“When you live your life in heaven and then you enter hell, it is a real tragedy,” says Zahid Sakani with a painful voice. He is a resident of Baghan, a remote area, which is around 77 km from Thatta, Sindh. He and his family lived a prosperous and happy life in Kharo Chan, where the River Indus meets the Arabian Sea. It is a Taluka situated in the delta of Sindh and surrounded by water, where according to the 1981 census, there were 88,753 people but now they are less than 2,000. Around 1.2 million people have been displaced from the Indus Delta due to the sea intrusion and scarcity of sweet water. Zahid was one of them who migrated in 2001 from Khar Chan.
“We were very happy and prosperous; my grandfather had around 700 acres of agricultural land in 7 different Dehs of Kharo Chan. We had horses, goats, buffaloes, boats and gardens. There was a lot of milk and butter but alas! We lost all these things which were the causes of our happiness and prosperity. It all happened because the river Indus was stopped.” He looks towards the sewing machine and becomes sad and silent for a while. “This is now all I have – a shop on rent, where I work as a tailor.”
When Zahid and his family migrated from Kharo Chan in 2001, once there were 42 Dehs and now more than 30 had been submerged into seawater.
He says that his grandmother, whose name is Sahiba, keeps memories and stories of last 11 decades of the Indus Delta. “She witnessed its prosperity and destruction with her own eyes. She tells us the stories of past in which she was like a princess who used to visit beautiful gardens. She tells how the farmers from all over the Multan and Sukkur used to come there for harvesting and used to return with lot of wheat and rice which used to keep them and their families happy. She used to not extinguish the fire in case guests might come. These are the memories of the people of the Indus Delta.”
I ask Zahid if it was possible that I could meet her. He agrees and we set out. After crossing the road which was under 1 foot of rainwater, we reach near his home, and he asks me to sit in a place which was made like a hut. He goes towards his home, and I remain sitting there. Never in my life have I seen mosquitoes like this before. In front of my eyes are the goats under a green shade for keeping them safe from mosquitoes. Not more than 5 minutes would have passed, and he returns with tension over his face. He offers the excuse that his grandmother was suffering from pain and fever. With anger in his voice, he says, “You see, there are no officers of government who could spray against mosquitoes.” He closes his hands in Sindhi cultural style and says; “Always together.” And we depart.
After traveling 30 minutes in a boat, I reach Kharo-Chan. Here the fishermen are sewing the nets. Around half a kilometre’s walk, and I reach a market and enter a shop made of wood, where a businessman of crabs is dealing with fishermen.
I look for someone of old age who could tell about stories of his past and I find him: Khamiso Badalo. He says, “I have 40 acres of agricultural land but all that is barren. How can we crop it when we don’t have water to drink? If there were no crabs we would have starved to death. I leave in the morning for catching crabs and come back after 2 pm – and can only earn 500 rupees by selling them. If the snakes bite us, we don’t have hospitals. This Bazaar and our villages were submerged due to high-tides and floods recently, but no one came here for us. We are those people who are left on their own.”
When I tell him about Zahid that I had recently met him, he says, “Zahid was from our village, I know him, he and thousands others migrated but we can’t. If we leave from here, where will we live and how will we earn? Here, we have crabs to earn with. But I wish my land could be green again.”
According to the Collins Dictionary, a delta is an area of low, flat land shaped like a triangle, where a river splits and spreads out into several branches before entering the sea. The Indus River started flowing around 40 million years ago from western Tibet and ended in lower Sindh. It created a natural equilibrium with the sea and produced a vast delta spreading around 13,000 square kilometers in three districts of Sindh, namely Thatta, Sujawal and Badin. The Indus Delta is the 5th largest in the world. Due to sediments and water, the land of the Indus Delta was very rich in agriculture and fishing. In the 20th century, yearly silt in the Indus delta was 8 millimeters, which in the 21st century is only 1 millimeter. When the Indus River was dammed and diverted, and water and sediments were not reaching the sea, the Indus delta started dying as the sea started filling its creeks.
Majeed Motani, head of Karachi’s chapter of Pakistan Fisher Folk, tells a story that once in the 1960s he stopped by a village near Kharo-Chan, where people provided him delicious food and Majeed asked if they had curd. At that moment, they didn’t have any. He slept there for a while. When he woke up, he saw a bottle of 10 liters hanging in front of him. Upon asking, he was told “Here is the curd you asked for.”
“This is how the people were rich and happy. The people of the delta were mainly involved with agriculture, fishing, cattle farming and business. People naturally tend to live in those places which provide them food and the Indus Delta was very rich in it. There are 17 creeks of the Indus Delta in Sindh and 4 are in India. Water used to flow all the year in those creeks and only in one month it used to decrease – but not stop. So, the people started agricultural activities on both sides of the creeks.
And, due to agricultural land, people belonging to cattle farming didn’t spend any penny, as water and grass was easily available and this region begotten millions of animals. When water was stopped, and it didn’t come down the Kotri-Barrage any more, it brought destruction and miseries for the people of the Indus Delta. Firstly, it was the agricultural land which was affected: when it did not produce grass, cattle farming became the second casualty. Water used to flow only in summer, and people used to make little dams to store the water for winter use, but that water used to become saline with passage of time.
So, the first migrations were done by those who belong to agriculture and cattle farming. Then by the fishermen. There are two types of fishing: one of the river and the other of the sea. The river water was no more so people started going into the deep sea. But the sea’s stocks of fish began to get depleted rapidly due to over-exploitation. When the water of Sindh was expropriated, the first who were affected were the people of Delta.”
Motani explains that there was a gap between sea- and river-water from Jamshoro to the Keti Bandar area. “The intervention in the ecosystem is dangerous. You see why it is flooding – it is only because the pathways of the Indus River are stopped…