Bhuj

The 16th Century Barefoot Geologists of Kutch.

Before the colonial powers, electricity, dams and other technology came along, it seems like our ancestors were pretty clever when it came to using whatever little knowledge they had to make use of the most important scarce resource of them all - water.

There are several that can be listed but one good selection of those stories can be found in a book by Nitya Jacob called Jal Yatra.

One story that is missing in that book is the story of Hamirsar. The artificial lake that forms the heart of Bhuj and reason for its existence.

Hamirsar. A 100 years back.

The return of Common Sense.

Hamirsar must be the only clean lake found in the heart of an Indian city at the moment. The water is actually clean. You cannot smell it and that can be shocking for any city bred Indian who sees the lake. These Kachchis must be a different breed from the rest of us, except for this. 'Pooja Items'.

However, a decade back, this lake was just like any other lake in an Indian city. A relative of Hussainsagar or Ulsoor lake. The poor Hamirsar was dead until the earthquake shook the people of Bhuj. The lake was cleaned up and revitalised after that.

How Hamirsar was built.

To feed rain water into the Hamirsar lake must have involved an army of people following the instruction of some brilliant mind or minds. It is named after the founder of Bhuj, Rao Hamir. It is his son and his successors who actually built the lake and extended its catchment area. This is a rough map of the system that brings in the water from the surrounding hills. It's a system of small reservoirs, channels, and tunnels. Care is taken to avoid saline rocks that can contaminate the water. This worked for nearly 450 years.



The system fell into disuse in the second half of the last century. Wells, water pumps and other modern methods reduced the water inflow into the lake. This coupled with our legendary love for cleanliness ensured that the lake was almost killed when the earthquake struck Bhuj 10 years back.

What followed was one of the most interesting rebuilding exercise any region of India has seen. Kutchis stopped and listened to the ground beneath their feet. They realised that there was common sense and sustainability in the system that helped create the city of Bhuj in the first place. They revived the Hamirsar Lake System.

The Barefoot Geologists of Kutch are only following the same example set by their forefathers, 450 years back.

Bhuj + Naliya. Kutch

Barefoot Geologists 2:
The world beneath their feet.

Geologically, Kutch is one of the newest regions of the Indian Subcontinent.It shook its way up from the seabed rather recently. It continues to shake often and rises up inch by inch and the memory of that is all too recent.

To see how new it is, take a look at Kutch on one of the satellite photos or Google Earth. A large section of Kutch is beautiful white and salty, or there are a nice patterns of white created by flowing water and there are the rectangles of man-made salt pans in the Little Rann.

This also means that the most of rocks and soil here have salt in them. The rainwater that flows over and into them become saline and adds to the difficulty of obtaining useful water .

This is a Geological map of Kutch made by ONGC, The Oil and Natural Gas Commission. Many decades back they went prospecting for liquid gold - the black one in this case. I'm not sure if they found anything useful for themselves but the same mapping can be pretty useful if you are looking for the real liquid gold of the arid lands - water.

If you know the nature of the rocks and soil, you can pin point where you are likely to find sweet water. And if you know where to find them, you can collect rain water or channelise rain water to them and if possible store them for the dry days.

Imagine, taking that valuable data down to the individual village level. You pinpoint the right place, channelise rain water, store them and dig a well.

That's exactly what the Barefoot Geologists do. Armed with detailed maps of each village in the driest taluk of Kutch, they have made them drought proof.

The Barefoot Geologists call their project: Pani Thiye Panjo or Water Becomes You.

And if there are contaminants and salts, they can destroy you.

The Bible, Gita and Quran.

This book contains the hydro-geological maps of every single village in Abdasa Taluk. It also has the topography that allows the villagers, led by Barefoot geologists to build water channels to places where sweet water can be stores and wells can be dug, making the village drought proof.

But maps are useless without tried and tested methods to measure the reality on the ground and underneath it. The Barefoot Geologists are trained to use tools, instruments and tests to what lies beneath.


"Our job is to understand the janamkindli (birth charts) of the local rock formations" says, Velji, one of the Barefoot Geologists.

Who trains them? Who funds them? And what is the effect of their work?

Over the next few posts, I will take you to four villages from different regions of the taluk where the wells have been dug.

Pingleswar, Abdassa Tq., Kutch

 

Jayanti, Sulaiman, Velji, Jitendra, Md. Rafiq, Chandrasinh


The Barefoot Geologists of Kutch.

In the driest taluk, in the driest district of Gujarat, this small group of ordinary people have come together to make all the villages drought-proof.

Armed with geological maps including some that were made by ONGC in the 60s and 70s to hunt for oil, these Barefoot Geologists of Kutch studied the geological ground reality of each and every village. Then, they divert the little rain water that falls, in this forgotten corner of the country, to rocks and soils that are capable of storing water.

Using basic geology skills, these ordinary heroes have made it possible to give themselves precious drinking water even if the rains fail for over a year.

