Common tailorbird
Photographed by Dileep Permar in Nagar
Young, Hungry Bulbuls in a nest,
Photographed by Dileep Permar in Nagarparkar
The Lives that Through Karoonjhar
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In Nagarparkar, a study recorded 44 butterfly species, including a national first: the Joker (Byblia ilithyia), never before documented in Pakistan. The highest butterfly diversity was found in a single protected site. It's a quiet testament to what can flourish when left undisturbed.
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This is not just a place of creatures, but of deep coexistence. The Jain sages who once made their home in these hills, as remembered by Pundit Chaturlal, moved through the world with reverence. They avoided even striking metal against stone — afraid of harming the smallest beings, the unseen lives underfoot. In their silence was a kind of listening.
And then, with the monsoon rains, come the peacocks. Hundreds of them, dancing across the wet red earth, feeding on their beloved chibbarh, trailing iridescent joy behind them. Their calls echo through the valleys, joined by the bells of camels and the murmurs of migrating birds above. In Sindhi songs — from Sarmad Sindhi and Fozia Soomro to Saif Samejo, in poems by Shaikh Ayaz — the peacocks of Karoonjhar are sung as emblems of longing, of freedom, of sheer delight.
Other lives remain more elusive. Jackals call out at dusk, but vanish before we can see them — wary of humans. Snakes coil in the warmth of the rocks. Red spiders glint against dry leaves. Bald eagles circle above, and in the clear skies, hundreds of murmurs (flocks of starlings) move like smoke, painting the air with motion. It’s a vision that lingers: shimmering, fleeting, and full of grace. Coming back to the city — to Karachi — from such wild, honest freedom felt like returning to a kind of prison.
The human and non-human here are not separate. In the past, shepherds played borindo and changg (jaw's harp) — instruments of wind and earth — believing their vibrations aided digestion and calmed the herd. Now, we find them carrying portable speakers, playing super auto-tuned Bhojpuri-Sounding --Sindhi music that echoes strangely across the open landscape.
We watched herders communicate with camels through sound — distinct vocal calls that make them follow, pause, turn. A language shaped by generations. And among Rajput families, we heard stories about deer — the most sacred of creatures in their eyes. In Sardharo, a tale is told of a woman from Vikasar, who was once a deer in a past life.
The human and non-human here are not separate. In the past, shepherds played borindo and chang (jaw harp) — instruments of wind and earth — believing their vibrations aided digestion and calmed the herd. Now, we find them carrying portable speakers, playing auto-tuned Bhojpuri-Sindhi music that echoes strangely across the open landscape.
Still, there is knowledge here. We watched herders communicate with camels through sound — distinct vocal calls that make them follow, pause, turn. A language shaped by generations. And among Rajput families, we heard stories about deer — the most sacred of creatures in their eyes. In Sardharo, a tale is told of a woman who was once a deer in a past life. To harm a deer is more than a crime — it’s a betrayal of the land’s spirit.
Nearby, in the Rann of Kutch, flamingos still arrive by the hundreds to feed in the salt lakes. Other birds, once common, are now rare on this side of the border. Conservation has fared better across the border in Gujarat, India — a truth we must learn from.
And still, despite all this change, the land remembers. The shapes of the hills and the open, golden stretches below recall a prehistoric savannah — a landscape older than history, pulsing with memory. This isn’t just a record of species. It is a living story of kinship, memory, and what it means to truly be awake to the world.
Artist Statement
Areesha Khuwaja
Community Collaborator: Dileep Permar
In Echoes of Karoonjhar, our collaboration brings together two lenses: one rooted in archival care, the other in visual mythmaking. Dileep Permar walks the land like a living index — holding stories of its people, festivals, wildlife, and sacred rhythms with the quiet care of someone who belongs. Areesha Khuwaja works through an ethnographic and creative archival lens, re-membering Karoonjhar as a site of layered sacredness, erasure, and survival. Her practice bridges cross-border interviews, ecological grief, oral storytelling, and myth-making by animating what official histories leave out.
Together, we treat Karoonjhar as a living, shape-shifting archive — not just of human memory, but of land-based cosmologies. Our work moves across time: from the kohl-stained ponds of Parinagar to the contemporary grief of granite extraction. We try to listen for what the land remembers, even when people are made to forget.
This collaboration is a refusal of erasure, a map, a way of seeing, sensing, and re-membering for those who will come after us.
