The desert casts its spell

Only those who have lived in the desert truly understand its magic. When we first went to a tiny desert hamlet in India, it was midsummer. Those who had been there earlier waxed eloquent about the clean air, the soft sand and the brilliance of the stars, but we didn't see any of it at first.

Instead the barrenness of the brown dunes broken by the dull green of thorny young trees jarred our senses and made us realise that the concrete jungles of the city we'd come from had been greener than we'd appreciated.

Through the intense summer heat, there was no electricity for hours on end. We wilted, we wished we were elsewhere — then slowly started looking on the bright side of the lack of modern conveniences. Who needed the sleek microwave ovens we'd coveted each time we looked into store windows? Why, we lived in one. As for the three-door frost-free fridge with different temperatures for different compartments, our old model had converted itself to that. One just never knew what temperature the stored food was, since practically everything in the freezer was almost at room temperature anyway.

Catering for unexpected guests, which threw me off in the city, was a breeze in the desert. A touch of spice, a slice of this, a dab of that, and our solar cooker did the rest, baking and broiling and browning to perfection without any effort on my part. A great way to conserve energy — mine. And if we could never indulge in ice-cream, either store-bought or homemade, why, there were any number of other delectable warm treats that could be whipped up at a moment's notice. Culinary creativity certainly got a boost here.

For many, the desert is just an endless empty place. For us, we were closest to nature here, introducing ourselves to a variety of creatures we'd never encountered before. True, the unpleasant shocks were more than the happy surprises, but there was never a chance to be blasé about anything. Safely perched on a stool, at stick's length from what we couldn't really decide was a scorpion or a spider, we lunged and feinted and tried to scare away a many-legged creature that was probably more terrified than we were. The loopholes in our knowledge of natural history were soon plugged.

Unwillingly, we were educated further, and were able to distinguish one arachnid from the other when the first scorpions fell into our laps from the false ceiling of our temporary mud-and-mortar home. There were also locusts, which we thought were just harmless, colourful grasshoppers and didn't deserve to go splat beneath our feet; monitor lizards the size of mini-alligators, which lazed upon the dunes, but could disappear in a flash as we neared; rats that peeped out of thousands of holes in the sand; and snakes that watched us lazily, quite content to coexist peaceably as long as we kept to ourselves.

As compensation for the hosts of creepy crawlies, the desert winter brought birds of every shape and colour and size flocking to the tiny lakes that dotted the landscape, making every outing a magnificent learning experience.

Those were the days we looked forward to — when we could enjoy the sunshine, trudge up the dunes, going two steps back for every three up, then roll down the other side, the quality of the sand finer than anything we'd encountered on our beaches. And when the sun had gone down, we'd lie back on the sand and wait for starlight and the glow from space to warm our hearts.

That glow still warms us each time we go back in our minds to those times — and that's why we believe there's magic in the desert.

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.