SHONAIKAIZI, Bangladesh (Asia Water Wire) - Fresh monsoon water  rushed down from the Assam highland onto the river Dharla in  Bangladesh, near the Moghulhat border, about 300 kilometres northwest  of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

   As usual, the Dharla had been dormant for well over eight months. She  suddenly woke up with her shallow, sandy bed embracing the rushing  water. Villages on both banks still remained a mile away from the  stream formed by the early monsoon rains in the upstream.

   But still, vast stretches of sandy beaches along the Dharla resembled  nothing other than a desert, where the wind occasionally formed dusty  twisters.

   For the villagers, the month of May was just the beginning of another  flood season and meager prosperity. But life for the women along the  Dharla, which winds its way into the river Brahmmaputra 50 km  downstream, was yet to change.

   With the daybreak, scores of women and children set out from the  Shonaikazi village towards the Dharla, carrying empty earthen  pitchers, sullied clothes and utensils, staggering in ankle-deep sand  toward the waters a mile away.

   The two tubewells in the village were long ago painted red by the  authorities, indicating the water was contaminated with arsenic. The  only good tube-well pumping potable water was about three miles away.

   The loose sand clutched their bare feet, making the journey even more  difficult. The women from Shonaikazi would spend the first half of  the morning washing, bathing and fetching water from the rejuvenated  river.

   “Returning home on the sand is the most difficult part as I have to  carry a large pitcher full of water and also the wet clothes,”  Julekha Begum, about 30 and mother of four children, said shyly,  hiding her face with the wet saree she wore.

   Yet Julekha was happy. For the eight months of dry season brought  more misery for the women folk of Shonaikazi, when they had to travel  even further for water.

   “When I was pregnant with my son Farash, I had to use and drink the  water from the red tubewell; we did not die because Allah loves us,”  she said, grabbing two-year-old Farash by his hand and pushing him  tightly against her wet body as if an unknown fear of death whistled  past her.

   At the small ferry ‘ghat’, Julekha’s husband Abdul Hamid, a lean,  unshaven man in his 50s, sipped tea at the stall. A young man still  worked on the makeshift shed that had just been built to shelter  commuters. Hamid has been a crop-sharing farmer on the bank of the  Dharla since his childhood. For 10 years, now his hopes have  dwindled. He looked blankly over the vast sandy banks of the river  and sighed deeply.

   “Only ten years ago we grew vegetables along the banks in winter  season,” Hamid said, “Then it started to change. Instead of silt, the  Dharla started to deposit sand on our land during flood season.”

   “Slowly, this fertile land turned into a desert and we started to  starve in the dry season. Many of my friends and relatives have since  moved to Dhaka in search of jobs,” Hamid said.

   As he turned back at the Dharla, his tired eyes flickered.  He  hurriedly handed over the empty tea mug to the vendor and rushed  towards a wrecked boat beached on the shore. Nonetheless, the new  water has brought back some hope for him. He would spend the entire  flood season ferrying people, fishing and being on the lookout for  drifting logs.

   The oncoming flood season brought hope to many like Hamid in his  village. Juved Ali, a sturdy young man was repairing his small engine  boat nearby with an assistant hardly the age of twelve. The wooden  body of the vessel looked weak with age and lack of maintenance.  Juved said he called his boat Moina (a popular talking bird), which  remained beached for nearly six months.

   “I have hired my cousin to repair my boat and we are getting prepared  to catch large trees floating down from India. Last year I caught two  huge mahoganies and earned twelve thousand taka (200 U.S. dollars),”  Juved said nailing a broken piece of timber on the hull, clasping  another between his teeth.

   “When I’m searching for a drifting log, I also catch fish. But fish  are hard to get these days due to the sand,” he said. “You know why  we have become so poor?” Juved said suddenly, obviously feeling down  in front of a stranger witnessing the dilapidated state of his boat,  “It is because they are chopping down all trees,” he said pointing  his finger towards India in the upstream.

   The sun set with a crimson of colors painting the western sky. Rays  of sunlight pierced through the clouds. The sky looked like a  veritable canvas with the artist hiding behind it. The ferry ghat was  now almost deserted with a single boatman singing a tune from a local  song. A flock of domestic ducks swam merrily towards the shelter of  the ghat. The young man at the tea stall lit a kerosene lamp and  carefully wiped the wooden floor with a wet piece of cloth.

   From the distant village came the sound of ‘azan’, call for the  evening prayers. At the Hindu village, a woman blew a large conk  shell before she set out for lighting the evening lamp in her hut. An  eerie silence fell by the Dharla.

   A ‘sadhu’ in a red drape around his body appeared on the eastern bank  of Dharla. He had a large dreadlock hanging on his back and on his  shoulder a small red sack. He held a ‘ektara’ (a one-string musical  instrument) in his right hand. In a husky voice he called out at the  only boatman, who was on the western bank to help him cross the  river. The boatman was delighted to see the ‘sadhu’ after, what he  said was, exactly a year.

   Soon several people gathered at the tea stall around the ‘sadhu’ and  asked him where he had been for such a long time. They offered the  ‘sadhu’ tea and toasted biscuits. The frail-looking wanderer talked  in a low voice and narrated how he had wandered into India, where  food and shelter was never a problem for him.

   He then sat himself comfortably on the wooden bench and played on the  ektara. The half a dozen men listened devoutly as he sang, “Oh  heartless Dharla you have exiled my voice …….my living…. ”. (END/AWW/ IPSAP/MAK/JS/161105)