Bakhtaring Baa

The Bakhtaring Baa project was born to record the lives of people who live here without making an effort in that process of living or even knowing it. The circle of life here is full of colour, culture, music. Bakhtaring is fictitious name and Baa means elderly or seasoned- An old man who knows the past, is watching the passing of today and understands the future.

I was born and brought up in a small village, Lodrawa, near Jaisalmer. I Grew up in and around Jaisalmer which is also a popular tourist destination. I reckoned that tourists barely see the real life here. The life behind the golden fort and sand. They are shown only a few tourist places. But the real Jaisalmer and the life here are beyond those palaces and haunted terrains. After spending years in my natural habitat, feelings of brotherhood and love began to grow. I could feel Jaisalmer running in my veins. I could feel everything. The nights here are accompanied by the silence of stories and hymns. Here Muslim Manganiyars sing music for Hindu deities. Manganiyars are a caste associated with music who sing the praises of Gods and Goddesses. Marriage, child birth or any event is not considered complete without their songs. Kair-Sangri-Pilu-Millet also grows in dry desert.

There is a pond / well to save water on the bank of every village. I used to go flock with the shepherds to find more about my own home sometimes. While going through the struggle of this life, it was very important for me to record the beautiful things I saw here, in the same form in the same dialect. So that the people here can understand their liveliness, the beauty of their own folk. To save her, to love her.

Jaisalmer falls on the border of India and Pakistan. Geographically, Jaisalmer is where the border of India ends but it is culturally spread towards Sindh towards Pakistan. From dialect to customs, life is very similar on both sides. This division of boundaries has not only created distances between this side and the other side, but have also increased this side too religiously, economically and socially. The Bakhtaring Baa project began to record the struggles of the people moving from these distances, divisions.

In order to know how people react to Bakhtaring Baa project, I used to record the stories and post them social media in the same way. There was an overwhelming reaction from people. Gradually a lot of people got involved with this project on social media. Currently I am working on two separate projects. 

People associated with Bakhtaring Baa say that the biggest impact of this project is what happened among people is love of their dialect. Earlier people used to write in Hindi or English on social media. They suffered from a huge inferiority complex when it came to talking or writing in their own language. But after joining this page, many people started writing in Marwari and other dialects around it. Many typical indigenous words that had disappeared from the common lore returned to people's writing. Bakhtaring Baa became a template and an inspiration for Hundreds of more pages on social media which people started writing stories in their own dialect. It was all about home, the home that we were missing even when we lived there, it again became about that home. My home. Jaisalmer.

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