsnAll community, the first reply referred me to Nick, the mediator at another community at Bali Blog who in turn advised me to email direct to all on his mailing list. The replies I am still receiving are varied, showing so many perspectives. “There is nothing like variety,” says Nick.

The virtual world is composed of information rather than physical identities. Information spreads and diffuses. Those who belong to these impalpable spaces are also diffuse, free to take it or leave it.

My Village

There are lessons in the first landscapes of every one's life. Mine was a vista of green paddy fields, smoking with Salt Range mist, against a setting of ribbon of River Jhelum which from distance looked like a shore of another land altogether. The rough, rugged hill range appeared uninviting against a sky withering with the morning, interrupted by the dawn's red and blue brush strokes. My first learning in life was also in the village.

In villages, people still live without assessable roads or other civic amenities of this modern age. No telephone or the Internet, even the electricity is the recent phenomenon; some are still without it. You see one village and you have seen all. This was the setting where I spent first twenty year of my life savoring the freedom of adulthood. It is where I decided what (and how) I wanted to do with life. It is where my mother, brothers and friends live. It is where I return whenever my active life allows me to. It is where I want to settle and spend my future.

My village is awe inspiring -- pollution free and quiet. Different shades and colors of waving crops and trees - solitary, in groves or avenues - beautify the landscape. The scene changes after the harvest. The air is always fresh and fragrant with the smell of earth. The only sound is singing of birds, ringing of cowbells and sighing of wind or some youth loudly singing Heer Waris Shah, Sassi Punun or Mirza Saheban at night. One sees butterflies fluttering, ladybirds creeping and squirrels jumping around. To me the place feels like a paradise.

My roots are in the village where no body seems to be in a hurry. Every time I go there, from the different cities where I happen to be living, I take small things like candies and toys for the kids of neighbors and my family in the village and they are so happy that the words cannot explain their delight. From the village I bring everything, and more than every thing I bring lot of love.

"I help my neighbors and my neighbors help me", is the philosophy of life in our village. Faith, sharing, contentment, grit, hard work and humor are few others. There are no marriage halls or other renting places. Daras (community centers where cultural diffusion takes place) are very useful 'institutions' for functions or for elders to sit and teach irreplaceable heritage of ideas to the younger generation. The learning that passed on to me in Dara turned out to be very precious: it was the legacy of the fable. Tandoor (Oven for backing bread) is still a meeting and talking place for women.

Guests of one family are shared by ever one at the time of marriage (or death). Hospitality is like one of the cultural benchmark, as villagers strongly believe that a guest comes with the blessings of Allah Almighty. Pull a hay cart into the shad, to rest, to dream. You shall be served with hookka (Hubbell-bubble), water and food. Cooing crows are still considered as a symbol for the arrival of guests in my village.

From our village, a group of seven students used to go to nearby town for attending school (and then college). Ghulam Muhammad was my buddy in the group. After completing the education, my dreams become out of control and took me on the darker roads of the life whereas Ghulam Muhammad, equipped with degree from Faisalabd Agricultural University, started progressive farming in the same village. He was a hardworking, gentleman, economically very sound and ambitious. Ghulam Mohammed's father soon started getting proposals for the marriage of his son from many wealthy landlord families of the area. But, my friend married his cousin: uneducated daughter of one of his poorest uncles and is living happily ever since. Village society is still simple, cohesive and based on similarities.

This time when I was coming back from the village, lot of people - family members, peers and neighbors - came to see me off as always. My mother had packed my vehicle with vegetables (fresh from the farm), palsies, atta (floor), and husked rice and even live chickens. Every body was advising me to consume every thing back in the city, as "they are fresh, pure, nutritious and desi". On my way back, a question kept coming in my mind: how much time this simple society will take to become complex and when will 'development' change the outlook of the villagers to life?

A cluster of memories - some overlapping, some isolated - of 'the village boy' I once always stay with me. I am a result of my childhood experiences. After having knocked on all the doors of opportunity that come in my way in life, I want to settle and spend my future in the village?

