About "Is there still no place like home?"

The following is a revised essay from 2019, January. Why did I write it? that is a separate matter. I shall mention that some other day. But for now, there is a question and an essay for the same. 

Is there still no place like home?

The eponymous character E.T. – that oddly shaped and completely loveable character – from Steven Spielberg’s film said – as far as I remember – two comprehensible words. One was “Elly-Ott.” The second was “Home”. Every time E.T. said “Home” in that rumbly voice – his index finger would glow red. He missed home so badly that he fell in a state of malaise, which did not seem purely physical to my long-gone 10 year old self. He perked up as soon as he saw – well, what did he see? His home was surely not his spaceship that had descended to Earth. Yet he waddles up happily and gleefully – all bodily, emotional and spiritual malaise forgotten. His mum and dad were there. In a sense, he was home. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza make a houseboat their home in the concluding pages of Marquez’s classic. Then there is The Little Prince from St. Antoine Exupery’s timeless tale, who after his earthly adventures takes the help of the snake to go back home, back to his planet, and to especially his fragile and hoity-toity rose that loved him and whom he adored. He dies. He returns home. And why stop with the world of "higher" sentient life form – whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial when approaching the idea of home? I am reminded of the tall and lanky Palm Tree – whom I encountered when I was 8 years of age – from Rabindranath Tagore’s poem – who daydreams fondly of sailing off to far-off places like the skimming black clouds that traverse the skies, and yet as dusk drops and the tree pauses in his dreaming spree – he realises that the Earth is his mother – he feels an ineffable contentment in his earthly corner, his home. To move from the mundane to the magical and into the mystical (might some find it morbid?) – the sea is not the home of the sailor and the hill is not the home of the hunter for Robert Louis Stevenson in his “Requiem”. Death is home or else it is the grand and ultimate way back home. Then there was Jim Reeves who sang “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through...” Emily Dickinson must have felt something similar and yet deeply connected to that "Species" that "stands beyond; Invisible as music but positive as sound..." and felt connected to a surreal sense of "home" and "oneness", when she penned the lines, “This world is not conclusion...” And Bod’s home? In Neil Gaiman’s magical The Graveyard Book, Bod's home had been for many years, yes – a graveyard with ghosts and a magical being. And yes, who can forget Dumbledore's line, regarding "the next great adventure"?. And in the grand Bengali novel, Debjaan (The Way of the Gods) by Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay – home might be here – somewhere in this world, on this “pale blue dot” to quote Carl Sagan – or else it could be macrocosms away, temporally and spatially unreachable and inaccessible until and unless we lift and pass through the veil and embark on fantastical journeys. 

Human beings lose their homes, leave homes, make homes, move homes, find homes, feel at home, return home, discover a home, break homes, create homes, wonder of an ideal home, yearn for home, search for home, set up a home. Home – even in this rather mundane, chaotic, brutal, beautiful, beastly, serene, technologically-advanced, digitally overwhelming, conflict-ridden, and oft-times-incomprehensible world where travel, and even global travel, has become a fairly easy affair for the well-off from many in the developed and developing nations or for those who are not viewed suspiciously at Visa offices – holds a place of significance, which cannot be dislodged or displaced.

Can there even be a uniform answer to the question – is there still no place like home? – The questions and the corresponding responses set off ways of looking at and of coming to an understanding of how wide and deep and divergent the imagined, mental construct of “home” and the actual home can be as compared to that which is not perceived as home. 

While engaging with the question – I have found myself saying a quiet “no” over and over again. For one thing, if any place were “like” home – it would be home. And no matter how I approach the question – and true, there are very many thousands of conceptions, understandings and interpretations of what home means and implies, which change politically, socially, culturally, contextually and at the macro, meso and micro levels while similarities are carried from age to age and place to place and across people – it would seem to me that for human beings, home remains  a place that is unique, incomparable (or only set up as reference point to make favourable or unfavourable comparisons) and desired or is a place – if even imagined – one, which is intrinsically, inherently and even perhaps, ineffably, desirable.

