Exactly 22 years ago, on 26 January 2001, the continental plate of India stretched a bit, relaxing kinks that had formed during the breakup of Gondwanaland 140 million years ago. The resulting earthquake, around 8 on the Richter scale, flattened the town of Bhuj. When we visited two years ago, the town had built back. Signs of this were in the profusion of metal grilles that stood where wooden doors would earlier bar an entrance. Disasters can accelerate trends, as all of us see today.
Some have gone back to the old style panelled doors which were common across the edge of the Thar desert. More than taste, it was clear that practicality was important. Open metalwork was visible where privacy was not a concern, like blocking entrance to stairs that led up to a flat on an upper floor. In the villages that cluster around the town, doors usually stand open. A locked door, like the one in the featured photo, seems to be more a symbol than actual prevention. That seems to be a nice relaxed lifestyle. What are neighbours if they cannot be trusted?
Last night I tasted Sagla Bagla for the first time. There was just a little sliver of the pastry on my plate. A diaphanous pastry crust, which looked like it would blow away at a breath, hid a sweet and creamy paste of pistachio. Coup de foudre is the only phrase I know which describes this. It’s an appropriate phrase since you wouldn’t be very wrong if you just pronounced it “coup de food”. Like all such events, it was entirely fortuitious. An old schoolmate of The Family had returned from Surat recently, and presented the nicely packed sweet to her, remembering that she was very fond of it when they were schoolgirls. The triangular package lay forgotten for some days before she exhumed it last night. Now I would gladly forgo a table loaded with all the sweets I know for another taste. It is one of India’s lesser known sweets, and I can think of nothing that deserves to be better known.
The box it came in had the name of the shop: Zaffran. I read that the sweet was first made in 1901, and the recipe is passed through the family. As far as I know, it is made by only one person, Fatimabibi, whose husband, Khalidbhai, owns the shop. Her son Aiyaz is apprenticed to her, so the recipe for this Bohra delicacy can pass on to another generation. Fatimabibi makes the pastry filling from pistachio, cashew, sugar, and cardamom. The flaky crust of maida, called manda, is rolled in the bakery. When the manda is ready, it is cut, stuffed with the filling and lightly baked. This recipe is said to be a riff on something which Khalidbhai’s grandfather tasted during his travels in the Middle East and Levant.
Amazingly, The Family had completely forgotten about the sweet. Not only did the sight of the box not jog a memory, even the taste did not (take that blow, Proust). But this is not a sweet I’m going to let disappear from my life. I will pursue it.
Where do mushrooms grow? I’d thought that wet decomposing leaves and wood are their niche. So I was quite surprised to see them growing out of bare ground in the Rann of Kutch, and almost completely ignoring the few twigs and leaves nearby. A couple of weeks later, I saw the same varieties at the edge of the Thar desert. The Rann is part of the Thar desert, so the commonality did not surprise me. But seeing mushrooms in that habitat took me aback. I had to take photos.
I know a couple of other dedicated fungivores. This tribe is as uncommon in urban India as wine drinkers were twenty years ago. With this tiny tribe I’m trying to figure out whether we can find edible mushrooms. There is a difference between a wine drinker and a mushroom eater: a wrong choice could kill one, but not the other. So the first step is to document the mushrooms that we see, before we go on to try to find whether they are edible. I think I managed to photograph all the ground-living varieties more than once.
As it turned out, this was also an opportunity to learn something new. Mushrooms, as you may know, are the fruiting bodies of fungi. The body of the fungus is a mass of filaments that lives and grows underground or in dying wood. They are neither plant nor animal, but an entirely different kingdom of life. What I was surprised to learn is that fungi grow in all kinds of enviroments: polar valleys and glaciers, deserts and salt flats (aha, for the Rann and the Thar). All that is required seems to be oxygen. It also turns out that understanding the ecological niches they inhabit is an active area of research. The moment you move out of admiring plants and animals, you hit the boundaries of human knowledge!
The forest department is meant to conserve ecology. Unfortunately, they interpret their job to mean they are supposed to grow forests. As a result, they are changing the desert scrub ecology of the Rann of Kutch by planting white bark acacia (Vachellia leucophloea). These plants have nitrogen fixing nodules in their roots, which are useful when you want to green a desert. That may be part of the reason why the forest department likes it. This acacia also grows naturally in other parts of the Thar desert. So, maybe, this experiment is not as bad as the one carried out in the 1970s, when the desert was seeded by the exotic mesquite Prosopsis juliflora. But the Rann of Kutch is a special habitat, and reduing the space for its distinctive flora and fauna creates a sudden change in ecology which will have effects that we cannot predict. But then, maybe none of this matters. Maybe the rising seas will reclaim the Rann very soon.