This is where I get my supply of Salageet (Shilajit)

Some places are so peaceful and unspoiled that it is almost unbelievable. One such locality is the picturesque, tranquil and pollution free (and undeveloped) boarder village Arrandu in district Chitral. The very sound of the name is musical. This village is located 'on' the Pakistan Afghanistan boarder. Dir-Chitral Road bifurcates near village Mir Khanni and a jeep able track along Kunar River leads to Arrandu through Domail Nisar and onwards into Afghanistan.

Gateway to the South Asia, the Chitral valley has been center of activity since ancient times. Macedonians advanced through this region in fourth century. In 1338, Timur subdued the area on his way to the plains of Punjab. Mughal King Akbar garrisoned here in 1587 and the British in 1897 in Chakdara on Dir side of Lowari Pass. Among soldiers who served here in Chakdara then was young Winston Churchill who later became Prime Minister of Britain. So far about the past importance of the valley but the little hamlet got the international fame during Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. It remained in the news and was commonly called as 'BBC Baby'.

Arrandu is set up on the bank of Kunar River flowing into Afghanistan. Terraced fields of wheat, barley, maize and fragrant orchards of walnuts, apricots, grapes, apples and mulberries are strung up the valley like flags, at the feet of bare or thinly forested mountain walls.

The 3118-meter Lowari Pass is normally open to vehicles from June to October. One can sometime cross the pass on foot in May or November, despite the snow. One can also reach this small hamlet from Peshawar to Chitral by air and then by road to Arrandu or from Afghanistan. Though taking flight to Chitral is not everyone's cup of tea because the Fokker Friendship can cross the Lowari Pass only if weather permits. It rarely does particularly once the valley is landlocked in winters. First time, I landed in Chitral after three attempts by Fokker. Flying above the clouds, I had a window seat on the West Side of the small and noisy aircraft and could see the sighs of Hindu Kush where clouds allowed. Chitral to Arrandu via Drosh along Kunar River is easily one of the prettiest drives in the valley.

Chitral Scouts have kept this post in a very good shape. And, when ever I happened to pass the post conducting 'travelers' from down country or alone, I was always given a warm welcome and send off by Essa Khan, a local who has the biggest store cum tea house in the village. He also has arrangements for Trout fishing in Kunar River near his store. After zig zagging on a difficult road, one can spend a good day at the riverbank fishing and relaxing, with supply of tea from the Pinion Shah's teashop. And, to me Pinion Shah used to present, every time I visited him, a gift of pure salageet (Shilajit) - an oozing black paste from rocks famous among men in this part of the world as an anti aging and sexual health. After Afghan refugees and occasional travelers, now this road is used by herd of goats lead by a lonely Gujars to and from greener pastures. That is the place, which I use as a retreat from the hustle and bustle of urban life and that is where "I go to reminisce about fairies."

While the entire Chitral Valley is breathtaking in its splendor and beauty, one of my most enduring memories of Arrandu is watching the sunrise over the hills. And, when you devote enough time to look at the mountains, it becomes a bit chameleon - clouding over, changing colors, cliffs turning into convex and concave according to the slant light.

Arrandu has red roofed grand mosque and some makeshift provision stores that are stocked in summers when Lowari Pass is open to road traffic. There is also a water mill for grinding grain. Lot of tracks interlaces the area that is frequented by Mazdas or pedestrians.

At night, lights glow in this isolated village. One finds men spending their quality time sitting on the retaining walls along the razor edged roads and tracks while women (mostly with enlarged thyroid glands due to lack of iodine) working in the fields, homes or collecting woods from hills in conical wicker baskets. Even in their fifties men carry guns along with a belt of ammunition. The fact is that I found them friendly and at peace with themselves.

There are side valleys that yawn on both sides of Kunar River for hiking in its upper reaches. Friendly people of Tajik origin who had came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan only a few generations ago, to manufacture matchlock rifles for the Mehtar of Chitral populate the area. Arrandu Road is an ideal place to study the effects of land erosion: how it ruins the land and clogs waterways. And, there are some beautiful geological formations along the road. Besides scenery, there are many well-used camping grounds on both sides of the road and river, which run side by side.

