A Canvas White

There are places that make your think of the end of the world – or perhaps a new beginning. The Rann of Kutch in Gujarat is a land unlike any: stark and beautiful with a mesmerising dash of colour.

There are 20 of us on the bus. The front rows are cribbing about the journey that I have supposedly dragged them into. Despite the occasional sarcastic remark, I am happy. I’ve done this before, and know what to expect. I’ve told them, “Wait till that road comes up. And you’re surrounded on both sides by nothing.” I know what to expect. I’ve seen this before. Then again, I haven’t. Or maybe my brain has suppressed this memory. Stored it away, slyly showing me glimpses but never the entire truth.

The road from Ahmedabad to Dholavira is straight—the occasional turns and u-turns come mostly as we near the destination. It’s flat. Mostly arid, spotted with the occasional farm and, farther on, salt production units. Marshes being harvested for salt. There are about 30 km left when, suddenly, everything goes white. On both sides of a double laned road, the landscape is unending, blank, reflecting the glare of the sun straight into your eyes. The sun is high in the sky but descending, for it is afternoon. The Rann has finally arrived. There is silence in the bus. Everyone is gazing out, looking at the white. Scarily beautiful. Majestic and unending. Why did the residents of the third oldest Indus Valley Civilisation site (after Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro) put themselves on an island? This was sea then. Leading to nothing. Why would they put themselves so far from land?

Bhim Raoji guides us through the site very meticulously and dutifully. He has been here since the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) first started excavating the site, and learnt what he knows from the banter he caught and, later, from the archaelogists themselves. “This big cylinder,” he pats a column-like structure, actually a sphere shaped like an hourglass, “was the base for a massive statue of a man sitting. It is now in Delhi.” Unlike Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, Dholavira was constructed with a specific architectural plan, he tells us. There was a guided structure, a citadel, a middle town and a lower town. He guides us past several small ‘houses’ in the citadel, a huge reservoir for water, a sewer system that could put to shame Mumbai and several other cities in India, and then shows the coup degráce. Except, there isn’t much to see. He points towards a spot, covered up right now for restoration, where the artefact sat. It was a signboard. The most complex and longest arrangement of the Harappan script found to date. The Harappans had arranged and set pieces of gypsum to form 10 large symbols or letters on a big wooden board. This, too, resides in Delhi.

Dholavira’s beauty isn’t in the site itself. It’s not beautiful, honestly. Most visitors are disappointed. It seems like a pile of rocks, with the occasional recognisable column or wall. A mound of dirt, surrounded by the white sand. There is a corner of the site compound, where the wall is at its highest, marked by trees. Once upon a time, that was perhaps the sighting point for a sentry in the citadel and it provides the best vantage point, even today, of the surrounding Rann. That great white desert, a parched earth, that was water aeons before we ended up there.

Soon, an avalanche of schoolchildren floats into the site. There are at least 100 and, true to their teenaged, enthusiatic, exuberant physiology, they keep chattering away among themselves, screaming, shouting, pointing at stuff and creating a din in the middle of nowhere. For a minute you kid yourself and try to put this situation in a time several millennia past, and imagine the din to be that of a buzzing marketplace within the citadel walls. Then, one kid pulls out a selfie stick. The drive back is long. Much longer than the drive in. We aren’t going back. We are off to Bhuj, to the south, for a glimpse of the ‘actual’ Rann. For the Rann Utsav. Two months of festival in the middle of the desert. Accommodation in luxury tents, beautiful sunsets and sunrises and several means of experiencing Kutchi art, craft and culture in between.

We pause to watch the sun set. It is undeniably beautiful, unreplicable in pictures. With or without Photoshop. A travesty if there was one. The sky is a bowl of water, the sun a tablet of paint, throwing colours and patterns which swirl around till they rest at the bottom. There is no order to this. Purple follows pink, follows yellow, follows blue, follows another yellow, and, wait, is that green! Again, this too, is unreplicable. Graphic artist be warned, kitsch is only allowed to nature.

