The camel decoration song

Ola !!

A very happy new 2011 to all.

The holiday season always brings with it its own joys and pleasures. Mine took me to the desert state of Rajasthan this winter.

We rented a cab and drove around the state for a week visiting Jaipur(bleh!!) , Jodhpur, Udaipur, Pushkar and Jaisalmer.

This post is about a 13 year old boy called Ashraf from Jaisalmer.
We reached Jaisalmer at midday driving from Jodhpur. The highway being maintained by the army was smooth. But it ran right through the middle of the thar desert. On a moderate winter afternoon with a clear sky, the highway seemed to go on and on to eternity.

The expression "in the middle of nowhere" came to mind. We counted ourselves lucky to see humanity once every 10 kilometers. The sight of a tree amidst the scrubs and bushes every once in 20 minutes was very unusual.

The place is vast, empty and devoid of life. The only notable signboard throughout the 270 km journey was "Pokhran". The valley worse than the one we were in where India had conducted its 2 nuclear tests.

Such was the loneliness of the place, that everything around seemed unwanted. The plants, the people and the desert sands.

Post lunch, we were driven from Jaisalmer to Khuri, further into the unceasing desert just 70 kilometers from the border with Pakistan.

Khuri is literally in the middle of nowhere. It has tents and camels surrounded by sand for miles together. At Khuri, a camel ride awaited to take us into the dunes. Ashraf, greeted me with a smile and we got talking. Me on the camel and him walking alongside. I would have loved to trade places because camel rides arent exactly comfortable on your "important areas".

Another 5 kilometers and the sand dunes grew out of the ground. Ashraf told me that if I got stranded any further than where we were, then the wise thing to do would be to die peacefully at one place.




He told me this with a grin. Ashraf's 13. He's walked his camel right from the time it was born. It's been his best friend. Pretty much the only friend in those parts. He went to school something about 5-6 kilometers away on the camel till he was 8 and then felt that he was wasting his time.

I'm not sure how schools in rajasthan function but I certainly felt that the boy had tried going to school. Things hadn't really worked out for him both academically and financially. So he quit.

On first thought, one would say he was stupid to leave behind a rosy future. But then again, one has to live in the present, survive the ongoing day, sleep through the cold nights of the desert to get to tomorrow. Certainly, his priorities were surviving today rather than dreaming of a bejewelled tomorrow.

Back from the dunes, Ashraf and some of his friends had an entertainment program. It's how they made their living. Camels, folk songs, some traditional instruments around a big bonfire.
They we're ready to share their cultures with the dumbstruck "goras"(foriegners) as Ashraf calls them. So the entertainment began, with Ashraf on the drums and some folk songs. Dance by a girl no more than 12 or 13 stacking pots on her head.

One of the songs was called the camel decoration song. It reflected in many ways, their lives. Walking a few miles everyday with pots on their heads to get water, decorating camels, farming desert beans etc. Their lives were intertwined with the desert as yours and mine are with the internet.

As the bonfire denigrated into a soft red glow of ashes and charcoal, the biting cold of the desert night bit into my skin through the layers of the reebok jacket. But Ashraf was unaffected. Wearing but a cotton kurta his enthusiasm for entertaining his guests never dwindled. He dint wear footwear for he never needed it.

One factor that really struck me was the zeal with which they explained each of their acts to the outsiders. I'm pretty sure they never learnt english the way we do. Despite language barriers, they put across their ideas exuberantly. They were even eager for feedback and took our ideas like it really mattered to them.

As the night grew quickly, and the desert sky was black with twinkling stars, it had been an experience worth remembering. In many ways, I'd seen the old India, with "athiti devo bhava" as the motto, full of talent but secluded and subdued.
Did it matter that he was muslim and could have crossed over from Pakistan, a country that many of us despise? He was more indian than many of us will ever be.

Ashraf was extremely enthusiastic about what he does. I'm from a bustling city, so it dint make sense to me why he would be so upbeat about singing the same songs day in and day out. Or why he would be excited about walking the same camel with a different person on it everyday. Or about why he would beat the same drum to entertain people every evening.

Maybe he dint have a choice. This is what he had to do to survive. I went in there thinking he was entertaining me. In reality, I was his entertainment. Meeting different people from around the globe everyday is their only entertainment. That's the best education that they have.

I tried talking Ashraf into going back to school but he wouldn't budge. But then again, his priority was to get through another cold night to see the rising sun again.