On our last evening’s attempt to spot birds in the Rann, I found myself quite distracted by the greenery. We walked gingerly between the trees, but there was little to see. You see a typical stand of white bark acacias here: spindly trunks with white bark spreading out a little above your head. The older bark turns rough and dark as the tree ages. The canopy is full of the typical feathery mimosa leaves. The flowers are very interesting, as you can see in the slideshow above. The dense round collection of white flowers are called glomerules, and they grow in a multiply branched stem called a panicle. That picture does a good job of explaining the words.
But there were too many trees, and the birds were avoiding this place. We moved away into the open land and were immediately rewarded by multiple sightings: silverbills, larks, warblers, robins, flycatchers. A single bird came and sat on a branch of a tree right at the edge of the open scrub. It was the grey-necked bunting (Emberiza buchanani) that you see in the photo above. In the setting sun and against the bright green background its drab brown plumage looks red.
Aak (Calotropis procera), named rubber bush, is the typical dry area plant. You won’t find it deeper in the Thar desert, but the bushes were visible around rocks everywhere we went. In the Rann of Kutch they seem to be usually less than two meters high. Usually they attract ants, so I keep a watch on the small purple five-petalled flowers to see what kinds of ants I can spot. In Kutch, as the featured photo shows, I didn’t manage to get the flowers with any ants at all.
The succulent called Thor (Euphorbia caducifolia) is the commonest plant in this region. I spotted lots of birds sitting on a projecting stem of the bushes. You can see an Indian Robin in the photo on the left above. They can grow well above a man’s height, 3 meters often, taller sometimes. It flowers in late winter. If you want to see what the local insects are, keep a watch on its flowers at that time. They attract many of local insects wherever they grow.
Another succulent that is widely found in the desert is the Aak Thor (Cynanchum acidum). It has attractive tiny six-petalled white flowers (6 is not a Fibonacci number) which were budding from the ends of the stem; you can see them most of the year except in the winter months. It seems to be a climber. I saw stems trailing on the ground when there’s nothing else growing nearby.
The Rann of Kutch is full of many different kinds of grass or millets growing wild. I find myself completely unable to identify grasses. I’ll have to spend time learning more about this group. Many of them were in bloom at this time, immediately after the monsoon.
The low bushes of Kana (Commelina benghalensis) were very visible even from speeding cars, because of the attractive three-petalled blue flowers. There was a variant in purple which was also quite widespread. The flowers are large, petals can be half a centimeter in size. It seemed that a plant can either have blue or purple flowers, but they can grow quite close to each other. That makes me suspect that the colour is determined by genetics rather than soil.
Thorny nightshade (Solanum virginianum), Kateli in Hindi, is again a plant that is common in most dry areas in India. I’ve seen it deep inside the Thar Desert as well. Here you see the five-petalled flower poking out from under a different bush. Kateli is a spreading herb, and this particular plant was spread along the ground below this other bush. You can see it flowering around the year, except in the monsoon months.
Perhaps the commonest tree that I saw was the Khair (Senegalia catechu). It happened to be in flower. It is a typical mimosa, with the feathery leaves (called pinnate by botanists), flowers with wire-like petals, and thin gnarly trunks. They grew up to a man’s height, and spread out thorny branches which were exactly at the wrong height for me. if you add the Kair (Capparis decidua, bare caper), which I’ve written about earlier, I think I’ve listed the most widespread plants which I noticed in this area.
Gertrude, do visit Bhuj to correct your mistake. (You too William; a rose would taste as sweet.) I had heard much about the chain of sweet shops in Bhuj called Khavda. Not being a Kutchi speaker, I assumed that the name was the imperative case of the verb “eat”. So I was quite surprised later when I passed the village of the same name. Apparently the shops are called after the village, because the family which owns the chain comes from there.
My first reaction was “A typical sweet shop.” Their topmost shelf displayed something called roasted barfi (that’s the tray on the right in the photo above). I asked for a sampler. The Family looked at me quizzically. “I’m full. And in this heat I don’t want to taste any sweets,” she said. When it comes to sweets (rather, when I come to sweets) I set no conditions; the antique Greeks called it agape. The barfi was nice, but it couldn’t be what they are famous for.