The matter can be approached from different schools and disciplines of thought that encompass economics, sociology, political science, geography, psychology and religion and across levels and ways of seeing, whether individualist or collectivist, universal or cultural, and there could be many combinations and permutations born of varied understandings and alternative perspectives. To borrow from Stephen Covey, the lenses one uses to examine the idea and the meaning of home, and its place within the world and beyond, shapes one’s responses, shroud and even reveal one’s personal biases and prejudices, and also takes us a little closer – one hopes – to the journey’s end of why there is still no place like home. One would like to present as inclusive, diverse and holistic a view as possible, and yet given one’s experience, training, background and understanding one also knows that it never is quite possible to include all views without generalising and no matter if one believes or imagines one is expounding upon the views and often overlooked perspectives of marginalized groups – one has realised that even among marginalized groups or those that are almost invisible, perspectives and viewpoints vary widely and even wildly, which social scientists often have to gloss over for too much attention to the aberrant outliers within outlying groups gives rise to confusion and complexity and the picture becomes a picture constantly in motion. Being aware of such limitations is an advantage – not a disadvantage. One does not become incapacitated by such limitations but acknowledges that despite such limitations, there is much that can be approached and sensibly answered without becoming convinced that one is some soothsayer or all-knowing being who has got the ultimate handle on the question: is there still no place like home?

As one cogitates upon the question, and one’s mind glances over illustrations from various branches of thought, formal disciplines and one’s own understanding gathered through a lifetime of quiet wondering, a bit of study, a lot of madness, travel, observation, experience, conversation and reflection – one cannot let the idea of home remain swathed in the comforting whirl of emotions or conflicting sentiment that the word carries or allow it to remain somewhat inscrutable by dint of the fact that home is not merely tied to the physical construct of four walls or a geographical tract of land or an official “permanent” address. The four walls could be replaced by a half sphere or a cone-line structure or a tent – but one understands. The lack of a permanent address while a pain (as anyone trying to fill out a form at government offices will know) cannot quite be equated to the absence of a home. That is why historically, and subject to economic and socio-political requirements, the corresponding definitions and descriptions of the house and home have sometimes been viewed as separate entities or have been merged.

Home is -  and is more than – the physical space contained within the confines of four walls, more than a physical rootedness that a human being or groups of human beings experience in relation to a geographical tract of land or possibly – depending upon the manner in which one frames, defines and understands the idea of what “home” implies – the very idea of home includes the tangible, the intangible, the physical, the emotional, the economic, the geo-political, the socio-cultural, the individual, the universal, the pragmatic, the idealistic, the spiritual and the imaginative. 

Depending upon which viewpoint one wishes to adopt, home relates to the matter of identity and Self, it intertwines intimately with the idea of finding oneself, of connecting to something deeper, something psychical just as much, at least – if not more – as it relates to the political and physical. Home connects and resonates for many as a place of belonging, as a place of contentment, human fulfillment – even bliss. It is felt to be a space where one can be one’s self; a place where one experiences the deepest and most meaningful of human bonding and relationships. Yet what of the political prisoner under house arrest? – I find myself asking.  And what of the politically exiled and ex-communicated ex-hero who is now perceived to be a traitor by those in positions of political power or authority? And somewhat contrarily, what happens when home itself becomes a place of unrest or abuse or misery or just plain and simple boredom? Does a person – whether a man, woman or child then desire a place other than home? Or does one discard the concept of home as being a piece born from one’s own or someone else’s fevered and delirious imagination? Or does a person still feel that there is a home for him or her, if only such a place could be found or discovered?

