
On a sweltering day in late September 2023, a large number of people gather at a place near Tharparkar district’s Roherro village to celebrate a man long gone, whose name and story they have forgotten. All they can recall is that the celebrations are Syed Jo Melo (Syed’s Festival) — held in late summer every year. “He was from a Syed family. That is all we know about him,” says a sturdy old participant of the gathering. “It is said that he stayed here for some time and then it is not clear whether he disappeared or died or went somewhere else,” he says, pointing his finger towards the other side of the dune where the exalted man is believed to have lived or visited once.
The old man has a colorful shawl loosely wrapped around his shoulders and he talks in a loud voice. As he talks he looks through his thick eyeglasses, waving a handkerchief with one hand and rhythmically tapping a thick stick on the ground with the other. He looks both excited and ecstatic.
The story of this festival is intriguing, and not just because no details are available about the Syed’s identity. There is also no clear knowing why the festival is held every year after all. Remembering and forgetting seem to team up to create an assortment of surreal responses to this ‘why’.
According to a legend in Ramayana, a book revered by Hindus across the subcontinent, a Hindu god, Lord Rama, shot a divine weapon at a place that we call Thar today.
Essentially a food carnival – it is organized mainly by the Hindu community living in Tharparkar – Sindh’s southeastern district that spans over large parts of the great Thar Desert. Its participants are also largely Hindus even when the man being celebrated is a Muslim. This comes across as a pleasant surprise to outsiders accustomed to Pakistan’s acute and deep religious divides. The festival, thus, stands out as a manifestation of the warm embrace of the ‘other’, so to speak, when seen from the perspective of communal difference.
‘This too happens in Thar only,’ some of the participants of the festival say – with a visible sense of pride. It looks as if Tharis are used to effortlessly navigating such differences in their everyday lives — an invaluable trait in a highly polarized society.
The sun is beating down hard on the festival’s venue. There is no protection from it except a few shadowy trees. Given Thar’s harsh weather conditions, trees with cool shades have a special place in the life of its people. Roherro village, for instance, is named after a tree whose foliage is said to be the favorite feed of camels. It also bears fruit much fancied by Tharis.
Local residents say that a roherro tree does not flourish on bhits – or dry sand dunes. It grows in valleys surrounded by dunes where its roots can reach the subsoil sources of water with relative ease. These valleys make up roughly one-third of Thar’s vast expanse and also serve as fields for rain-fed crops. “This tree is disappearing rapidly from Thar,” says Aakash Hamirani, an educationist cum activist based in Mithi, the headquarters of Tharparkar district.
Under the few roherro trees dotting the carnival site, men and women sit in groups — small and large. Some of them are chatting, others playing cards and smoking. Women are sitting separately in two large groups. Some children are playing around. Others are sleeping in the arms of their mothers and fathers. A few makeshift shops are selling toys, combs, oils, mirrors, pestles, mortars and other pots.
At a little distance from the crowd, a few people are busy handling mutton-rice cooked in large cauldrons. Some are eating. Others are serving. They must have been in the hundreds — including men, women, children, and the elderly. Those who arrived early are leaving. Many others are staying put for another round of mutton-rice.
At around 6 pm, they pay the last visit to an indistinctly marked but believed to be a glorious place on the other side of the sand dune before going back home.
Their festivities foretell the realities of life in Thar. It is apparent from their demeanor that the residents of the desert have developed a peculiar sense of place which could not have been cultivated overnight. Building that sense of place must have involved a series of experiments in relationships over time – some succeeded, some failed, others neither here nor there.
Thar, indeed, starts to make sense only after one has spent quite some time there. It keeps its eyes and arms wide open, just like Syed Jo Melo which is open to all and sundry, and yet it also retains its mystique, its wrapped-in-mystery origins and its rather inscrutable maze of castes, creeds and classes.
As an outsider all that one needs to do is to acknowledge the bond people have with the place they call home and the different ways they associate with it. Only then it starts unfolding itself, valley by valley, dune by dune.
A Thar That Isn’t
Thar seems to have charmed its people into believing that it is not simply a desert; that it is something more than that. That perhaps is where its magic lies. For a lot many, this magic, this charm, is both this worldly and otherworldly.
According to a legend in Ramayana, a book revered by Hindus across the subcontinent, a Hindu god, Lord Rama, shot a divine weapon at a place that we call Thar today. This he did on his way to Lanka where he was going in search of his paramour, Sita. She was abducted by Ravana who was the ruler of Lanka at the time. Rama is said to have prayed to the ocean deity to pave the way for him and his army so that they could move forward to Lanka but the ocean deity stayed unmoved by his invocations. In a moment of distress, Rama summoned one of his divine weapons. Fearing its end as a result of an impending strike by that weapon, the ocean deity appeared before Rama and requested him not to hit it.
