Sindhu Ghati Aur Samandar
By Abubakar Shaikh
Sang-e-Meel, Lahore
ISBN: 978-9693534306
350pp.

Sindhu Ghati Aur Samandar [Indus Valley and the Sea] is Abubakar Shaikh’s third book. A native of Badin in Lower Sindh, the author has worked for nearly three decades on environmental protection and fishermen’s rights and has written extensively on these issues.

Understandably, Shaikh’s first two books, Nagri Nagri Phira Musaafir [Wanderings of the Traveller] and Taareekh Kay Musaafir [Travellers of History] — also reviewed in these pages — were serious reflections on the environmental degradation Sindh has undergone, as well as the resultant plight of fishing communities ranging from the delta to inland lakes and the river upstream of Kotri.

Since Shaikh’s stories are based on actual visits to the areas, the prose reads like travel writing, enlivened by reliance on anecdotes. The feeling he puts into his writing is remarkable and, in many places, moving. It will not be inappropriate to mention that such work has never been undertaken in the vernacular anywhere in Pakistan. Shaikh is, therefore, a pioneer in Sindhi travel writing, or of this genre in any other local language, as well.

Sindhu Ghati Aur Samandar is a bit of a departure from earlier elegiac lamentations for the dying Indus Delta, or the environmental havoc caused by the outfall drains along both banks of the River Indus. The key feature of Shaikh’s work is the absence of hectoring tirades some authors rely upon. Here is a quiet plea, a story told as if it is the earth itself speaking through the author and his interlocutors, whose quotes he uses to add the flesh of emotion to the prose.

The third book by a pioneer in vernacular travel writing is a cry from the heart about environmental degradation, and also an erudite and readable account of history

The current work continues to be our author’s cri de coeur for the environment and, though it contains new stories on ecological degradation in Sindh, the emphasis shifts to history as told by an accomplished travel writer. Shaikh now wears two hats: he is a travel writer and, therefore, an historian as well as remaining the committed environmentalist he started out as.

It is indeed a coming of age of the author, a clear indication of intellectual fulfilment arising from extensive reading and research. The prose is loaded with some beautiful similes. Standing in the Bhago Thoro hills near Sehwan, Shaikh sees them ‘vomiting the train.’ Elsewhere, he finds affection flowing from a certain Dr Ghulam Mohammad Khatti ‘as water spilling from the containers of a Persian wheel.’

Emotions pour into the narrative as we are told how sea intrusion evicted the doctor from his ancestral Kharo Chhan in the delta to live in Rehri village near Ibrahim Hyderi in Karachi. Not many years after this migration, the doctor passed away because ‘the tree of his life could not take root in alien soil.’

The stories in Sindhu Ghati Aur Samandar all begin with a rather poetic introduction, whether they be about the sea intrusion-induced death of the once agriculturally rich Kharo Chhan region in the delta, or the story of the last independent ruler of Sindh, Mirza Jani Beg’s defiance of Mughal emperor Akbar’s overture to annex Lower Sindh — a boldness that wreaked untold misery and havoc on Thatta that was once such a beautiful city.

Following the introduction, the narrative slips easily into the main theme. There are tales of communities forced to leave their ancestral lands in the delta because of the death of mangrove forests caused by reduced outflow of sweet water in the Indus and the resultant sea intrusion. Where they were once reasonably well-off from their rich agriculture, such displaced families now live in destitution.

If the world scrambles to assist human displacement by war, the reader becomes painfully aware that there is no succour for persons such as Mai Bhagi. Forced relocation turned her into an environmental activist, who took her lament to the offices of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Yet, she lives out her life as a refugee who now knows only poverty.

The key feature of Shaikh’s work is the absence of hectoring tirades some authors rely upon. Here is a quiet plea, a story told as if it is the earth itself speaking through the author and his interlocutors.

Similar tales are brought to us from Manchhar Lake, once the largest sweetwater lake in South Asia and now poisoned by the poor planning of myopic managers in Islamabad. Shaikh’s prose does not harangue, though. It simply brings out reality through the words of persons affected by the mismanagement of babus who have never seen the delta or Sindhi lakes, much less read historical reports on the agricultural riches once found there.

In his historian avatar, Shaikh is equally accomplished. He can tell with equal ease the story of the depredations in Sindh of Nadir Shah, the Persian ruler of Afghanistan, as he can recount the travails of Sidi Ali Reis, the Turkish admiral who stood against the Portuguese when, in the 16th century, they made a bid for supremacy in the Indian Ocean.

Among British writers who left a mark on the author, the Burnes brothers — James and the younger Alexander — and Edward Eastwick lead, while our contemporary Alice Albinia, author of Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River is close behind. A chapter in Shaikh’s book thanks Eastwick for being a sympathetic visitor in the age of imperial domination.

The reader can almost feel that Shaikh will mention another Sindh sympathiser in Major James Outram, a British military officer grossly misunderstood by the Talpurs. But, as Shaikh frequently makes tantalising references to other historical personalities and events to whet the reader’s appetite with the promise that those stories will by and by be told, we can expect another book from him.

Meanwhile, Sindhu Ghati Aur Samandar is a very readable tour de force through Sindhi history and the plight of her people suffering environmental degradation. Anyone following Abubakar Shaikh’s work and his growth as an intellectual can only be surprised by official neglect of this writer.

If there is anyone struggling for the preservation of Sindh, it is this writer. He needs to be valued by the provincial government.

The reviewer is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and author of several books on travel. He tweets @odysseuslahori

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 19th, 2023