Maru Marangal or The Story of the Desert written by V. Muzafer Ahamed begins with an inimitable description of the invisible rain, which only desert trees can perceive.
In the immeasurable vastness of the desert, a single drop of rain will fall and disappear. Ordinary people will never be able to sense these rains but if the drop falls on a ghaf tree, the Bedouins will figure out that rare phenomenon of Nature. The single drop will bring forth one small leaf in the ghaf tree. On rare occasions when the rain drop fails to create a leaf, it will break forth as a throbbing green vein in the soft under belly of the tree…It’s such unique perceptions of rain, trees, earth, birds, animals and human beings that make Maru Marangal unique.
Maru Marangal is not just another book of travel but a proto epic, which gives insight into lands, peoples, history, geography, architecture, literature, anthropology, cosmology, religion, spirituality… Yet, what sets this book in a class of its own is the unique perception it offers on all things living and non-living; real and imagined; visible and invisible. A host of sights, sounds and scents surround the readers.
While talking about a valley in Liwa desert in Abu Dhabi from where people were forcefully evicted, and where remained just a lone tamarind-like tree spreading a canopy of dark green leaves, the traveller sadly says, ‘Places from where people get evacuated, give out a peculiar odour – one that’s very similar to the eerie stench of graveyards.’ On the other hand, in Rub ul Khali, he is jubilant seeing the leaves of grass tossing their heads in the wind, and remarks - ‘…they stand up in pride, thrusting forth their chest, as if they believe themselves to be the luxuriant rain forests…’ This traveller of the desert is one who can peek into the minds of trees, grass.
Do conditions of life affect people’s ways of thought, perception? Faisulla, the man who has spent 20 long years in the heart of the desert, laughs at the question whether he isn’t afraid to live all alone in the desert. He says, ‘It’s the desert that is afraid to be alone. It yearns for people, trees, camels, deer… I live here to give it company.’ The distinction between land, animals and man disappear somewhere along the way. What remains is intimacy and universal connectedness.
The Arabian Desert that Muzafer Ahamed traversed with his friends is documented with scores of telling pictures. Alongside rocks, rivers, forests, monuments and people are captured dying trees, nests of birds, camels, tombs, rock pictures, refugee camps, desert barbs, and tombs. Maru Marangal depicts not just the wonders the eye meets during travel but the flights of fancy and the journey of the soul that are prompted. It instigates several questions in the mind of the reader. At the end of the book, one feels that the desert is a most wonderful land – a school which can fill one’s mind with deep spiritual knowledge. One is also left to wonder at the mind of the writer which has gathered from miles and miles of dry, arid sand ‘thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’.
Maru Marangal
V. Muzafer Ahamed
DC Books
Rs. 250
