A Seal from Lothal

 

An unforgiving summer’s Lothal it was –

Arid, hot, furnace dry,

Packed in a car, a nondescript way,

My friends began to wonder why

 

‘What is there in Lothal?’ one asked

The driver, trapped for a day’s wage

Sighed, ‘Bachhanji’s promotion,’ -

Souls trapped in tourism’s cage

 

Kach’s Mohenjo-daro,

An invisible history, a Harappan star,

Yet, there was nothing perhaps,

For the Rann’s emptiness had spread this far

 

There was nothing indeed –

Save a dried channel that was once a dock

Long when the sea used to kiss this port,

And boats from Arabia, here would flock

 

And a small museum with paltry things,

More a shade from the sunburnt feel -

Within lay shards, broken times

And one replica of a unicorn seal

It took me beyond the history books

Where I had seen the seal, years before,

And I wondered who could have crafted this?

What had he seen? Was it all a lore?

 

A passage through time, yes it was,

A seal to talk to your ancient soul,

An extinct beast that could bring you back -

A piece of stone that could make you whole

 

I was there perhaps, I reincarnate said

Upon the charm of a river now dead,

Perhaps all this ruse, a pilgrimage –

For the past and future in my head

 

My friends were bored, what a wasted day,

They couldn’t spot the glint in my eye

In those moments few, none could see,

A thousand times did I live and die

 

24^th Feb’2022

 

Not many of us would know, leave alone visit the rather nondescript destination of Lothal in Gujarat. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Lothal ranks with Dholavira and Rakhigarhi as the most prominent Harappan site on the Indian side of the civilization that once grew on the banks of the now dried up Saraswati river system. Akin to Mohenjo-daro, Lothal translates apparently to ‘Mound of the Dead.’ Today there will be nothing spectacular to catch the eye – but look closely and you may be awed. It is said that though inland today, Lothal was once close to the sea – a tsunami had raised the southern edge of the Gujarati state relegating  Lothal to the inlands and making it hard for travellers to believe that this was the dock on the southern end of the ancient civilization that launched trade-ships to the faraway western lands.

Brick layouts, cemetery and burial mounds aside, there is also a small museum at the site – when within this small building I saw a unicorn seal, I almost had an ‘Altamira’ moment. In one of Satyajit Ray’s masterpieces, Aagantuk, (the visitor), the protagonist mentions how he is overwhelmed on seeing a caveman’s rock art of a bison in the caves of Altamira. The awe and overwhelmia lied perhaps in the primitive grandeur and existence of the art millennia after it was created, as if it was a vortex that connected both space and time.

Aeons old history sometimes has this impact on us, making us realise that despite our mortality, we can sometimes transcend our existence many times over. I had that same feeling that day, on seeing that seal of that pure animal - What was it? Was it a unicorn? Or was it a bull? Was it a prehistoric Elasmothorium?  Who crafted that little piece of art centuries earlier? What was his inspiration? All unanswered questions, perhaps which mattered not – what mattered was the fact that the little piece of art overcame life and death and existed in the twentieth century to challenge questioning minds but more importantly to inspire artistic souls even in the summer filled emptiness of the baked salt lands of the Kuchh…