Who trained them? How do they fund their work? Over the next few posts, Indian Road Romeo will be showing you their work and yes, salute the people of Kutch who truly understand the value of water.

Their motto: Water becomes you.

Meet the Barefoot Geologists.

 

Naliya, Kutch

Drums, noise and hunting the tigers the Royal way. This is how we killed almost all our tigers. And I guess, Velu Pillai Prabhakaran and his cubs.

Royals. The tiger hunt firecracker.

"Dumara Dumara Dum
The tiger has come
Take a little gun/gum
And stick it on his bum"

Bhuj

Most autorikshaws in Bhuj town have this heart shaped rear window.

Abdasa Taluk, Kachch

Hair style of Kutch: Windswept.


The Kutch coast is windy. Right now, the monsoon winds sweep across the dry desert land. Without stopping. Taking away with it the rain clouds... scattering only a few drops that are not enough to quench the thirst of this parched earth. But it's good enough to generate power, many megawatts of it and to give the little girls this hairstyle.

And if you haven't noticed it. The Kutchis have the most wonderful smiles in the whole wide world.

Pingleswar, Abdassa Tq., Kutch

Monsoon 2011.

The monsoon hits the Kutch coast. There's no rain. The few drops that did fall, fell on me and the clouds just flew away. But there was electricity. And it probably lit up many homes.

This stretch of the Kutch coast, is Suzlon territory. Tall windmills line the coast, high above the salty sand and thorny shrubs. And yes, it is very windy at this time of the year. The monsoon here looks fiery but there's time before the clouds actually cause some rain.

This place also saw a Tsunami in 1945, the Great Earthquake of Kutch in 2001, and is close to the border where Pakistan started the war in 1965.

Luckily, this is a sparsely populated area, just a few kilometers south of the Sindh border.

And finally, this taluk is called Abdassa Taluk and you are not likely to find a town by that name on any map. That's because the taluk is named after a very interesting character from history. More about him, later.

Dholavira, Kachch

Archeo Postman

It’s all in a day’s work for postmen to stamp and deliver letters from all over the world, but what would you call a postman who delivered messages from a different millennium?

The ArcheoPostman?

That’s exactly what the retired postmaster of Dholavira post office, PIN Code 370165, did. And he won the Indian Postal Service Award for his work. Not for delivering messages to the residents and soldiers of the Border Security Forces in this remote village sitting on top of a raised ground, an Island name Kadir in the middle of the dry Rann Of Kutch, but for his work in archaeology.

The remains of Dholavira, a city that thrived as a trading centre during the good days of the Indus valley civilisation was first discovered in 1967-68 by JP Joshi but the excavations have been going off and on since then and earnestly only since 1989. The locals say because of the constant reminders of the postman who kept digging up interesting messages from the past.

The archaeologists came and left, but one person was a constant fixture as the wonderful city that we now call Dholavira slowly revealed itself to the world – the postmaster. He took a keen interest in the things that have been excavated here and like Ekalvya, he observed and learnt the science of archaeology from the ASI officials.

Today, this retired postmaster is a daily visitor in this ghost city that is left in the hands of a couple of temporary casual workers who once assisted the archaeology teams. And if you happen to go to Dholavira, you now know who could be your best guide.

Ask for the Postmaster Kaka.

The most unique aspect of Dholavira city are the reservoirs. The city is surrounded by massive reservoirs that stored rain water from a seasonal stream. Built in the precision Indus Valley Civilisation fashion, the water supported a trading city that was connected to the rest of the world when what is now the Great Rann of Kutch had easy access to the sea.

Read about Dholavira’s unique water harvesting reservoirs here.

Special thanks to Srinath Perur and Vinayak Varma of Brainwave Magazine. These pictures were clicked for a story in Brainwave, the science magazine for children from Amar Chitra Katha Publications, Vinayak edits. You will find it at select bookstores across India.

Read Brainwave magazine.

Bodrani, Kutch

The Door That Faces Pakistan.

This is an old door in a lonely village bordering the salty desert called as Rann of Kutch. Across the road for many kilometers is a desert and your nearest neighbour in that direction is across the border in Sindh, Pakistan.

What makes this door special is that it still stands after the great Bhuj Earthquake. The villages here were almost completely destroyed and new homes have been built. However, the new homes are all concrete and tin boxes that served their purpose soon after the destruction.





However, the old and the new coexist in this little village. The post-earthquake ones have pointed tops. Now, Back to the doors

Looks like they ran out of paint here.

The most important commodity in this harsh landscape - water.

Apparently, the monsoons have been good ever since the Great Kutch earthquake. And now, the Narmada Canal is also set to reach Kutch. But it's not likely to reach this village which is on the edge of the Rann.

And finally, the residents of this village that is on the frontline every time India and Pakistan decide to fight a war using an excuse called Kashmir but mainly to fund the Swiss Bank accounts of their rulers.