Three years ago, I went to Tharparkar to conduct training for journalists, it was summertime. The searing heat seemed to burn right through the skin, even though the exposure only lasted the few minutes of walk from the training hall to the air-conditioned guest house.

Last month, I got the opportunity to visit Tharparkar again, when the temperature was 48 but really felt like 52. And this time I realised that the bustling town of Mithi I had visited earlier was not Thar, but that the vast expanse of desert where the people lived in their thatched chowras was the real Thar.

The Thar that usually makes it into the news on two counts: deaths, and drought.

The death of the beautiful peacocks that roam the desert, strutting around once the sun sets, calling out to each other, the males showing off their jewel coloured plumage to woo the females. For the past many years, a large population of this bird is being wiped off due to a disease called ‘Ranikhet’.

Thatched hamlets (chowras) deep within the desert.

Dead tree trunk – the drought created plenty of these.

Peacocks of Thar, threatened by the 'Ranikhet' disease.

Peacocks of Thar, threatened by the 'Ranikhet' disease.

And then there is the death of newborns and very young children. How many, we will never know, because the media focuses on the ones who die in the Mithi hospitals or die on the way there.

Traveling deep into the desert, and visiting their villages, I realised that with little or no means of transport, many of the children here must have died at birth or soon after – they could not have made it to the hospital in Mithi or one of the other larger towns; these children had not even become part of the statistics.

One look at the mothers and I could see why this dance of death perpetuates. They were a picture of chronic malnutrition. I saw young girls with a child in their arms and one in their belly, as did older women, well past their 40s, who had a brood of varying sizes in tow.

It meant that they were having children for most of their reproductive lives. How many lived and how many died, no one was willing to talk about.

Babies with low birth weight have very little chance of survival against disease attack.

Repeated pregnancies throughout their reproductive lives retard the health of women.

Half-fed, half-clothed children looking for hope.

The babies, and toddlers seemed undernourished. The women were overworked and undernourished; a lethal combination leading to low weight babies, whom they are unable to nurse themselves.

Also read: 311 Thar children died in 11 months

I found this vicious cycle of extreme poverty very distressing. All along the parched landscape, we could see the evidence of drought. A degradation of the rangeland means that the health of the livestock is also compromised. Expectant mothers are not able to add milk and other dairy items to their diet because of the low productivity their goats and camels.

Walking into their courtyards, in the searing heat, I could see what a hard life they had. A poor diet, coupled with the lack of health care facilities, especially maternal and neo-natal care are the underlying reason for the pitiable conditions.

The weak mother and child are not able to cope with the extreme temperatures, and the babies, due to their greater vulnerability, eventually lose their lives. Being here, I understood well that until this cycle is broken, there is little hope of a better life for them.

A Thari woman’s life is an unending cycle of hard physical labor. I witnessed them do their household chores, this beside the most strenuous of work they do, like tending to livestock, searching for and carrying back fuel wood, and working the fields, wherever they exist.

Scorching heat and household chores; no getting away from them.

A woman's work is never done.

Malnourished mothers mean malnourished children.

I was enchanted by the exquisite rillis or patchwork bedspreads they made, and the embroidered dresses. And would have loved to have bought them, but was taken aback by their refusal. They said they were too poor to get enough raw materials to make them commercially, so for them, these are just a labour of love for their daughters to be gifted to them at the time of their marriages.

There were, however, some artisans who were keeping alive the tradition of making hand-loom shawls and trading them through a middleman. They complained that the wages they received was a fraction of what the middlemen made off their hard work.

Handlooms spinning beautiful patterns.

Love and best wishes in every stitch of dresses made for daughter's dowry.

Keeping alive the traditional craft of making handloom shawls.

Exquisite patchwork bedspreads (rillis) made over long hours, bring colour to the drab desert surroundings.

Nothing compares, however, to the task of fetching water, the toughest chore.

It is this diminishing commodity for which the people of these hamlets have to travel long distances. The issue of water is at the heart of Thar’s woes.

The lives of the Tharis need to change for the better, the one persistent problem, of water must be resolved.

Take a look: Thar: Walking miles in their shoes

The quantity and quality is rapidly depleting in areas hit by the drought. The minerals leached into it make it unfit for human or animal consumption, and has led to severe deformities in people who have had no choice but to consume it.

The local, practical solution for pure water: BioSand filters.

Thousands of camels roam the desert, promising a great but hitherto untapped economic potential.

The Thari bull, grazing the depleted rangelands.

Food is equally insufficient for animals and humans.

There are vast spans of the desert where time seems to stand still, and the people’s lives are stuck in an unconscionable, unpardonable time warp just five hours away from one of the largest, modern, bustling cities of Pakistan, Karachi.

The contrast is mindboggling, and stark even between Mithi, the capital of the district, and the little villages dotting the deserts.

The main road leading to Tharparkar shames even the best in Karachi. The infrastructure for the colonies of coal projects coming online are within sight of the chowras or the thatched abodes of the villages.

I wondered how these ‘modern’ structures are viewed by the villagers who live lives in another time zone, devoid of basic facilities of water, health and education.

So imagine my excitement when all of a sudden, the bumpy track smoothened out and lo and behold, we were going over an airfield strip! Once the airport becomes functional, there can be no excuse whatsoever why the locals should not reap the benefits of these developments.

An airstrip promising development for the Tharis?

Then again, my mind went back to places like Sui in Balochistan, but I vehemently shook off the thought and hoped that this would in fact mean livelihood opportunities for the Tharis.

Yes, the Reverse Osmosis plants are all the buzz; their inaugurations made for good optics. Meanwhile, I saw Tharis make do with simple, practical solutions like BioSand filters for their potable water needs.

But, this is not all that water is needed for.

Also read: Misguided investment: RO plants not the answer to Thar's woes

For the humans and animals, especially the livestock; a hardworking lot. Despite the harsh temperatures, they followed the advice Pakistan Water Partnership in preparing natural depressions and areas dug out for road construction into potentials water reservoirs when the rains come.

We were taken to spots where they have marked the channels from where the rainwater can be directed to flow into these ponds. There were places they made separate ponds for animals and humans.

Granted that these ponds would be able to serve their needs much better if they were lined; by a geomembrane, or even old panaflexes which can be donated to them — something an event-heavy city like Karachi can easily do.

Getting saplings ready to plant alongside the banks of the ponds to stabilise the soil.

Men preparing reservoir ponds to store the rainwater.

Reverse Osmosis plants, bringing the promise of an end to Thar's water woes.

We also saw the nursery in the villages. The villagers told us they would plant shrubs, bushes and trees along the banks of these ponds to stop soil erosion.

These ponds are ready. Now, they wait for the bounty of nature to fill them up.

The first rain came this week, I heard. I hope there is more on the way to renew Thari hopes.

—All photos by author

Related:

• Thar: A famine of facts
  
• Beyond hunger: The tragedy of Thar
  
• If mother nature is unkind to Thar, the state is no less