By the time we get to the Rann itself—in Dhordo, where the tent city is pitched for the season—it is past midnight and cold. We rush to our tents and burrow in for the night. Not for too long, though, I promise myself. There is a sunrise to be caught.

There are two things that define the Rann of Kutch for what it is, the great white salt desert, and the Kutchi people, among the most artistic—and colourful—in the world. Someone reminds me that there is also the gadkhar, the wild ass, the symbol of Gujarat that never will be. There is an argument to be made for this, my far more knowledgeable friend tells me. He raves on about how the lion is an inappropriate symbol, and how it signifies only pride and arrogance, but I’ve lost him midway (he keeps it up, and I agree with him eventually), watching the sun rise. 

Some may say that it is the stark whiteness of the Rann that makes the Kutchi people embellish their attire with bright, unapologetic colour. They are right. But, let us, for the sake of romance and the silliness, not throw out the theory that maybe, they don’t design their clothes to stand out on the earth as much as they do to mimic their morning skies. It’s crazy and untrue, but believable. 

This is another specialty of the Rann Utsav. The enormous hit of Kutchi culture it gives you. The utsav is a handicraft haven where you can buy from the artisans themselves. The stalls are full of mirror-worked clothes, handmade footwear and bead jewellery, most of which will not be available elsewhere in Gujarat. 

In the day, we visit Hodka, a small artist village a short drive from the tent city. There are two parts to Hodka. One is the actual village, where the artisans and craftsmen live. There is the cattle, a water reserve, khats strewn about and the occasional resident smiling at you from their homes. 

The second part is the guest village. Visitors can, for a fee (3,5OO a day for a one-room, air-conditioned hut called a bhunga, along with three meals) live in the middle of the community and learn the crafts that sustain their lives. 

Most of the leading craftsmen are craftswomen. Baya Bai, one of the best in the village, has featured in a French newspaper. There is a picture of her at work, accompanying the piece. She is one of the most skilled applique artists in the community. She is also the proud owner of five bhungas. A massive win for women in a community that doesn’t even allow free communication between genders.

 

Another woman opens the door to an innocuous-looking hut for the gathering. The kaleidoscope of handicrafts is enormous: wood carving, pottery, lac-ware, stuffed toys of dancers and camels and turbaned riders on horses, and bells. As we walk into another village later, almost all the huts lay out a spread for us. It seems almost rude to buy from one when they are all equally beautiful. Maybe I could buy a village, I remark to a fellow traveller. Sure, and soon they’ll be dressing their ware in pastels, he says as he walks away. 

I understand his cynicism. You cannot possibly imagine designing or visualising these colours if you aren’t from here.

(Facing page)The ruins of the ancient civilisation of lJholavira; the landscape 

of Kutch is stark and barren, yet evocative and picturesque; (this page) a handc rafted bag on a colourful door in Dhordo 

They do not belong anywhere, but here. When I get back, I look at my purchases from the craft stalls to find a sombre red and grey shawl and an assortment of little mementos in the bright hues of Kutch. They are too crazily-coloured for the city. Too kitschy, too absurd and too surreal for the grey cityscape. My friends happily lap them up. I keep the shawl.

Evenings in the Rann are mostly melancholic. A walk is in order, and the tourism department has smartly built a thin, wooden footpath (almost like a galley plank) that leads into the salt marsh itself. The more adventurous step off the plank and walk on the salt. Your first step seems like it’s on snow. A gentle crunch and then it settles. Almost everyone bends down to pick up the crystals, scrutinising them, making sure they aren’t being conned. No, this is salt. It was water years ago. Not anymore. 

It is the opening day of the festival. At one point, just as the sun is setting, the expanse of people almost seems like an exodus. There are camel carts and c/zak/as (motorcycle rickshaws) ferrying people around. A song and dance exhibition is taking place in another corner of the Rann, a few kilometres away. Occasionally, the sound filters through. 

The real utsav, though, is here in the vastness of the Rann, with the moon shining above you, a wind blowing across your face, and an eerie silence despite the huge crowd. You would travel across the world for a few minutes of this.

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