Isolated from the rest of the country because of the remote location, Chitralis live a primitive rural existence without any civic amenities. Even the TV transmissions, telephone and electricity only in some parts of distract are a recent phenomenon. "Why would anyone want to live in a country like that?" Pinion Shah smiled and said, "I guess we like it here because we like to be left alone. Oh, it is nice to have people visiting. And we like people all right. But we like them on our own terms." And, he was right. I could hear him, murmuring sitting on his old stool: a freedom that meets other people only on its own terms - and yet forces you to care about every one of your neighbors scattered across the hillocks. Most of the Chitralis whom I asked confessed, "We like and want our own way of life." That is what is keeping them there.

Tags: Travel, Chitral

Pilgrimage to Dalbandin

Salman Rashid

Although I had travelled the "Lonely Line" between Quetta and Zahedan (Iran) seven years ago when I was doing what I called "The Little Railway Bazaar" after Paul Theroux, this journey had a special meaning for me. I was on my way to Dalbandin to see the house where my father had lived when he was posted there as Assistant Engineer (AEN) on the North Western Railways from April 1943 to December the following year. For me it was like a pilgrimage. But that was not all, I had also wanted to see if this train continued to be the festival on wheels that it once was.

In my six berth "First Class Sleeper" Agha sahib sat serenely and allowed the big, crinkly haired man and his friend to fawn over him. He wore the round black turban and the matching robe of the Ayatollahs of Iran. His chinky eyes, very Mongol face and sparse beard screamed that he was either a Hazara or a Chengezi, like his attendants, and claimed descent from Chengez Khan. He was a quiet man who did not speak much and when he did it was difficult to catch his soft whisper. Mostly he just sat there looking regal with his pout, occasionally flicking some unseen particle of dust from his robe with ring laden fingers.

The crinkly haired man said Agha sahib was returning to Qum in Iran where he was a teacher, after visiting with relatives in his native village not very far north of Quetta. The master spoke only Persian and I, despite my illiteracy in the language, was asked to see that he was not inconvenienced in any way during the journey because he suffered from a sick heart, high blood pressure and diabetes. I hadn't the faintest idea how I was to accomplish what was expected of me but the nod and the smile from the man of God assured me all was well. Then suddenly, as we sat their exchanging nods and smiles, all hell broke lose.

The lad burst into the compartment surrounded by the characteristic smell of lower class trains. His hair was wild and dirty and his face unshaven with parched lips flaked with dried spittle. His clothes were dusty and on filthy feet he wore the slippers that every worker from the Middle East wears. His eyes swept over the four of us and in a state of agitated frenzy he asked if we were all travelling in the same compartment. Since it was just Agha and me he relaxed, but only a fraction, turned about and swept out of the room.

A moment later a red shirted porter dumped a large case sewn in khaki cloth and measuring about one metre by half a metre by half a metre. Then another, and another. And they kept coming until they were all over the four free berths. Crinkly Hair got up and asked how many more were coming. "No more, no more." said the boy breathlessly and leaned out of the window to shout to the coolies to bring in the rest. And they did; until there were nineteen khaki cases each weighing over fifty kilograms and there was no room for Agha sahib and me to do anything but sit on our berths with our knees tucked under our noses.

"How do you expect Agha sahib to get to the toilet?" demanded Crinkly Hair.

"No problem," said the man, and to demonstrate he climbed over the cases, opened the door and jumped into the toilet. "It's easy." he said looking desperately at Agha sahib.

"Get this bloody stuff out of here!" Crinkly Hair exploded, "We are not paying good money to see our religious mentor hassled by the likes of you."

What Ali Raza, whose name I was to learn much later, said next blew my brains out. "Please bear with me." But Crinkly Hair was not impressed and insisted that he book his stuff in the luggage van. Raza begged to be allowed to keep his cargo under his watchful eye; Hair remained implacable. The argument dragged on, Hair got extremely worked up and Raza was virtually grovelling when in came two other boys who were clearly his brothers.

