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After a hiatus of more than a year, I finally have another adventure. This time I decided to head for the Rann Utsav (means festival of the desert) that takes place in the Kutch region of Gujarat once every year. What is the Rann Utsav? Imagine staying in a tent deep in a desert (Great Rann of Kutch) with the India-Pakistan border at one end and the sun setting over a white desert at the other end. Imagine a three day festive extravaganza in the desert during the moon lit night of the winter amid the awe-inspiring and contrasting landscape of Kutch. That friends is the Rann Utsav.
For the uninitiated, Kutch is my native land. As I landed at Bhuj airport and saw the dummy Indian Air Force aircraft at the air force base (the real aircraft are hidden underground), I tried to remember everything since my last visit in 1999 (after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, my grandparents moved in with us). As I viewed Madhapar village from the air, a tiny hamlet whose existence is unknown to most Indians, its historical significance in modern Indian history came to mind (mentioned in the end so as not to detract from the day's adventures). I began to recollect how once during one of my visits to Kutch, at a time when India-Pakistan tensions were at a high, the air raid siren went off and a blackout was ordered of the entire region. As we landed, the quaint little Bhuj terminal was a welcome sight and I headed to my native village called Mandvi.
My native village Mandvi is the original place for a famous dish known as Dabeli. The main ingredient of the dish is called Dabeli Masala, which is a dry-paste made from dried red-chillies, black-pepper powder, dried coconut, salt, clove, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, turmeric, elachi, badiyan, black-salt and tej-patta and one can taste the original mixture only in Mandvi and a few other places in Kutch. Also, Mandvi is one of the few places where they make a 'Dabeli Plate' which is a dish made only with the masala as the main ingredient. So needless to say, after visiting Mandvi beach (famous for it's windmills which were built with Swedish help and the fact that they withstood the earthquake), I headed for dinner for a dabeli plate (pic attached) and picked up half a kilogram of the masala for home. It was nice to be back staying in our home in Mandvi. Now the traditional houses in Mandvi have a peculiar feature. The houses were not entirely under one roof. The rooms of the house were separated by plenty of open air space and courtyards. Therefore, for added security, each door of the rooms open in a different pattern. For example, while in one room there is a hidden lock under the middle of the door that needs to be released to open the door, in another room a particular slab needs to be pushed to unlock the door. If you don't know the combination, you just cannot open the door (from either side). This helps ensure that even if an unwelcome guest breaks into one room, he is going to have a tough time breaking into another. It was fun to be back and retry the house combinations.
I am a Kutchi Bhatia and it was sad to hear that in our native place, there are only 300 Kutchi Bhatia people now in existence. I visited all our community structures (temples, festival halls, schools) during the course of the day.
The next day, I headed over to Bhuj to catch the bus to the Rann Utsav. The system set up the Gujarat Tourism department was immaculate. Well before I had left for Gujarat, my security pass had arrived in the mail with my tent number assigned and mentioned. Back at Bhuj, our bus left on time and when we reached the venue, check in was done in ten minutes flat which included my luggage being transported for me and ready at my tent before I entered it. For 600 people coming down to the venue at one time, this is an achievement which even the world's finest hotels will face a tough time beating.
The venue is in the middle of nowhere (just south of the white desert). There is a nice video of the white desert on YouTube here. We step out of the tent ad stare right into the desert. I have attached a picture of our camp and our view from our tents. The tent itself is very simple and basic but no complaints. Breakfast was excellent which included the traditional 'Bhavnagar na Marcha' (a chilly from the Bhavnagar area which is huge in size but not at all spicy and can be eaten raw). You will be hard pressed to find this outside Gujarat. Pic attached. We then proceeded to see some traditional Kutch villages. The best sight here was seeing a small hut with a satellite dish outside (pic attached). We then headed to venture into the white desert. As I mentioned earlier, our camp is located a short walk from the entrance to the white desert. We passed through the Border Security Force check post (as soon as the desert ends, you come across the Indo-Pakistan border) and entered the desert to watch the sun set. The reason the Great Rann of Kutch is called the white desert is because in India's summer monsoon, the flat desert of salty clay and mudflats, which average 15 meters above sea level, fill with standing waters. This soon solidifies and the entire desert looks like a flat marble patch. It's completely white and solid. And hence as the moon shines, the entire place lights up as if diamonds are radiating from the ground. You can see a video of the same on YouTube here. In winter (as in now), the Great Rann of Kutch is a breeding ground for flamingos and pelicans. It is the only place in India where flamingos come to breed and is home to 13 species of lark. Needless to say, as the sun set, it was a beautiful sight as you could watch the entire sun slowly setting in the horizon while the desert slowly started to gleam.
