On the banks of Manchhar Lake, near Jhangara, stands the dargah [shrine] of Ghaaib Pir, a saint whose name evokes disappearance, invisibility and passage into the unseen. In Sindhi and South Asian Sufi traditions, ghaaib does not simply mean absence, it refers to that which has slipped beyond human perception, into a realm that exists but is no longer accessible.

Saints associated with the ghaaib phenomenon are believed not to have died in the conventional sense, but to have withdrawn quietly and mysteriously from the material world. Manchhar Lake itself is now in the process of becoming ghaaib and, consequently, so are the Mohanna people who live on it.

Once Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake and a shimmering expanse of sustenance and song, Manchhar Lake’s waters expanded and contracted with the seasons, swelling to over 250 square kilometres during the monsoon and retreating in the drier months. Fed by hill torrents from the Kirthar range and freshwater flows from the Indus, the lake functioned as a natural reservoir that sustained fish, birds, reeds and people. But now, its waters are increasingly saline and toxic, no longer signifying abundance.

“This lake raised us,” says Mai Jindan, a Mohanna woman seated on the edge of her houseboat. “Our mothers washed babies in its water. Our fathers cast their nets at dawn. Now we tell our children not to touch it.”

Once a pristine freshwater lake, home to the thriving Mohanna fishing community and their houseboats, Manchhar Lake is now polluted and toxic due to decades of state neglect. As the lake grows increasingly inhospitable, the dwindling Mohanna culture of the lake creeps closer and closer towards extinction. While efforts, such as those by NED’s Heritage Cell, are underway to preserve the Mohanna way of life, can the lake that sustains it still be saved?

Once a pristine freshwater lake, home to the thriving Mohanna fishing community and their houseboats, Manchhar Lake is now polluted and toxic due to decades of state neglect. As the lake grows increasingly inhospitable, the dwindling Mohanna culture of the lake creeps closer and closer towards extinction. While efforts, such as those by NED’s Heritage Cell, are underway to preserve the Mohanna way of life, can the lake that sustains it still be saved?

For generations, the Mohannas lived not beside Manchhar but within it. Their houseboats, known as galiyo, approximately 38 feet long and 10 feet wide, formed floating villages that drifted with the seasons, clustering and dispersing according to water levels, fish movements and the wind. Children learned to swim before they learned to walk properly, because water was their first language. For these indigenous fisherfolk, the boats were homes, workplaces and social spaces.

The Mohanna life has long been centred around three seasons: sawan (monsoon: July-September), machhi maran (fishing season: October-March) and sukkal (dry season: April-June). Oral historians among the Mohannas, often referred to as the “Bird People”, recall ancestral fishing grounds by name, particular bends in the lake where certain fish would gather, or seasons when birds arrived so densely that the sky itself appeared to darken.

Manchhar was a cultural landscape, shaped through intimate knowledge and reciprocal care. Over 200 species of freshwater fish were recorded here in the mid-20th century. Tens of thousands of migratory birds — pelicans, ducks, cormorants and egrets— arrived each winter. Reeds grew thick along the edges, providing material for mats, shelters and boats. Fishing techniques were refined over generations, sometimes involving trained birds. Time itself was organised not by calendars but by water levels, fish migrations and monsoon winds.

The lake taught the Mohannas where to move, when to wait and when to leave. In this way, Manchhar functioned as both classroom and archive, holding generations of ecological intelligence that never entered official records. “The lake was our market, our school, our mosque,” recalls Ghulam Mustafa Mirbahar, a Mohanna elder. “Everything we needed came from it.”

But now, due to Manchhar Lake’s reduced freshwater inflows and increased toxicity, the Mohannas are under threat — much like the lake itself. In an article titled ‘How a Polluted Lake is Endangering Life in and Around It’ published in Dawn’s Herald magazine in September 2018, Namrah Zafar Moti quotes a Mohanna fisherman who recalled that, around 14 years earlier (circa 2004), there were nearly 2,000 houseboats on the lake. The Mohannas, whose lives were inseparable from the water, are now disappearing from it, pushed ashore by necessity rather than choice.

At present, around 375 people, comprising 65 families, continue to live on Manchhar Lake. The number of galiyos has now dwindled to just 44. Migratory birds also still arrive, but in fewer numbers. “When ecosystems collapse,” one Mohanna elder observes, “even flight changes.” This is a slow disappearance that has been unfolding over decades. And, like Ghaaib Pir’s disappearance, it is happening in plain sight.

MANCHHAR........

© Dawn (Magazines)