As long as the concept of nation-states exists and as long as political boundaries separate my land from yours – the idea of home, at one level, cannot be approached without taking into consideration the geo-political, the socio-psychological and the economic. For what about the refugee who must flee the night, with his family or alone, while bullets whizz over a land gone mad? And what about the tribal who must keep moving further and further back on the land that her ancestors occupied for generations until there is nowhere to go but fall into the sea or disappear up a tree, perhaps, because the non-tribals want the land to drill for oil or mine for metals or open a golf course or perhaps, with more noble intentions, construct a dam? What about races who yearn for their “homeland” or people who must cross borders overnight because there are two nations created out of one? And how was that nation drawn up anyway? But drawn it was, and this created a political idea, which gave rise to the "Imagined Community" of Benedict Anderson, which then became real in its consequences ("Thomas Theorem"), as in being "home" to over 300 million when the nation was divided on the basis of a social identity marker. 

And what of the people who have all but their lives wiped out by some natural calamity or disaster? Did they lose their homes? Yes. But they lost something else or something more than a physical space with their possessions or are those very ideas contained within the construct of “home”? And what about the traditional nomads, the Dom and the Romani who wandered from the deserts of Rajasthan in India, The Punjab, Haryana and further north all the way to Eastern Europe and beyond, and down South to Greece? Where was and where is home for them? Do their descendants feel at home in whichever nations they reside or do they feel an inexplicable, irrational wanderlust coursing their blood? What of the wandering minstrels in Eastern India, who used to travel from village to village and occasionally through city spots in India? Did they travel and wander about, settling nowhere in particular for long stretches merely for matters economic? Or is it that they have made the world, which they can traverse on foot, their home? Or is it that they feel no overwhelming urge to connect to any single place as home? One can muse about the still-ubiquitous but perhaps less rarely visible matted hair, saffron clad wandering mendicants of varied dispositions, and I am sure, at differing levels of self-actualization with their traditional food bowls, cloth sacks and sometimes even travelling monkeys for company. Where really is home for such people, and do they care overmuch about the idea of home?

To take another detour – what about the nameless, faceless bands of the homeless across lands, ages and political boundaries? Do they dream of having a space to call home? Do they see any space as being home? What of the aged who find themselves in Old-age “homes” and orphans who find themselves in shelters variously dubbed “Homes” and “foster homes”? What about those whom we label the insane and who sometimes (conveniently forgotten by their families) spend the best part of a lifetime in facilities, which are sometimes followed or preceded by the rather sanitized and apparently warm nomenclature of “home”? Do they – some, many, a few – feel that they are in a place that resembles home or did some go mad in the first place trying to find home?

Each individual would have a different tale to tell. Numbers and statistics would provide us with gigantic patterns where individual stories – like it or not – would not matter (paraphrased from Zygmunt Baumann). Yet can meaning ever be seen without the stories and first identifying the stories?

My mind returns to the pictures and images that fluttered about at the beginning of this essay. None of those views have become obsolete. That’s what I see. And it is precisely because the idea of home is so incredibly expansive and diverse, and contains so much more than just the physical or just the psychical or just this or just that that even today home remains unparalleled in comparison to any other space or place in what it signifies. And maybe, for some, which would be for many millions - if not billions - on this very planet, home is about discovering for oneself what Jesus meant when he stated, “The kingdom of heaven is within you”, and from there going on a journey where the destination becomes less and less important, and one where home eventually signifies no specific physical place or space.

"The world..." by Emily Dickinson

The pictures in the video are both from Katha books for children. The picture on the left by Oscar Bluemner is from Why always? And the picture on the right is by S.H. Raza from the book, “Raza by Raza”. 

The poem has been a favourite of mine from the very first time I read it – late in life. Suvro da had sent an essay of his, “Why we read and write poetry?” back in the Fall of 2002, and there were a few key lines from this poem, and so I had looked the lines up on the net back then, and the poem has stayed with me since then.

Ladakh

For the past few days I have been dreaming of lunar landscapes. The dreams themselves are not prophetic. I do not remember the events upon waking up from my dreams but the landscape is returning from what I saw around me for close-to-a-week week out in Ladakh. The Founder-President of the organization where I work was supposed to have travelled to Ladakh as an invited keynote speaker for an Education Conference but due to unavoidable circumstances, she and her husband had to travel to Madras instead. I was appointed as an emissary of sorts. That is how I found myself on a flight to Ladakh a couple of Sundays ago, instead of a flight to Durgapur.