As we headed back, we noticed the convoy of the Chief Election Commissioner of the Republic of India headed towards the white desert. The 2012 Gujarat legislative assembly election is currently underway and Kutch is due for polling on December 17. Even the Election Commissioner of India could not stay away from the captivating beauty of the white desert.
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Historical significance of Madhapar
Pakistan's military operation of carrying out pre-emptive strikes on Indian airbases in December 1971 war was code-named 'Chengiz Khan'. But it was thanks to "200 Jhansi ki Ranian" in Madhapar that the Indian armed forces in this sector could measure up to this 'Chengiz Khan'. Bhuj was then a forward area air base on the western border meant only to be used during active war. The attacks began on December 3 and by 9, a total of 136 bombs had been dropped on to the airfield, out of which nearly 64 bombs landed on a single night, i.e., the intervening night of December 8 and 9, reducing the runway to a rubble.
Unnerved by the constant bombing, while the town people, including the entire manual workforce fled Bhuj, about 200 women folk from the village of Madhapar came to Indian Air Force's aid (the village is known for its exceptional masonry skills and hence all the men of the village migrate out of the state to other parts of India, Asia and the middle east while the children, women and elderly stay in the village). "When the people were fleeing, the then district collector N Gopalaswami, who later headed the Election Commission, hopped on to a motorcycle, announcing on a megaphone that people should not panic, but the exodus wouldn't stop," recalls then commanding officer of Bhuj Airbase Wing Commander (retired) Vijay Karnik.
Karnik was a squadron leader then. A day before the bombing, he had been asked to keep the runway ready to receive a squadron of fighter planes from Punjab. Since Jamnagar had started bombing Karachi port and fuel dumps, Indian military was expecting retaliation on the western borders and wanted to use Bhuj actively. But with this airfield gone, and the labour force abandoning town, the task looked impossible, until his friend, the sarpanch from the affluent Madhapur village called up. "Behnon ko le ke aaun?" (do I get the sisters?) he asked.
Soon 200 women arrived at the airfield. "They brought their own food while we had the construction material ready. After a short briefing on how to protect themselves during an air raid, they started work," Karnik recalled, adding he had managed a combat air patrol to keep the skies safe during the repair work. Karnik's wife, Usha remembers how the brightly attired women sang while they passed on 'taslas' (metal containers) full of stones and concrete. They finished repairs in two days and after another two days of sweeping the airstrip clean, the runway was declared operational which became a turning point in the war.
Three days later, the ceasefire was declared. In December-end, the then prime minister Indira Gandhi arrived in town. Indira made sure she met the women at the Circuit House. She then declared at a public meeting in Jubilee Baug, "Pehle hamare paas ek Jhansi ki Rani thi, aaj hamare paas yeh 200 Jhansi ki ranian hain" (earlier we had one Rani of Jhansi, we have now have 200).
Madhapar village, which was recently in the limelight for the distinction of having Rs 2,000 crore worth of deposits in its local banks, was very affluent even in 1971. Every household had at least one NRI member to send remittances back home.
"The village boasted of a fridge in every house and you could even see Mercedes and other cars in the houses. But, despite the affluence, they had an unusual tradition of making the women do manual labour, often on the roadside, even though they were educated. Sarpanch's own wife and daughter would work on construction sites for at least two hours a day, while the former worked in the farm," recalls Wg Cdr Vijay Karnik.
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