There has been a rumour around ‘the river Indus is coming to us.’ The mighty Indus is shifting its course and going deeper into populated area day-by-day.
We bunch of friends decided to have a morning walk towards Indus. And we decided to make it early at dawn. Plan was to reach at the river before the sunrise.
It started early around 4:45 am in the morning. The meeting point was Chowk Baig, from where we have to walk towards the river. We were five-morning walkers, walking towards east, enjoying birds chirping, experiencing changing colours of dawn, and talking about life. It rained moderately at night, which added freshness in the morning air.
After a short patch of road, there started sandy track, and walking on that felt quite pleasant after raining. We met a few early morning walkers. The harvest season was around the corner, but a large proportion of wheat laying there in the field, yet to harvest.
Two of our fellows were acting as guides, equipped with long desi-styled wooden club plus valuable information of where we could possibly confront dogs on the way, who might take us, unwanted guests, in the late moments of the night. Frankly, the wooden club proved intimidating in holding dogs away from us, to say the least.
On the way, we have been confronted by the different parties of domestic dogs; some behaved mildly, others ferociously. However, there were others, amazed to see five people walking and talking, equipped with a wooden club, and couldn’t muster the courage to bark. Few tried to be smart and plan an ambush, but our guides were smarter than those.
After an hour, we reached the school, that was at the tipping point of collapsing into the river. River Indus got wild by coming deeper into the populated area. Just a few years back, it was kilometres away from the point we were standing on this day and waiting for the sun to rise from the east.
That morning was mesmerizing, added a different experience to memory. I felt a feeling of life, freshness, and pain simultaneously. Experiencing through dawn, the beauty of morning colors, the company of birds flying closely over the water, the magnanimity of river Indus, and how morning twilight was slowly changing the appearances of things around- this all bring joy. But, the feeling the pain of families whose houses are being submerged into the river; the birds whose nests are gone; the trees who are now in the deeper waters of the mighty Indus did pinch the feeling heart.
We sat and experienced through the contrasting streams of joy and pain at the newly-formed, yet ephemeral, the western bank of wild and mighty Indus.
While mediating at river bank, we realize that our guides were extraordinary photographers, too.
I have to appreciate one thing; maybe we humans are way-beyond from nature. Maybe nature has got a different track from us. Whatever the reason, the nature is beautiful, charming, and refreshing. And we the human are messy, noisy and chaotic.
The river Indus is mighty and roaring deep into the populated area. There is strange bent in the river bank. And that bent is caused by moderately dense growth of trees along the river bank. So there appears to be a pattern:
Where trees are dense, river respect that and does not take that land as much and as frequent. However, where there are no trees or few in number or more human population along the bank, the river roars into that land wildly and freely.
Hence, we may presume,
Nature respects nature, and maybe it does not presume human a part of nature anymore.
When we were inhaling the fresh air around the river Indus, our eyes caught another majestic view. The mountain range of Suleman in the west was just before us; majestic, continuous, and bright and shining with the morning sun. It was an unusual sight; to simultaneously fill our eyes with the majestic beauty of the mountain sight and breath in the air of Indus river. This was another positive aspect of Covid-19 outbreak. Because of less air population, the atmosphere got clear and you can see mountains peaks as clearly as they are in your near neighbourhood, though in actuality they are roughly 30-miles away from the tipping point of river Indus we were standing at that time.
We came back with an insight that nature respects the rights of nature, as we have seen
The river respects what belongs to trees.
FARRUKH HAMEED says:
So good to read this article.