The Family didn’t want me to do a systematic taste test to figure out what they are famous for. She short circuited the process by asking the friendly young owner of the franchise. He pointed out the rose sweets. Two of them lay in trays side by side, in an obscure shelf. Clearly you don’t need to make a fuss about displaying what everyone knows is your best. The one on the left was the regular rose, and the other was roasted. This time The Family joined me in the tasting. The roasted rose passed muster. We packed a box to share with the bird watching group which would assemble the next day. Watching birds makes you a little peckish, I find.
“Anything else?” I asked Siddharth, the young man. He pointed out the special rose sweet, each individually packed. How long would it last? A couple of days without refrigeration. We couldn’t take it with us on the trip but we would pass through Bhuj again on our way out. Except that we would arrive very late and leave early in the morning. “Not a problem,” Sid told us. “We’ll deliver a box to your hotel.” That was done then. He sealed the deal by offering us a sampler of salties. The Family added a couple of them. She feels peckish too after a morning’s birdwatching.
It was the week of Ganapati puja, the equinox, and the beginning of the festival season. So the countertop was laden with trays of modak. I sent a photo to friends as my way of wishing them. Some are purists. One wrote back “These aren’t modak. They are just pedha stamped out in modak-shaped molds.” That’s right. The true modak is a thin rice-flour shell filled with grated coconut sweetened with molasses, folded into that beautiful shape before steaming. And they are made at home.
Kutch is a flat land, a sea bottom raised in geologically recent times by the motion of the Indian continental plate. When Alexander’s army came to India, the Rann of Kutch was a vast inland lake. Now it is the southern end of the Thar desert. A plane so flat that large parts are covered in a millimeters thin sheet of water every monsoon, then baked dry the rest of the year, it is perfect for generating renewable power. For years, isolated families in this region have installed solar panels for their own use. Now they install wind turbines and pumping the output into the national grid.
The people I was traveling with laughed when I started taking photos of the pylons which criss cross this land. But I find that these impossibly tall towers have a poetry of their own. They are a first glimpse of our future. They are impressive when you stand near them. Low down on them falcons alight and scan the desert for prey. Buzzards build nests on the second rung of the towers. Ipomoea grows dense around the bases, taller than a man, but can’t climb beyond the first rung. The power lines which they support do not seem to pose a hazard to flying birds. Most fly well below them. Others fly far above.
But when you see lines of these columns disappearing over the horizon, you see what a light footprint they cast on this land. That tiptoeing through the landscape, like giraffes on the veldt, seems to be the only sustainable future for us. You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows, as Bob Dylan famously sang.
Each village in the Rann of Kutch seems to have a craft that it is known for. Since we decided to skip lunch on our day of arrival, we decided to visit a nearby village that The Family had marked down as a place of interest. This was the village of Bhujoda, and it was known for its woven woolens. The craft is very traditional and utilizes hand looms. The looms are made in a different village.
Each family has its own “factory”. This is a large courtyard where women card and dye the yarn (see the featured photo). Traditionally only earth and vegetable colours were used. We were told that the bright colours that people prefer today started to be used about a generation ago. The Family was enchanted by the traditional weaves: whites, browns, earth reds, black. The men work at the looms. A painstaking job. At one end of the courtyard was the family’s residence. A young girl offered us tea, and we were glad to accept.
Some of the things on display had Kutchi mirrorwork. That is done is yet another village which specializes in it. The cloth from this village is sent there, and the two families involved share the profits. I’ve seen villages specialize in crafts before in other parts of the country. But I hadn’t had the time to ask whether they have the same level of specialization.
In a completely different part of Kutch, deep in the Rann, we came to a village called Bhirandiara. It’s speciality is mawa, made from milk obtained from nomadic herders. These herders are perhaps the oldest inhabitants of this desert. The colourful mirrored cloth which Kutch is known for is their normal dress. We stopped in this village for a chai after spotting the marbled duck, and tasted this famous mawa, surrounded by crowds of the herders. I wished I had the time to travel through the Rann. Perhaps we’ll do that some other time.
Ram Singh Malam, the Kutchi polymath, designed a palace for Rao Lakhpatji, a rajah with an equally wide-ranging mind. It was called Aaina Mahal. A literal translation would be Palace of Mirrors. I prefer to call it the Palace of Illusions. When it was built in 1750 it must have been a stunning sight. Faults in the Indian continental plate which developed 180 million years ago during the breakup of ancient Gondwanaland triggered an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 on Republic Day, 2001, in Kutch. Bhuj is about 20 kilometers away from the epicenter, and the palace was badly damaged. It had housed the state museum. In the aftermath of the quake, many of the pieces that remained were stolen. The restoration is slow because of the lack of funds.