About-to-land

The flight to Leh took about an hour. I had a window seat, and when the pilot announced that we were getting ready to land – I saw the unreal landscape that does not look of this world. It was not just the sheer raw beauty of the landscape. I have seen stunning sights from aeroplanes and out-in-the-open. This resembled a scene from a different planet. Maybe Antarctica gives the same impression of a different order. Here, what met my eyes was the famous lunar landscape – as far as the eye could see with a stark unbroken line of snow-capped peaks in the horizon beyond. The white innocuous clouds hung here and there, looking like gigantic mushrooms over a landscape, which had grown from someone’s imagination.

There was a nice, pleasant chap from the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh, who had been receiving the conference folks from 6.30 in the morning. He sat and chatted with me for a bit and then went back to his post. After a couple of the speakers joined our car, we were on the road to Phyang village. On the way to my farmstay, which was to be my home for the next 6 days, I caught a glimpse of the sinuous Indus – somewhat swollen, slow and sepia-toned as it wound its way through the valley. I saw too the Phyang monastery up on a hill, and told myself that I would visit it before I left Ladakh.

                                           Phyang Monastery from the farmstay

The farmstay was run by a woman, her niece and her husband. The woman and her niece were friendly, polite and very helpful without being intrusive. There was a lush, green garden that they maintained, and the village of Phyang stood like a green oasis beyond which rose those mammoth brown mountains. Just brown. From head to toe. It was as though one were standing inside a vivid, green bowl with those implacable, monstrous brown mountains standing like a circle of sentinels. Beyond them – depending on one’s view – one could catch the twinkling snow covered peaks of the Zanskar range. There were other folks staying at the farmstay for the conference and we chatted till lunch was served. I went about once to explore the garden and to see what lay beyond. My room was basic but clean and had a bed and a bookshelf, which carried three books – one on Buddhism, one on Ladakh and the third was The Sea of Poppies. Nandini, a friend who is studying marmots in Warila came visiting during the late afternoon and we chatted till late. We went out to the monastery but the solitary monk said that it was closed and that we could come back at 6.30 in the morning – if we wanted to hear the morning chant. We left with no promises. After a while we went for a bit of a drive away from Phyang village and the sky opened up above as one gigantic space with hundreds of stars. The air was quiet, and strangely-shaped rocks along the landscape looked as though they might come to life at night when nobody was looking.

Every morning was an early morning there. One had to make sure that one could use the common bathroom – being shared by 4 occupants – without causing inconvenience or being inconvenienced, and I think we managed quite well. One could avail hot water from the solar heaters but I went with cold baths, and it was fine. I could do it there in Ladakh but in Delhi – I find it impossible. That morning, after breakfast, we boarded the bus and there were others who joined our troop. We visited SECMOL (Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh)  first – and I caught my second glimpse of the Indus, along the moonscape gorges, and it isn’t a sight I will forget in a hurry. 

                                                          View from SECMOL

At SECMOL, we saw the buildings, which have been constructed so as to maintain an even 18 to 20 degrees in the midst of the furious Ladakh winters, where temperatures plummet to -30 and lower. We were shown the brown field, which becomes the ice hockey grounds during winter. SECMOL houses the first Indian women’s ice hockey team, which has gone on to win tournaments around Asia. We saw the vegetable gardens and the hostel buildings, the work buildings, and the patches of green, which once again were hemmed in on all sides by the brown moonscape. Later on Mr. Sonam Wangchuk (the inventor-engineer on whom the famous character of Phunsukh Wangdu/Rancho of 3 idiots is ostensibly based; Mr. Wangchuk from what I saw and heard is thankful when people don't ask him about the connection) explained his idea behind setting up SECMOL. It was to give the students who could not pass the board examinations or get through the alien mainstream syllabus – a second chance.

