Fields of Nowhere

MYAJLAR is one of the last towns on the Jaisalmer border, which, at 464 km, is one of the longest that India shares with Pakistan.

- Avantika Mehta

The village was one of the key locations for the 1965 Indo-Pak war. Villagers who are old enough remember watching Indian army tanks ploughing through their kachchi roads.

With no more than 2,900 people, Myajlar sits at the edge of the Indian Thar desert border. In summer, the wind blowing across it only contributes to the dry, harsh heat. Temperatures exceed 50° C in the day. “It only rains once every two-three years here,” says Jeetu Singh, who is the de facto sarpanch of the town. Singh’s sister-in-law is the sarpanch but he takes care of most of her responsibilities, he explains.

This is the land of camel tracks and shifting sand dunes, of craggy rock plateaus and salt-encrusted lake beds—an inhospitable environment that is impossible to navigate, let alone live in for all but the hardiest. And that is what the people who live here claim to be.

“Life in border towns is definitely tough, but the people are hard workers. If they could find work, they will go above and beyond to fulfil it. They aren’t scared of hard work at all,” says Kasab Singh Sodha, a 65-year-old retired Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) officer, who grew up no more than eight kilometres away from the Indo-Pak border in the village of Karda.

Here, in district Jaisalmer, entire villages descend from the one family. “Everyone is related, our great-grandfather or mothers are the same and then the familial line diverges with marriages,” says Sodha. He and his family have lived in Karda—known as India’s last village—for over five or six generations. “Earlier, there was a lot of movement between people from India and Pakistan. People would cross the border to meet their relatives. Now, it has become very difficult. The fencing has come up, and there are SSB officers everywhere. It is very difficult to cross over now,” says Sodha.