Ram Singh Malam’s Aaina Mahal seen from the entrance of St. Clair Wilkins’ Prag Mahal. The cannon presented by Tipu Sultan is in the foreground. Details of Aina mahal on the right. Click to expand.
A small part of the palace has been restored and is on display, as part of the state museum. The rooms are now overcrowded, and you have to spend time to examine all that is on display. I’m afraid that the time we spent was not adequate. Still, I must make special mention of the doors in this palace. Fantastically decorated doors are a specialty around the Indian Ocean, from Kerala to Konkan, north around the coast in Gujarat and Arabia, and down to Zanzibar and Malindi. Even among them, these are amazing. I wonder which was the door that a colonial Governor General was prevented from taking away as a gift to Queen Victoria.
This is also a good place to say something about the architect, Ram Singh Malam, whose portrait hangs in one of the galleries of the palace. Little is known about his early life, except that he was born in Okha, at the mouth of the Gulf of Kutch. His early life was spent as a sailor. He was rescued from a shipwreck by a Dutch ship bound for Netherlands, where he spent eighteen years learning a variety of crafts: glassblowing, architecture, clock making, enamel work, foundry and gun casting, to name a few. You can see his influence in the cast iron structure of Aina Mahal, and its once-famous mirrors.
The mirrored ceilings were an invention of Malam. The gallery around the room called the Fuvara Mahal, the wonderfully designed music chamber, the bedchambers, and the inner corridor all have ceilings in this style. They require restoration, but given the magnitude of the post-earthquake restoration needed, I was happy that at least they gave some indication of the former opulence of this palace. The Kutchi school of painting developed largely due to the royal patronage given at this time. I was entranced by the painting with the flamingos. It catches the terrible beauty of the Rann very nicely. I was happy to see a portrait of Rao Lakhpatji eventually in a niche in one corner. The tour of the palace would have seemed incomplete without portraits of him and his architect, Ram Singh Malam.
The most relaxed part of bird watching comes when you are not really looking for a particular bird. You just stand in the open, soaking in the atmosphere of the shoreline, or the forest, or the open scrubland, while birds go past you, or go about their lives as you watch. Some of this happened to us every day during our trip to the Rann of Kutch.
White-breasted Kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis)
Pied Crested Cuckoo (Clamator jacobinus)
Indian robin male (Copsychus fulicatus)
Indian robin female (Copsychus fulicatus)
Barred Buttonquail (Turnix suscitator)
Red-naped Ibis (Pseudibis papillosa)
The first day, on the drive from Bhuj to Nakhatrana, we spotted many birds on the road. You can see some of them in the slideshow above. On this morning’s drive we also managed to sight three of the passage migrants that we had gone to see. We spent a long time trying to look for the European nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus). This is another of the passage migrants. We never spotted it, neither that day, nor the next. This was our big miss.
Green bee eaters (Merops orientalis)
Little egret (Egretta garzetta), glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) and Indian cormorant (Phalacrocorus fuscicollis)
That afternoon, our first in the Rann of Kutch, we managed to spot two more of the passage migrants. After that we spent an hour walking about spotting birds, some which I knew well, others which I’d seen less often. At times like this you can concentrate on photography, especially interesting configurations. In spite of the heat, I felt very relaxed.
Eurasian marsh Harrier (Circus aeruginosus)
Common Redshank (Tringa totanus)
Indian spot-billed duck (Anas poecilorhyncha)
Temminck’s Stint (Calidris temminckii)
Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus)
The next afternoon yielded the final passage migrant and the rare marbled duck. But apart from that we had a wonderful time watching waders and ducks. These are birds which one sees very commonly in Mumbai, but I’ve missed them in the lockdowns of the last years. It was nice to stand there and watch them foraging.
Painted Sandgrouse (Pterocles indicus)
Red-wattled lapwing (Vanellus indicus)
Ashy-crowned sparrow lark (Eremopterix griseus)
Grey-necked Bunting (Emberiza buchanani)
The morning of our second full day in the Rann of Kutch was spent in another fruitless hunt of the European nightjar. The saving grace of the morning was a sighting of a Painted Sandgrouse (Pterocles indicus). We had a really lovely time in the afternoon. The featured photo is one of the last I took on the trip. It shows a White-tailed Iora (Aegithina nigrolutea, also Marshall’s Iora). Everything we had gone to see was done, and it was time to enjoy the beauty of the landscape and its bird life.
Don't hold your breath 