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Salt and Earth
text & photo by Maria Möller
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Right after sunrise, we drive into the Little Rann of Kutch, leaving behind all trees, all green — leaving behind everything except for packed, cracked mud crusted with salt. Across the expanse we hear the constant clacking noise of water pumps used by salt miners. And in the distance, dotted on the thin line of the horizon, men are dragging rakes through huge pools of water, encouraging the salt to form . . .
. . . . . . We are surrounded by nothing. The ground is like a great big piece of cracked brown china, baked solid. Aside from the jeep and the tracks it has made, there is only the horizon.I think of the Rabari nomads, who cross this expanse by camel, accompanied only by flocks of birds and herds of wild ass. I think of the miner’s wife and her children, sitting on the edge of seeming infinity, day after day. I walk out into it, all alone, embraced by that un-Indian solitude that I so love. Until a little shiver runs up my spine and, like a child who has waded too far into the ocean, I run back toward Maureen and Caroline. . .
