Not only did its mud houses, art and music in its soul and the star lit skies of Hodka village cushioned him from the city’s jostle but also the barren stretch of Rann of Kutch made the writer shed his inhibitions. Johny ML shares with us his experience of this unforgettable place.
Let me wake up the Bacon in me: Some places are to be visited once, some twice, some never. They are to be cherished in memories. There are several places like that we never want to visit because the beauty of it lies in never visiting them. The magic ends when you get there. It is like personal relationships. There are very people on this earth who remain a mystery even after knowing them closely. There are places we learn in our history and geography text books which we don’t even dream of visiting. But one day, after decades you happen to be there, for some reason, professional or poetical or call it the poetic justice of destiny. Black letters printed on white papers become live and colorful reality, which perhaps you refuse to accept in wonderment. You walk into them as if in a dream. Kutch was one such place which I never thought of visiting. But one day a professional assignment took me there, exactly to Hodka Village and its wonderful Shaam-E-Sharhad Village resort.
Memories flood in. I was talking to Sushma, a news reader in All India Radio on 26th January 2001. From the other end of the phone she asked me whether I felt any tremor. I looked up and saw the ceiling fan oscillating frantically. Suddenly I felt the tremor. The whole of North India felt it. By the time the tremor subsided, there at the north west of India in Gujarat, Bhuj had crumbled down like a castle of cards. As a journalist I was asked to visit the place and report; I was tired of journalism so I refused to budge from Delhi. But destiny took me there in 2009, another winter season but with the earth behaving properly. We drove from Baroda to Ahmedabad and from there to the Hodka village.
Narendra Modi was in his second term as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. He had brought in material development there and the signs of it were too visible. The first one was the broad highways and the industrial towns flanking them. Development has its ills too. The roads have divided the villages into two parts. To reach from one end of the village to the other split part, one has to travel kilometers. So you have vehicles plying in wrong directions braving death. Driving is a death defying stunt here. As you enter Bhuj, the rebuilt and rehabilitated villages come into your view. There are no signs of the devastating earthquake seen except for some broken structures waiting to be resurrected by property developers.
From Bhuj you drive towards north west and you reach the Hodka village. As you drive on, you think of eternity and as exclamation marks to your thoughts on endlessness, you see sophisticated windmills all along. Gujarat is an electricity surplus state and I am told that major companies and persons have invested in these windmills and they make good profits. Military trucks zoom past you and an occasional bike rider appear from nowhere and disappear into nowhere. Hodka Village lies at the end of world, you feel. The bhungas (conical huts made of mud and grass) tell you the presence of people. You enter into a pastoral land where people live in semi-nomadic ways. Today they are familiar with presences of visitors and tourists. They have learnt about the worth of their lives, their crafts and art as new patrons come in the form of tourists and visitors.
Hodka village has Halepotra and Meghwals as the major inhabitants. The Halepotras are said to have come from Iran via Afghanistan. And the Meghwals originate from Rajasthan. These communities dare the adverse weather and live in the most hostile terrains of Gujarat. Male folk often go out to graze the cattle and the women folk engage in household works and making craft objects. Women weave, embroider, do mirror works and appliqué. They also paint the walls of their huts. The men folk by the time they come back from grazing the animals, engage in music and dance. They use drums and string instruments as accompaniments and the high pitch songs celebrate gods, earthly lives, and more importantly hail the trials and tribulations of their daily lives. There is a lot of soul in their music.
Hunnar Shala, a consortium of architects working on endogenous architecture and urban development in Bhuj, post-earthquake days adopted Hodka Village to set up a eco-friendly tourist destination using the village resources, tribal knowledge and indigenous architectural methods. Named Shaam-E-Sharhad (where the sun sets), this village tourist resort is now the centre of Hodka village. Hunnar Shala has developed three Bhungas and seven tents with state of the art facilities (including western commode and hot water shower). Shaam E Sharhad, the completely village run and village managed resort provides the guests with Kathiawari vegetarian food and soul music. Under the vast expanse of the sky studded with millions of stars, staying a couple of nights there in the mud houses is an unforgettable experience.
Shaam E Sharhad is operational during the months between October and March. The peak season is between November and February. During monsoon, the tents are taken down, the interiors are preserved and the mud structures that form the architectural part of it are washed away. The villagers re-make it in the next season that begins by October. The summer months are too severe when the men folk take their cattle to greener pastures. Nights are fantastic and during the day time you could either do some village hopping, crafts shopping or after getting permission from the local military authorities visit the white Rann of Kutch, a vast expanse of whiteness, from where you could imagine Pakistan lying at the other side of the horizon. When I was at the white expanse where earth and sun make no difference, an ethereal feeling of space, what I did was just shedding my clothes. I stood like Adam in his private heaven before Eve came for a long time till I was made conscious of the possibility of my feet eaten away by the saline content of the earth, by friends.
Hodka Village and Shaam E Sharhad village resort are famous amongst the foreign visitors. Indian visitors hardly think of spending nights there. One may visit their website and do advance bookings. This village beckons me; even if I don’t go there again, the memories stay fresh in me.
