Kandla: Through my looking glass :-)

Yahan hawa nahi dhool chalti hai

Yahan dhool dhool nahi namak hoti hai.....

I have never before come across topography as this and though many people might disagree and grumble, but I find it very enchanting.

Bright skies with patches of white cotton balls; shallow; very shallow swampy ponds on either side of the roads. The vision occasionally blocked by farms of closely built tanks. Few scattered buildings; some abandoned, some rebuilt and some unaffected by the tectonic plates underneath. The horizon displaying shades of grey, skeletons of dinosaur like cranes and of course small heaps of salt displaying shades of white and grey. This is what greets my eyes as I travel down NH 8A. My fellow companions on the highway are mostly trucks of varying stature.

A railway track crosses my path twice and on one particular occasion I found a goods train and myself taking a stroll on the road together, quite literally so. The different varieties of goods wagon that I encounter during my travels, seem to be my husband's scheme for giving me a better understanding of his job.

The picturesque landscape is made even more so by the annual migrants; Flamingos. Beautiful white coloured birds display their true colours when they take off. Strange though it seems but their feathers are a beautiful red from underneath.

Even though each and every inch of land here is reclaimed, and therefore planned, yet it gives me a feeling of wilderness. Looking at it for long seems to put me into a trance and I find myself transforming into a fly on the wall. The undulating topography, the swamps, the bushes, the soil, the salt pans, the roads, the tanks, the piping – Kandla very aptly reflects the never ending tussle between nature and mankind.

Floating through these scenes and thoughts, I am usually busy in ‘backseat photography’ and often a thought crosses my mind, ‘I feel like a princess of pre-independence days travelling in air conditioned luxuries clicking shots of ‘everyday routines’ of commoners, while the ‘commoners’ toil away in sun and dirt for their livelihood.’

However my sham royalty doesn’t last for long. As I near my destination and a particular manufacturing plant becomes more and more discerning, my driver takes a right turn and brings me to my own heaps of sands, morrum and abandoned property which had once been glorious. With a thud I am thrown back to reality and my looking glass slips inside by purse as silently as it came out when I started my short trip.