BBC Urdu's Wasatullah Khan describes his visit to flood-affected areas in Pakistan in a diary. Here is the twelfth episode of this series in which Wasatullah Khan is in Mehrawala.
Tuesday, August 17
The intention was to say goodbye to Fazilpur and go to Rajanpur, but the heart began to rebuke that the town of Ashiq Bazdar, a well-known Seraiki poet, was surrounded by water on all sides. Its connection to the rest of the world is maintained only by boat.
Will the lovers leave without meeting Bazdar? Won't you even ask about the salt you ate salt four years ago? Make salt halal. Shame on you?
I called Aashiq Bazdar. It was decided that Aslam Rasool Puri, Taj Gupang and I would board the boat and reach Mehrawala. After a while, Ashiq Sahib's phone rang. I will do it. '
About an hour later we left Fazilpur and covered a distance of five or six kilometers and reached the place from where the roads and crops ahead have disappeared in the water. I saw a house standing but the water surrounded its four walls. Has been eaten from below.

The water flowing under this hollow wall is entering the school in front and then coming out from the other side shamelessly, a half-dead Sansan is coming out from inside the mud house.
For the first time, I saw water in the form of a bully who doesn't care about anyone's wall. For this water, life was like a pastry shop on which he was fetching his grandfather's victory.
Meanwhile, Aashiq Bazdar also reached here from Mehrewala in a big milk jug to pick us up. In front of the anchor style, let's say a lot of food items were being loaded in the mud style boat. He said that a lot of aid is reaching your town. He said that what you are considering as relief goods is being traded by a grocer from Mehrewala.
On the contrary, the boat in which it is being loaded is also the property of Malik Ghulam Mustafa Khar, which he has temporarily dedicated for the daily use of the flood victims. It is a different matter that despite having a good amount of land in Mehrawala. Khar Sahib or any member of his family could not visit after the flood. Not even to see the condition of their lands!

Mehrawala is located about fifteen kilometers inland from the Indus Highway. The town, with 3,000 houses and a population of about 10,000, has been under siege since August 6. You can estimate the depth of the water so that our boat passed over it without noticing the standing crop of sugarcane on the way. Somewhere the stalks of cotton were turning black and the bodies of the plants were also floating. One of the mangoes When the boat passed through the garden, only the leaves of the trees were visible. The trunks were missing in the water. The floods have shrunk ten kilometers of land route to four kilometers of nautical route.
Mehrawala is a town in Rajanpur district, sandwiched between Mount Sulaiman and the Indus River, which was born in a rugged geography with a flood of fortunes. This is the third seal that has been in the chest for over two hundred years.
This time the river hid in a nearby canal and attacked. The canal dam broke because the rows of dense trees on it snatched the vultures of profit and thus the protective back of the canal weakened and then it could not withstand the river pressure. Gave up
Half of the hospital and school were flooded. Half survived, and the men of the town worked four hundred days and four nights in shifts, erecting a two-thousand-foot-long, three-foot-high embankment and diverting the water to another route.

What reassures the heart is that the inhabitants of Mehrwala do not live their lives but live their lives. As the poet created. The artists of this town play drums and niqaras and the whole of South Punjab is applauding them.
Every year for the last 25 years a Seraiki Literary Festival has been held here. In which poets, writers, critics, artisans, musicians and speakers from all four sides come together for two days. The same fame kept dragging Mir Ghous Bakhsh Bizanjo, Rasool Bakhsh Palijo, Farooq Leghari, Balkh Sher Mazari, Yousuf Raza Gilani and Shah Mehmood Qureshi to Mehrawala at different times. But now no one comes.
The river has been under siege since August 6. Only one Patwari has brought cooked rice in a boat three times. Two military boats have also been coming for two days. But half the population of Mehrawala, with a large number of women and children, was transported to the other side by private boats. This was also possible because the nearby village of the sailors was also inundated and they had to turn to Mehrawala for refuge, along with four boats. In this way, the homelessness of these sailors became a convenience for the people.
After about three hours of this cycle, we reached the place where we were kneeling in the water and sitting in the boat that was going to Mehrawala which was loaded with groceries.
It is only a matter of a few days. Mehrewala's path will be connected to the ground again. If the ground is dry, then a helicopter carrying guests from Lahore and Islamabad will also land. But by then Mehrewala will be on his feet. Such is the fate of towns beyond major highways.
I used to go to Rajanpur city. But now my heart has become dishonest. It seems that the rest of today's day will also be spent in Fazilpur. Just three days ago, the flood warning has passed near Zanzibar near Fazilpur. But it seems that this time Fazilpur has narrowly escaped. Also on the head of this city is the shadow of the hand of Hazrat Chen Chirag Shah Sai alias Ghode Shah.
#BBC
# BBC
Comments
Post a Comment