Desert! A vast expanse of sand! A timeless space of beauty, silence and longing! A land full of mysteries. Who knows what secrets lie beneath those infinite grains of sand, what untold stories are buried under those dunes!
A desert fascinates me greatly. It appears mysterious to me , like an enigmatic woman beckoning its admirers. The amazing stories of explorers of Sahara,Gobi and Rub al khali keep me occupied for hours. My mind travels with them into the depths of the desert and observes the native desert people, the bedouins, the caravans on camels and the desert culture. May be having Rajasthani genes in my body has to play some role in my love for desert. Though I have never actually been inside the depths of a desert, but i have experienced desert from its fringes. I have got a taste of desert in Sind, UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and my ancestral land of Rajasthan! I keep wondering that what lies beneath those huge sand dunes, how does life survive in desert!
Desert teaches us many things. Take for instance the phenomenon of mirage. To run after something that doesn't even exist! And how many mirages we chase during the course of our lives? Running after illusions! Finding meaning where none exists, looking for comfort in materialistic things. And then we finally realize that we have been running after mirages all this time! How devastating that realization must be to a man who is dying of thirst, and who has pinned his hopes on the mirage!!
An interesting phenomenon occurs when it rains in desert.The dormant seeds come to life and overnight the flowers blossom, transforming the barren land into a pretty sight! Isn't that miraculous? Sometimes a barren soul blooms into a beautiful entity by the power of divine love and water of knowledge! And that is what a true miracle is! Total transformation!
Thinking about desert and thirst invokes images of Karbala. Of the thirst and hardships endured by Imam Husain(a.s) and his family, in the scorching heat of desert. But they endured it all without faltering because the soils of their souls were fertile and nourished with divine love and pure water of knowledge! The desert turned into garden of Eden for them.
This world is but a desert full of hardships and mirages! Those who successfully cross it without getting engulfed by its vastness and its mirages, reach the evergreen gardens of eden!