                                                                  HIAL site

From there we were off to the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh. Here there was only an empty landscape. I had no idea where our bus was going because it veered off the road into the brown, empty expanse. A half-circle of blue shipping containers then rose into view, and nothing else. A solitary building then rose up in the distance accompanied by a couple of smaller buildings. It was in one of the larger buildings that we had the five-day conference. The idea was to look, listen and see whether the 40 people or so could come up with a plan in 4 days such that students could experience a contextualized, experiential and locally-relevant educational experience at HIAL. A very ambitious programme – but that’s what they had in mind. 

                                            At the Geography and Geology Lesson                         

The days and evenings fairly flew by, and we were there till 6.30 or 7 in the evenings. The first part of the days were actually unlike any other conference that I have attended. We visited Basgo village one morning and the drive through the landscape was a delight, and even though I found the brown gravelly and smooth mountains rather discomfiting till the end – there was something else that was bewitching about the place. I insisted on sitting in the front of the small bus so that I could get an unobstructed view. Here and there, there are army cantonments – right near the airport and strewn in parts of the land that we drove about but I didn’t see too many army men on the first couple of days. On our way to Basgo, we stopped at the sangam of the Zanskar and Indus. Both the rivers were brown – the Zanskar looked a shiny brown. The director of HIAL showed us a picture she had taken last November and there the Zanskar was a vivid green and the Indus was a bright blue. With the glaciers melting, during Spring and Summer – both the Indus and Zanskar change colour. I was interested in knowing whether we were going to be sitting next to the Indus for a bit. Another chap was interested in knowing whether he could go for a bit of a swim. Neither transpired and so it was off to Basgo. There, Mr. Wangchuk gave us an interesting Geography and Geology lesson – my most interesting one. He told us the story of the Tethys sea and how the Indian landmass bumped into the Eurasian landmass, and that we were standing very near the Indus-Tsangpo suture. He pointed to the two sides of the mountains and told us why they looked different. That one of the sides was formed from volcanic rocks, and how the sedimentary rocks on the other side had been pushed up vertically. From there we could see the Basgo palace, which was perched on the side of a purple rock, which peppered the mountains – and he explained it was actually clay. The castle lay on a melting clay chocolatey coloured substance and so was going to gradually disappear. Lower down, we actually felt the rock-like clay. Some of the more curious ones even tasted the clay, which Mr. Wangchuk jokingly called “chocolate”, and he told us about the simple experiment he had conducted to find out whether that particular rock was a rock or not. 


We next went to an idyllic stream and had a perfect breakfast of sandwiches and tea. Some of us crossed the stream on foot. It looked like a fairly easy thing but I am glad that the nice and pleasant young chap had insisted on carrying my shoes. The waters were freezing, the stones were mighty uneven and the distance looked longer somehow once one was standing in the stream. One wouldn’t have gotten swept away but a splash was not unlikely under the circumstances. But nobody slipped and there no splashes. One young man was helping everyone by pointing out the places to step on and he gave us plains-folks a helping-hand up the banks. We stayed there for longer than we were supposed to, and finished our breakfast with some cake, and a cake-demonstration of the formation of the Himalayas. It was time to depart. I could have stayed there for the entire day. We skipped off to Basgo palace after that. And examined some of the ruins and gateways. Since we were already short of time, we had to hurry off without exploring the temple ruins and the whole palace. Mr. Wangchuk told us a little story about the Tibetan-Mongol siege and how the Ladakhi king had taken the help of Aurangzeb in chasing them off.

On another morning we saw a rivetting documentary by Stanzin Dorje/Gya, titled, “Living in Ladakh”. It was a simple documentary made on his nieces and their everyday life. The granny featured as did Stanzin Dorje’s sister and brother-in-law. The stars of the show were the young girls. And since he had made a largely unscripted documentary – it captured the life of the two young girls in difficult, challenging, normal, happy and humorous moments. It ended with the girls going on the very arduous pilgrimage walk, and with Stanzin telling us about how and why he made the documentary. He was an old student from SECMOL.  

