THE time spent driving 60 kms from Karachi to Thatta and 600 kms onwards to Nagarparkar via Kotri and Hyderabad on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of September provided sights that disturbed and uplifted, offered contrasts that were vivid and ironic.

Covered in a single journey in these times, districts Thatta and Tharparkar become strangely distant though they are geographically close. The one ravaged by water, the other blessed by water. The one dislocated and distressed, the other serene and sedate with the tables completely turned.

Traditionally, the Tharparkar region faces recurrent drought and is frequently declared a calamity-hit area. This year, the rains have come gently in the right quantity and at the right frequency for planting seeds and nurturing crops. In Thatta, the rains brought floods of water and floods of refugees. It is Thatta that is now calamity-hit.

Women radiate strength, resilience, skill and dignity. In disjointed circumstances, they continue with the basic tasks they have always fulfilled. Delivering babies, minding children, finding morsels or meals, guarding meagre belongings and tending to livestock.

Three volunteer teachers were conducting a classroom full of girls and boys with no books and pencils but fully engrossed.

At the Technical College nearby, amongst about 1,500 refugees, 10-year-old Zuleikha accompanied by Tanya and Aroosa declines to surrender to the despair around her: the single outdoor toilet for hundreds, the single daily meal of rice, the wait for the single water tanker. She wants to go to school, and she smiles with a charm that lightens the darkness at noon.

We hear of inter-clan, inter-tribe strife and tension barely being held in check because of the common lot all presently share. Will this event subsume primeval passions or reignite them?

Some men are also better than others. There were at least five young volunteers rotating duties at the same camp with no complaints and in good cheer. All of them MAs in social work, all of them otherwise unemployed. At a time when neither political leaders nor bureaucrats are being remembered fondly for the most part, there was praise from development professionals for work rendered by MNA Ayaz Shirazi in hazardous rescues and for DCO Manzoor Sheikh for coordination. Under-acknowledged official civil efforts and adequately projected military efforts work in tandem.

The spontaneous compassion so promptly and generously expressed by the people of Pakistan and here in Thatta district, made manifest by individual acts of giving or in the vigorous work of NGOs, soothes frayed tempers and boosts confidence in our own people’s capacity to tackle formidable challenges.

Between Tando Jam and Tando Allah Yar, the beautiful canopy of trees that served as a tunnel is now only a memory. It has been tragically slaughtered in order to widen the road. To enter Tharparkar at this time is to enter Paradise Park. A fulsome green now covers undulating sand dunes to make them lush and resplendent. Shrubs, bushes, trees and farm fields wear nature’s favourite shade. Newly formed lakes and ponds full of tranquil water are most unlike the river water spitting anger and fury elsewhere.

Here are swooping, trilling birds, a gliding peacock. Thari cows with regal horns, disdainful camels in large herds, sheep as obedient as pliant voters. Then, sudden striking glimpses of red, blue, orange and black forms slim and silent against the green backdrop.

The tireless women of Thar toil in fields in their colourful, elegant clothes.

At village Churio, 45 sand-tracked kilometres from Nagarparkar, we are close enough to the Indian border to clearly see the structural detail of fences, watchtowers and office blocks built by our neighbour.

The local members and staff of an NGO working in the area proudly show off a new piped water supply system built with support from the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund that benefits over 125 households and 1,200 people to liberate women from the grinding daily labour of drawing and fetching water. Despite the poverty, there is a special sense of peace here. We discover why: they do not have access to TV. Radio keeps them in contact with our hyper-world.

Yet heaven on earth can be deceptive. Dereliction of duty, nepotism, professional and administrative apathy are alive and well in paradise. They are apparent in the slovenly maintenance of a new rest house or in the taluka hospital where 27 out of 31 sanctioned posts for doctors have remained vacant for years on end. Some staff remain absent without punishment because of their connections. Malaria, gastroenteritis and respiratory diseases are registering alarming increases. Despite the success of the Pakistan Primary Health Initiative elsewhere, the weak governance reflected in aspects of the relief effort afflicts a region so far from the floods, and so near.

Spiritually nourished and revitalised by the green glory of Tharparkar, we return via Jamshoro to the addiction of Karachi. Here another reality delivers a parting blow in case we let only pleasant images predominate. The Indus has spilled over its banks. Hundreds of persons are forced on to the edges of the Super Highway. Some people run after vehicles, transformed into beggars. Hunger’s wand weaves cruel magic.

Southern Sindh, like the rest of Pakistan, desperately needs resolve rather than recrimination, unstinted cooperation rather than contrived, unfair comparison and competition between civil and military efforts. Retaining a democratic path through all the twists and turns, the disappointments and the distress, is the only way forward from this tragedy to a better Pakistan.

The writer, a former federal minister and senator, serves several public interest organisations on a voluntary basis.