The legend goes on: “The deity suggested to him to release his weapon towards a place called Drumatulya. Rama did as suggested and the weapon hit the region where today lies the Thar Desert. After some time, the water of the place dried up, but Rama blessed the region saying that it would be conducive to cattle rearing, and will also produce good clarified butter, milk, fruits and roots as well as useful herbs,” reads a travel piece published in an Indian newspaper, Times of India, in March 2019.

In a rather rare instance of scientific evidence coming in aid of mythology, we see that even today Thar has the highest livestock population in the whole of Sindh. The Sindh Province Livestock Census Report 2006 confirms just that. Another study also supports the legend’s claim about vegetation in Thar. Ihsan H. Nadiem, in his book titled Thar, offers an exhaustive list of the desert’s plentiful flora including trees, plants, bushes, shrubs and plants. Thar, indeed, is far greener than most other deserts.
Present reality, strangely, also mirrors the desert of ancient legends: It runs the risk of drying up – again – and this time it is threatened by a large-scale destruction of its fauna and flora. “All roherro trees and other similar trees – such as kandi — around wastewater reservoirs have been burnt,” says Kamran Aziz, a researcher with a focus on livelihood losses being suffered by Tharis as a result of coal mining and coal-based power generation in the heart of the desert.
In the Ramayana story mentioned above, Thar appears in Rama’s journey as a ‘pathway to reunion’ with Sita. Many centuries later, the desert became a symbol of unqualified attachment to one’s homeland in the tragic folktale of Omar-Marui as told by Sindh’s greatest public poet and intellectual, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai.
Marui appears as one of the seven heroines of Sindh whose stories Bhitai told and immortalized through his 18th century book, Shah Jo Risalo. In his poetry, she came to personify patriotic love and loyalty to one’s own people. The following translation of a part of Marui’s tale by Elsa Kazi, a German writer and a connoisseur of arts, popularly known in Sindh as Mother Elsa, offers a glimpse into what her love for the land and its people meant to her.
Threads Maru round my wrists tied… gold Fine gold they are for me; Omar, don’t offer silks to rustic Maid, they leave me cold- Because much dearer I do hold My worn ancestral shawl.
Marui lived in a village called Malir which is situated along the main thoroughfare connecting Mithi with Nangarparkar – an ancient town situated in the southeastern corner of Tharparkar district. According to an Urdu translation of a book titled Purana Parkar (Old Parkar) written by Mangha Ram Ojha, the folktale of Marui does not have a single account but many which differ greatly from each other. What, however, remains common to all these accounts is the fact that King Omar kidnapped her and kept her enslaved at his fort in Umerkot but she continued to refuse to marry him and always insisted on going back to her homeland and to her own people.
These events are reported to have taken place around the middle of the fourteenth century (though there is little evidence to establish their historicity). Even after the passage of more than seven hundred years, this folktale remains widely popular across Sindh. Sur-Marui, its versified version created by Bhittai, still sways hearts almost everywhere in the province and even beyond. And it is just one of the many soul-stirring songs people continue to chant in choruses and hum when alone. Many phrases from these songs, indeed, have found their way into the idiom of Dhatki – the dialect spoken by the majority of Thar’s residents.
These stories and songs, in fact, form the warp and woof of the tapestry called Thar. These might also help one to understand the way the residents of the desert think, the choices they make, and the responses they might have when faced with an uncertain future – one that is already lurking behind the thick toxic smoke that coal-based power plants emit, round the clock, seven days a week, leaving the pristine air highly toxic and polluted.

This smoke includes three major pollutants — the most dangerous one of them being nitrogen oxide, or NO. It is closely followed by sulfur dioxide or SO2. Particulate Matter or PM2.5 comes third on this list. Mercury and other heavy metals also play supporting roles in creating an atmosphere where ailments such as asthma and chronic respiratory diseases flourish and where existential threats to animals, birds, plants and trees abound. The all-consuming fear of a massive dislocation also looms large over the horizon as the coal mining companies arbitrarily dump toxic wastewater near dozens of villages rendering their sweet water wells unfit for human use.
These worries are so acute that the people of Thar believe that, for the first time in centuries, their bond with the place is being tested massively. The desert too is changing – beyond recognition, as many local residents put it.
In the large village of Gorano alone, for instance, a reservoir that stores wastewater produced by coal mining has spoiled 50 sweet water wells over the last five years or so.
Let that sink in!
Not one, not two, not three… but 50 wells of sweet water going poisonous in front of your eyes. The reservoir is situated 37 kilometers south of the mining site in Thar Coalfield Block-II and spans over 1,500 acres. And Gorano is not the only village where such acts of environmental villainy are being played out. There, indeed, are several names and many shapes of Gorano in Thar – Dukkar Chau, Tilwayo, Warvai and others. “Water in all of them has become poisoned due to coal mining and coal-based power generation,” says Lakshaman, a resident of Gorano. Others around him nod affirmatively as they listen to him speak.