                                                                       At Warila

The rest-of-the-days and evenings were spent in the conference room – either talking and discussing and making points in groups or listening to and looking at presentations. But I ran off one late evening with Nandini to her field base off a village near Leh. And very early the next morning, Nandini, her field-assistant and I drove to Warila where Nandini is studying marmots. Those two hours up there at 5000 metres was a fine experience. There was an army cantonment there, which was temporary. The army had just moved in about a month and a half ago. I managed to see quite a lot of those bounding marmots. The landscape here was not really barren. Everything seemed to be a soft, pale green and here and there the marmots bounded out of their burrows, scampered about, stood on a rock, surveyed the landscape and went off bounding again. I mentioned to Nandini that they looked awfully like gigantic squirrels, and she laughed and said that they were a part of the squirrel family. Some of them, near a particular monastery are rather tame, and are fed by the monks and they even like being petted by tourists. Sometimes, Nandini said – they even chase the tourists to get some tasty snacks and petting. We fairly raced back to the town and Nandini contacted and picked up a local chap, Mingyur who was coincidentally her point-man and also connected to HIAL. She dropped me off at HIAL and Mingyur dropped her off at the airport from where she was returning to Tirupati for a couple of weeks. 

           Repainted artwork at Phyang monastery - the mind led by the chattering monkey

On the final day, we went about for more sightseeing. We visited Phyang monastery, and there some of us wandered about, sitting in the prayer room with an oriental-looking Buddha, and looking at the painted-over artwork, and an old prayer room with the original artwork, and where the monks were engaged in their deep, sonorous chant with their accompanying drumbeats. I can quite imagine the primordial tug to go deep into that chanting. There’s something very harmonic and hypnotic about it even when I don’t understand a single word of what is being chanted. My reasoning mind keeps saying “but I don’t even know what is being said” and another part just wants to keep sitting still with no thoughts. From there we went to Thikse (Thiksey) monastery, where the halls led into other halls and there was a great big statue of the Buddha. This prayer room was visited by more people and although I sat still for a bit – I could feel too many people moving around and I hurried out.

                                                     Thikse (Thiksey) monastery

                                                       View from Thikse/y monastery
 

                                                     The now-melting ice stupa 

From there it was to the town and market centre of Leh. It rather resembled the Manali mall in one part. We were left to our own explorations, and I took off on my own. I walked about, explored a couple of side roads and then found a coffee shop where I took out my note-book, wrote some, looked about, had some coffee and had a smoke. I was wondering what else I could explore when I spotted one whole bunch of our conference people. I gently waved from where I was perched but they were walking along, and didn’t notice, and I didn’t draw any more attention. I went back to my view and thoughts. From where I was sitting – I had an unobstructed view of a twinkling bit of the Zanskar. After 20 minutes or so, I looked up thinking that I would like to go and look about some places when I saw one of the conference folks. I waved out and joined her, and she was visiting the Central Asian museum. I happily joined her and had a lovely 40 minutes exploring the museum with its pictures and portraits and maps – related mainly to the Silk route – and artefacts. I wondered though why there were no weapons on display. There was plenty of tea-drinking and food and clothing-related paraphernalia but only two small knives were on display. From there, we decided to visit the Ladakh arts museum, which turned out to be an adventure of sorts. The place was almost impossible to locate and we climbed all the way to the Leh palace and were wandering about in circles. A couple of helpful tourists pointed out to a possible direction but we realised that would simply be yet another circle. Finally a local helped us locate the museum by going all the way with us but the museum itself hadn’t been set up properly. My travel-companion joked that the museum authorities should give us Rs. 100/- (the price of admission, which we were not charged because nobody was there behind the counter) for making the climb through rocky terrain and visiting the museum. There was hardly anything on display. But the journey to and fro the museum had been a lot of fun for me. Next we met up with one group from the conference and went off to see the ice stupa with Mingyur. There we spent some time, wandering about next to the stream and had conversations and walked about, and then it was time to return to our farmstay. A couple of the boys from another farmstay stayed on and after chatting and having dinner, I called it a night. Early the next morning it was off to the airport at Leh with two of the very young, friendly and nice chaps from the conference, and a quiet and uneventful flight back to Delhi.

