ADAM YAMEY

Retired dentist, active author

My wife’s cousin lives in a part of the Indian state of Gujarat called Kutch (‘Kachchh’). He and his wife have a lovely farmhouse near the port city of Mandvi, where you can watch huge wooden dhows being constructed along the riverbank. Although Kutch is now a part of the state of Gujarat, it has not always been. The people of Kutch (‘Kutchis’) speak a language quite distinct from Gujarati. The Kutchi language has closer similarity to Sindhi than to any other Indian language (Kutch is bordered to its north by Sindhi speaking people*). It is a spoken language, but not written. Even though Kutchi people can speak and write in Gujarati, they will proudly inform you that they are Kutchis and definitely not Gujaratis. During our several visits to Kutch, my wife’s cousin’s driver, who can speak good Gujarati, insists on speaking to my wife in Kutchi, which she cannot speak as well as Gujarati.

Many people with whom I have discussed my travels, look puzzled when I say that we have been to Kutch. Just in case you are wondering, it is the furthest west part of India. Most of the north of the region is bordered by Pakistan, from which it is separated by the arid Rann of Kutch. To the south and separated from it by the Gulf of Kutch (a part of the Arabian Sea) is the peninsula of Saurashtra – now also a part of Gujarat.

Until 1947, Kutch was a kingdom founded by unifying three separate kingdoms, ruled by branches of the Jadeja family, in the 16th century. In 1819, having suffered a military defeat (at The Battle of Bhuj in March 1819), the Kingdom of Kutch accepted the sovereignty of the British East India Company. Under the watchful eyes of the British, members of the Jadeja family continued to rule Kutch – it became one of India’s many ‘Princely States’. On the 16th of August 1947, one day after India became independent, Kutch voluntarily acceded to the new Indian state.

Kutch became a state of India. In November 1956, as a result of the State Reorganization Act (1956), Kutch ceased to be a state in its own right, but became a part of the then huge Bombay State. The latter was effectively a bilingual region, most people were either speakers of Marathi or of Gujarati. The Marathis and the Gujaratis began to clash. In 1956, the Mahagujarat Movement began campaigning for a state for Gujaratis, which was separated from that for Marathis. The movement was spearheaded by Indulal Yagnik (1892-1972). His nephew, who lives in Bangalore is a family friend, whom we meet whenever we are in the city. As the Gujaratis clamored for their own state, so did the Marathis, Blood was shed, and much property was damaged. On the 1st of May 1960, the old Bombay state was divided along linguistic grounds. The states of Maharashtra and Gujarat were formed. The latter includes the Gujarati speaking district of Saurashtra as well as the northern part of the former Bombay State, and also Kutch. And that is how it remains today.

Since 2017, we have made several enjoyable visits to Kutch, from which my wife’s maternal ancestors hail, and enjoyed many fascinating experiences there. Some of these can be found in my new book – a collection of true stories about life in India seen through my eyes. The book (also Kindle) is available from Amazon websites.

*When Lord Napier conquered Sindh (which neighbors Kutch) in 1843, he is reputed to have sent a single word message to London in Latin “Peccavi”, which means ‘I have sinned’.

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Courtesy: ADAM YAMEY | LinkedIn (Posted on September 3, 2023)

The post Kutch from Kingdom to District first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Nazarul Islam

Once upon a time in a prosperous land, a rumor swept across the kingdom that there was an invisible vapor floating through the air. Many vapors had come before, but this one was so extraordinary, it called for an extraordinary response.

This vapor, the town criers cried, could kill you at anytime, anywhere. You could get it by talking, breathing, or singing. You could get it by standing or walking too closely to someone. You could even get it by playing. And the scariest thing of all—you could get it and not even know you had it.

The only way to escape was to hide indoors, keep away from people, and rub your hands with a clear jelly every time you touched something. Merchants stopped trading, apprentices stopped learning, and people stopped seeing people.

Every day, the town criers yelled out the number of people who had caught the vapor, although most didn’t know it since they felt the same as usual—just a lot more scared. They only learned they had it because of a certain spell a sorcerer had written down before the vapor came.

The sorcerer had said it wasn’t supposed to be cast for vapors and couldn’t tell people if they had caught a vapor or not. But the sorcerer had died, and the king’s counselors decided to cast the spell, anyway, and that is how people found out they had the vapor.

The town criers shouted the latest death tolls so often their voices grew hoarse. Almost everyone who died was very, very old or very, very sick or very, very fat. Hardly anyone else died, and at the end of the year, it would turn out about the same number had died as had in other years.

Still, it was a very scary vapor, and the entire kingdom had to change for the good of the public. The land was no longer prosperous, but the king just minted more coins and tossed them out to his subjects so they wouldn’t notice right away.

Eventually, people were told they could come out of hiding and the marketplace could open back up if everyone followed a few rules.

They had to wear a hot, scratchy hat that covered their ears and eyes so the vapor couldn’t get into their earholes or eyeholes. They had to hop five times forward and five times backward if they accidentally got too close to another person. And, of course, they had to rub their hands with jelly after touching anything.

Some people thought the hats looked silly and were even a little dangerous since they made it hard for them to hear and see and made them sweat in the summer. The hopping took so much time people weren’t able to get much done.

When those people didn’t wear the hats or hop around, the rest of the people got very, very angry and said it was their fault people were dying and getting sick and couldn’t live the way they used to live. Some even took to wearing two or more hats for extra protection against the anti-hatters and anti-hoppers.

Every so often, the king would tell people to hide back inside again because too many people were catching the vapor. They couldn’t work or shop or visit people they loved. There wasn’t much to do besides lie around listening to the town criers, who always let people know how scared and angry and resentful they should all feel, especially toward the anti-hatters and anti-hoppers.

Suddenly, people started feeling more hopeful. A few witches who were richer than all the world’s kingdoms and queendoms combined offered to make a potion people would need to swallow every so often to keep them safe from the vapor—but it would only work if everyone drank it together.

It took a few months, but eventually the witches each had their own flavor—grape and orange and tropical punch—and they were ready to pour them into people’s mouths. Whenever potions had been made in the past, the witches had had to spend years and years making sure it was safe before giving it to people.

This time, though, the vapor was so scary, they skipped all those steps so people could be saved sooner. They even got the king to issue a special decree so no one could hurt the witches if anything bad happened to them after drinking the potion.

The king gathered three-quarters of the coins he had collected from the people that year and presented them to the witches.

Almost everybody couldn’t wait to drink the grape or orange or tropical punch potion. They bragged about going to get it and told everyone after they got their first and second drinks. When they came across someone who didn’t want to drink it, they got very, very cross. The town criers told everyone to yell at the anti-drinkers because it was their fault they couldn’t go back to life like it was before the vapor.

Nazarul Islam

The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.

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