The trio begged, wheedled and made promises they were never going to keep but Hair was adamant: the stuff had to go. In the course of this carrying on one of them disappeared to return a moment later with a young woman carrying a child and dressed like the women of the Ayatollahs' Iran - black chador and all. She turned out to be the eldest brother's wife who joined the chorus of entreaties giving Hair a new angle to his argument. "Baji, there isn't room in here for a decent woman. Also this is a very long journey and I am not allowing my sister to be inconvenienced."

The farce kept on for almost three quarters of an hour when at lenght Hair gave up and called for the conductor. After several more minutes of the three brothers and the wife individually and collectively imploring Hair and the conductor to relent, the nineteen crates were removed to the brake-van. And so the Taftan Express bound for Zahedan finally steamed out of Quetta over two hours behind schedule.

Clearly Raza was the architect of whatever was happening. The eldest and the youngest looked utterly miserable and it was certain that they were not having anything to do with future madcap schemes; but the wife, remarkably unperturbed, was buried in a cheap Urdu magazine. Raza lived and worked illegally in Meshed and since it meant much more money than living and working illegally in Karachi he had come home to fetch his two brothers and the wife. Now they were travelling on pilgrimage visas valid for only two weeks which were going to be "easily converted into residence visas". None of them could tell me how a family on pilgrimage was going to explain nineteen crates of assorted onyx handicrafts to custom officials on either side of the frontier, especially when there were no export papers. But then good sense and logic were not this family's forte.

Raza began by telling me that Karachi was soon going to be independent like Hong Kong, but he was utterly incapable of telling me was how they proposed to attain "independence" and, more importantly, sustain Karachi as a viable economic entity. He seemed to believe that when they really wanted to be like Hong Kong they would simply have to wish and they'd be. I asked how the Sindhis were going to put up with this independent Karachi. He thought a moment and very airily informed me that they would join Karachi because they had had enough of living with the Punjabis. "You Punjabis will starve to death when Karachi isn't there to feed you," he said smugly. Five minutes later he was telling me that the Punjabis did not realise other people's problems because they had too much to eat: "Aap ko to rotian lagi hoee hain." At this point I told him to shut up.

Outside, the wind sculpted crescent shaped sand hills looked like chocolate icing in the gloaming. We had crossed the last ridge of low hills into the desert that stretches clear across to the Iranian frontier, over six hundred kilometres away. Beyond Nushki the desert took over completely; in the dark landscape of a moonless night there was no reassuring flicker of a man made fire.

Until August 1916 the "Nushki Extension Railway", as it was called, terminated at Nushki beyond which travel was by camel. Then in 1915-16 disease destroyed thirty thousand animals and they said that a traveller could pick his way to the Iranian frontier by the carcasses littering the desert. When work began on the extension the English called it the "Lonely Line" for in the one hundred and sixty eight kilometres between Dalbandin and Nok-Kundi there is just one station: Yakmach -- One Date Palm. It is a great unpopulated wilderness with little vegetation to break the monotony of the wide open plain covered with dark rocks and occasionally punctuated by sand hills.

Ahmedwal, seven years after my first visit still is an important watering stop on the line. As before there were hordes of children and adults selling tea and eatables and several men with live chickens tucked under their arms to be sold to travellers presumably for slaughtering and cooking on board. Earlier I had seen no stoves on the train; now none of these men attracted any customers. Evidently the chickens never changed hands; and the Baloch entrepreneurs never gave up.

In World War I when fear of a German invasion of India rode high the line was laid to enable British troops to join the Russians in patrolling the area between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Subsequently in 1932, with this threat subsiding and with little passenger traffic on it, the line between Nok-Kundi and Zahedan was pulled up. Then came World War II and the line was revitalised in April 1942. Exactly a year later my father, fresh out of Thompson College of Civil Engineers (Roorkee, India), arrived at Dalbandin.

We arrived in the middle of the night, with a good part of the desert deposited on my person and crunching between my teeth. Half asleep I staggered after Ramzan, the man I had been handed over to in Quetta. The rest house, a majestic high roofed, mud plastered building painted the perscription pale yellow of all rest houses, had no electricity and, unable to read, I lay awake until just before dawn when I was roused by the chowkidar come to show me the Assistant Engineer's residence.