A quick statistical analysis of water scarcity in Thar shows that the situation is graver than it seems. The desert’s waterscape suggests that wells remain the sole source of water for more than 82 per cent of the local population. Scientific surveys reveal that only 48 percent of these water wells have safe drinking water while the remaining 52 percent have brackish water. With that in mind, just reimagine: 50 wells of sweet water having gone highly poisonous. Not one, not two, not three… but 50!
Villagers living around wastewater reservoirs seem to have given up on their rights after putting up a hard fight. They have been coaxed into believing that they no longer own the natural resources they always have. This perception is deepening as the coal industry expands its operations in Thar, hitting where it hurts them most – their already compromised access to water. In a scheme of things driven by coal-based power generation, Thar clearly stands on the dark side of the development — a shareholder in only losses. That is how so many people with strong opinions but the wish to remain anonymous think in Thar.
Some even relate their fate to what befell Marui. They believe that her story is being played again with the only difference that the people of Thar have replaced Marui, the poor captive girl, and the coal companies have taken the place of Omar, the powerful king bent upon having his way no matter what.
Nay. It is not easy to discern and declare. Omar, after all, like Ravana, is not as universally despised as many other mythological and literary villains.
Who, then, is the villain here? Is it the provincial government of Sindh or is it the coal companies? Or, worse still, is it the powerful Punjab province which consumes the electricity being produced in Thar? The story of Thar coal is certainly as complicated as the desert’s folktales and its festivals: Nobody has any accurate information and yet their impacts are all encompassing and all very well known.
Ironically, though, Thar happens to be not only on the dark side of abundance (as in the case of coal), it is also on the dark side of scarcity (as in the case of water) – and both at the same time. How coal-based power generation, a highly dirty and water-intensive process, is exacerbating water scarcity in Thar will remain the prime concern and a burning issue till all the camels and cows of the desert are forced to relocate somewhere else or they manage to reclaim their millennium old habitat for themselves again.
Secrecy also shrouds the water needs of coal-based power plants. If anything, this suggests that the often touted linkage between coal-based development and the welfare of people of Thar may be dubious
Back to the future
With Tharis constantly worried about their homeland, what importance, if any, can be associated to their effortless navigation of differences? How could we continue to bring up Thar’s magical origins and its lovely descriptions in folklore if there is no water to support its legendary vegetation and livestock?
It is apparent to even outsiders that the arbitrary wastewater disposal by coal companies operating in Thar is akin to an eviction notice handed down to people who can hardly read. At this point, the people of Thar look bewildered. They tremble with anger but they are so lost for words that they stammer as they talk about the promises made to them by coal companies and Sindh government only to never fulfil them.
Their stares have gone blank. They are seen asking each other for help in making sense of the place they always had but are becoming increasingly scared of the changes being made in it. The advent of the coal industry has complicated things to the point where people are no longer able to make heads or tails of it all. Thar of today is a bewildering mass of development schemes. Coal mines, power plants, power transmission lines asphalt roads, new rail lines are dotted or zigzagging through farmlands, pastures and homes that people once knew like the back of their hands but no longer recognize as their own.
The government and corporate entities want to maintain a thick layer of secrecy around the water needs of Tharis and the volume of water being supplied to them. The district government officials, the bosses of Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company and the local employees of Sindh Irrigation Department and Thar Coal Authority choose not to respond or say too little and too vague when asked about these things.
Secrecy also shrouds the water needs of coal-based power plants. If anything, this suggests that the often touted linkage between coal-based development and the welfare of people of Thar may be dubious because this development is highly likely to leave them poorer, at least in terms of their access to water. This also implies that those at the helm of affairs want this relationship to be a parasitic one, built on unequal terms and promoted on exploitative and extractive conditions.
For a better view of today’s Thar, it is important to briefly assume a safe distance from the turmoil being caused by coal-based power generation. The sublime moments of navigating petty differences; the festivals about unknown and unknowable saints and savants; the rhythmic sound of a stick hitting the earth while its wielder speaks in his sing-song Dhatki dialect; the marry-making children milling around their parents and the plates full of mutton-rice going around. That moment of being blessed by Rama. That worn ancestral shawl of Marui.
All that and then this – an ever present and all-engrossing anticipation of rain. When talking about Thar it is impossible not to talk of the allure of rain. This allure has its roots in the extreme need for groundwater which is recharged only when monsoon clouds part and shower the desert with their munificence.
But it rains only rarely in Thar. The desert’s precipitation rates are low and evapotranspiration rates are high. It, therefore, has a fragile water cycle. That is where it is the most vulnerable. That is why water determines the course life takes in Thar — for better or for worse.

Hassnain Ghayoor is a freelance journalist and an independent consultant based in Islamabad.