Dip: Camel trail and fish crossing

Dhirendra Mehta, a native of Chha and well-known literary creator of Gujarati, has recently published his new collection of poetry, 'Dumrina Mandesh'. In it, he has included poems focusing on the unique environment of Kutch. This is the first time in Gujarati that such a collection of poems focusing on a single region has been found. Although I myself am a native of Kutch, taking up the 'country of Damri', I wondered what it is in this land of Kutch, which inspires the poets and writers of Kutch and Gujarati to the creators of today's youth generation to write about Kutch? Dhirendrabhai has also written a lot about Kutch earlier. He has edited Gujarati and Kutch compositions expressing the personality and regional colors of Kutch's deserts and seas and has contributed scholarly articles on them. However, what did he see in Kutch that he now gave a collection of 40 poems focusing only on Kutch? The answer is found in the poems of the collection. Dhirendrabhai has seen Kutch in many different ways and has been composing poems about it for many years. As the poet himself says, there are some place-specific, some event-specific, and some object-specific poems. The external and internal changes in Kutch over time are also reflected in these poems. The vision of all of them may seem neutral from the outside, but inside it, a kind of anguished voice of a sensitive poet from Kutch can be heard. This pain is painfully revealed in the poems of Bhuj Nagar, which changed after the earthquake. In the poems of this collection, the entire Kutch with all its internal idiosyncrasies and regional features and idiosyncrasies is depicted! It has the desert, the sea, the folk songs Morchang and Jodia Pava, the salty life of Agaria. There are Kharwa and Kharwan, mostly empty lakes, rivers are waddling, folklore of Vrajvani, monuments standing to preserve history. There is a black hill standing steeply on the edge of the desert, which preserves the story of the winter when Dutt came to take the prasad of God. These poems have the rhythm of the cymbals, the vast sky, the 'thap thap thap thap steps' of the camels 'beating each other'. There are questions asked by the fish to the drying sea, the illusion of intense light flying across the desert of Kutch on a dark night. There are also childish dreams of going to the beach and playing codybodies and weaving conch shells. In these poems, the poet sees the sea in the eyes of the desert and in it the two neighboring seas and the desert of Kutch seem to merge into each other! Says – 'Janjwan hai / Chalkaya Daryo / The eyes of the desert.' The constant feeling of desert has been woven into the mind of the poet, the desert is so absorbed in him, that the desert comes down on the blank paper as soon as he sits down to write something. And Damri? It is the flood – 'everywhere/ whirling and flying' and when the blind rises, the column of sand that connects the earth and the sky in the middle of the desert flattens the desert. In fact, the pain and suffering of Kharvaran, which is integrally connected with it, has also been seen by the poet. 'Song of Kharvan' describes the relationship between Kharvan and Darya. The sea rushes into Kharvan's nostrils, roaring in its ruddy. There is also the sea in the mesh he wears over his eyes and in his cache, moving in the wind blowing along the coast. The sea is Kharvan's 'Janamjanam's friend' and 'Ola Bhava's veri too'. After the plowed seas are swallowed up in the sea, the 'collective lamentation of the seas' is heard. The grieving Kharvanos chant – 'Khari gayan re Lal, Khari gayan! The green coconuts have fallen…' A tragic news comes and the 'live streams' of the Kharvans are lost. However, a true Kharwan does not stop her husband or son from going to the sea. As soon as a Kharvo is seen retreating to climb the sea, he gives the signal – 'Kanthe bese e to machiyaro bhunda, Dariye rande e Kharvo.' The distinction between the dry Kutch and the other green regions is subtly captured by the poet, thus – 'Tare malak to kaal kaan kaal kaan nakalam, mare malak aa dholaan ne dhaf… tara malakno aawe e viaro mara malak majan loo jaye loo…' Dumri and loo face the challenges head on. Kutchimaduness has emerged only from this crushing reality connected with the yeast-like people of Karti Kutch. A representative of that nation, the poet of the 'Damrina country' has inherited the desert and the sea, both lying side by side in his village. Centuries ago, the sea used to roar where the desert of Kutch is now. From that natural upheaval, Dhirendra Mehta is trying to find the meaning of the ocean from the bottom of the sea to the desert and the desert! He says that now he has to find the waves of sea water in the sand ridges of the desert and solve the sand ridges in the water waves. Then comes a wonderful idea that their 'heading is the trail of a camel lost under the sea' and finding 'the path of dead fish somewhere in the middle of the desert', such a heading can only be done by a poet who has assimilated Kutch. }