It lay behind a high brick wall in the midst of a sprawling not very well kept garden with a few patches of vegetables and looked as dusty as the desert that surrounds Dalbandin. The facade was taken up by the glass windows of what probably meant to be a sun room. In the backyard was the mandatory masonry pedestal with its structure of pipes for the fan (with the fan missing), a swing and a fish pond. Except for the addition of a powder room the interior was exactly as my parents remembered it. But there was very little furniture. The spacious drawing and dining rooms were empty, only the bedroom was equipped with a bed and a dresser. What struck me as unusual was the complete absence of any form of reading material. Fifty years ago an avid reader like my father had piles and piles of books in the house ("A Penguin was only ten annas at Quetta!"). Now there was not even an Urdu pulp digest, and since the AEN was away I could not find out how he kept his sanity in a place like Dalbandin. Doubtlessly, like most of us, he too whiled away the tedium in aimless gup shup.

The high point of this pilgrimage came when upon my asking for the oldest railway man they brought Mohammed Sharif who had joined the railways in 1942 and retired twelve years ago. "Baba, do you remember the AEN posted here in April 1943?" I asked.

"I remember him well," said the old man, "It was Rashid sahib."

This was remarkable. Forty nine years after he had left Dalbandin never to return, my father was remembered by a man who had worked with him. "Baba, I am his son," I said, and all that escaped his lips was "Oyy!" as he grabbed me in an embrace; then he kissed me on either side of the face in proper Baloch fashion and held me away to regard me through misty eyes. And then the stories came pouring out. What touched me deeply was the untainted sincerity of Sharif's words and actions; it was all spontaneous and straight from the man's heart.

There were also insistences to stay. "I am a poor Baloch, but Baloch nonetheless, and you are not allowed to leave without proper hospitality." He expected me to stay with him for a few days at least. But this was one of the two days in the week that I could get the flight back to Quetta and after much pleading I was let off with a lavish tea of several different kinds of biscuits and the promise that I would one day return to Dalbandin to be hosted by Sharif. He then showed me the AEN's office where my father had worked many years ago.

I asked if he remembered my mother. Of course he did. My father had received his transfer orders when he was going on leave to be married. When he returned with my mother they stayed just long enough to put their stuff together, in the meantime the twice a week service returned from Zahedan. "Rashid sahib was transferred to Mach and I went with them to see that they were comfortably settled there." His memory was uncanny; my father had indeed gone to Mach. And that was where I was headed.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of eight books including The Apricot Road to Yarkand.

Rebuilding lives

Salman Rashid

When the Indus River rose in August 2010, Wahid Buksh and his family fled their village Malhar Sheikh near Gambat (Sindh) for their lives. From the high ground of the raised bed of the road leading to the new Khairpur-Larkana bridge across the river, Wahid watched the fertile farmland around his village go under the swirling, brown eddies. But the water would not stop rising and by and by his poor mud brick home too was lost.

When, two months later, he returned from the displaced persons’ camp to what was his village, he found few homes standing and all of his four acres of sugar cane and two of cotton wiped off the face of the earth as if they had never existed. In his twenties, Wahid was no land owner, merely a sharecropper. Even so, his loss was great. As the summer drew to an end, he had little hope of raising enough funds to purchase wheat seed and fertiliser for the December sowing. But a man needs to win bread for the family and so Wahid Buksh resorted to daily wage labour in nearby Gambat.

In February he heard that Participatory Village Development Program (PVDP), an NGO based in Mirpur Khas, supported by Church World Service (CWS) of Islamabad was offering three-month skill training programmes at the newly-established Construction Trade Training Centre (CTTC) in Gambat. The training on offer was for the trades of plumber, electrician, welder, carpenter or mason. There was no educational requirement other than the ability to read and write Urdu which suited the man. Wahid applied and was selected to train as a mason.

Earlier, CWS had run similar training courses in Mansehra and nearby districts after the earthquake havoc of October 2005. Consequently, a large work force of young construction workers has since been at hand rebuilding the damaged villages. The centre in Gambat was on the lines of those that had been so successful in the north.

Classes were from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon leaving no time for a daily wage earning labourer like Wahid to work after hours. The upside was that there was the two hundred rupees-per day stipend for all trainees. Even though he was required to pay fifty rupees for the lunch provided by the centre, Wahid was still able to take home some money for the family to get along by. At the end of the three months, the government’s Trade Testing Board examined the trainees and issued certificates. Each successful candidate was to receive from CWS-PVDP a complete toolkit appropriate for his trade on the day the testing board issued the certificate.

Early in June, Wahid Buksh, the unskilled labourer of only a few weeks earlier, went to work with a building contractor as a brick layer. I found him in a Gambat back street in the shade of a building preparing iron bars for the construction of columns at a nearby site. He pointed to the under-construction building with visible pride and said it was all his own handiwork. And it has to be admitted that the work was neat.

In late July, seven weeks after he had graduated from the training centre, though he had passed the test, Wahid Buksh had not received his certification from the Trade Testing Board. Delays being normal in governmental working, he is not bothered. However, because of that he was still deficient of his mason’s kit and was obligated to work with a contractor.

‘I get six hundred rupees per day because I use my contractor’s tools. When I get my own equipment, I’ll be making eight hundred per day,’ says Wahid.

That is a darn sight better than being either a farm labourer or even a sharecropper. If things were good, he had to cope only with market fluctuations and his landlord’s cavalier attitude. Otherwise there was always the danger of floods or drought or crop failure. For the number of man hours he put in as a sharecropper, his net earnings were less than meagre. He also remembers times when he went into debt because of poor harvests – debts that took years to pay back. Now Wahid takes home a steady income and has a weekly day off to boot.

Almost bashfully he notes that having been born in poverty and with only five grades of schooling, the end-all of his life once seemed to be farm labour or hauling bricks at constructions sites. He could not imagine himself a skilled brick layer so early on in life.

Neither could the other seventy-four young men, all of them locals whose lives were destroyed by last year’s floods. With fifteen in each class, the Gambat centre turned out seventy-five trained technicians in the first batch. All of them immediately went either into self-employment or were hired by construction firms.

Dominic Stephen of PVDP says that given the educational level of these young men, there was no way they could have been gainfully employed. They would never have been anything but unskilled labourers, shop keepers or sharecroppers But now with just three months of training, they are useful members of the society sought after for their technical expertise.

When I was there, the second batch of seventy-five was half way through their session. Raza Hussain of village Khemtia was a shopkeeper until last year. Then the flood took his village shop and set him back by about three hundred thousand rupees. There was no question of being able to restart the business and so with a family to support, he resorted to unskilled labour until he enrolled in the training programme in June.

With a high school certificate to show for himself, he joined the electricians’ class and was doing rather well. ‘The way I see it,’ says he, ‘the stipend is equal to what I earned as an unskilled labourer. Then I had no future to look forward to. But now, after I graduate from the centre, I’ll be a trained and properly equipped electrician ready to go to work.’

Initial funds provided by CWS for the CTTC were for only two sessions of seventy-five students each. However, even half way through the second session, the value and utility of the programme became more than evident and it was extended for a third session due to begin in September. But then funds will dry up and the centre will fold. Already dozens of young men come calling every day to ask why only flood-affected men are being trained and if there will be sessions for others as well.

Dominic who supervised the establishment of the CTTC at Gambat is worried. At the end of the third session there will be two hundred and twenty-five technically trained men in the field. Going by the beneficiaries’’ own reports, the training and the complimentary toolkit has set them up as entrepreneurs as they could not have done on their own. Now the sky is the limit for these skilled technicians.

But the flood did not only disrupt the lives of these two hundred and twenty-five. There are countless more. There are also all those young men who have the will to learn but lack the required education to join the government’s poly-technic institutions. It is them that Dominic is looking out for: why should this facility not be extended to them?

Even as you read this, PVDP is hard at work to raise funds to sustain this unique and very useful programme. The funds will arrive, that much is certain, but from where, it is hard to say. Meanwhile, the number of youngsters waiting in the wings to join grows by the day.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of several books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Riders on the Wind, Between two Burrs on the Map, Prisoner on a Bus and Sea Monsters and the Sun God. His work - explorations, traveling and writings - appears in almost all leading publications.