Summer trip 2018: Kasauli

I’ve dreamed of hills and mountains more often than I’ve visited them.  But sometimes – not too often – but sometimes, dreams, in part, come true. And so I found myself on a trip to Kasauli with Pupu and Suvro da, the last week. The days preceding the holiday deserve a blogpost of their own – but I’ll stick to the trip for this one.

We left at an early 6.30 a.m. Pupu and Suvro da being veteran travelers said we would stop for breakfast on the way. We were waiting at our assigned pick-up point and the driver came along in a few minutes. I had the sinking feeling about the driver for when I called him, he yowled on the phone saying that he had missed CCD and was returning to the pick-up point. We got into the car and were off on the road. The Delhi roads seemed and looked peaceful at that hour. I was sitting in the frontseat and looking about. The highway roads are in excellent shape and if it weren’t for our horrible habit of ignoring lane rules – it could have been a highway from the US. Pupu’s to-be university rose up on the right and she pointed out to it. We stopped at a roadside place for breakfast. The restaurant while it was named Shiva dhaba had a huge three-headed grinning dragon adorning its front. The road journey would have been absolutely fine, despite the heat, if it hadn’t been for the rude and yowling driver who had an uneven and unpleasant temper, kept texting or jabbering over the phone, and insisted upon playing the radio all through the journey. There were toll taxes and state taxes stops as we made our way across Delhi into Haryana, and crossed over to Punjab before journeying into Himachal. The heat was intense. The road in front seemed to be shimmering with rising heat waves. Yet inside the car, it was pleasant. I was waiting for the mountains to fist appear on the horizon, and almost on cue Pupu called out to her father and pointed to the mountains. They appeared as a haze in the distance – barely sketched into the distant landscape. And then came the winding mountain road with cars and buses hurtling in from around the bending road, which always seem to me to disappear into thin air before the road swerves back into one’s vision.

We reached Sukhi Johri, a hamlet in the Shivalik Range. The exact road to the hotel was hard to locate. Suvro da asked at a roadside shop and the owner helped out. The road wasn’t much of a road and when we came to a halt in front of two tracks – one at a sharp decline, winding about the hill and disappearing at a curve and which looked about half a foot in width and another which rose steeply only to end at a gated house/home/could that be our hotel? As we debated and the driver was of no help – Suvro da got out of the car and trotted off on the horsetrack path which disappeared around the curve. I hopped out to ask a couple of men sitting by the roadside – and sure enough they told us to take the road Suvro da had taken. We followed in the car for Suvro da had walked quite far along that narrow footpath. The winding path curved about and it looked like an alarmingly precarious track but Suvro da was walking along nonchalantly and speedily. The car inched forward and the bellboys from the hotel arrived to meet us, and told the driver where to park. I noticed Suvro da standing near the edge of the path and smiling, and he remarked on how apt the name of the hotel was.

It was a little past 2 in the afternoon or so, and I could hear the wind whispering through the pine trees. God knows what secrets and songs the wind was whispering.

The Whispering Winds Villa was truly a lovely place that Pupu had picked on-line with her unerring eye. The rooms with a view and the terrace were delightful.  The Villa was perched high up on that weird and precarious goat track/horsetrack/dirt road but what a lovely, clean forest it was that surrounded it on all sides. The room was a fine one with a view on three sides and my bed was right next to a grand view. The private terrace was all ours since there were no other guests, and the wind kept whispering away, softly and gently and continuously as I stepped out and sat in the shade smiling beatifically and with a somewhat goofy expression on my face, I’m sure. I couldn’t quite believe the sights, sounds and least of all the fact that I was really there with Pupu and Suvro da whose voices I could hear drifting about with the wind in my ears.

I didn’t think I was particularly hungry but as I sat for lunch I polished off more than my fair share of rajma , roti, dahi and salad, and I’m sure I felt guilty later but the deed was done. Very soon after that amidst the looks and comments of disbelief (for the A/C was running – it was rather warm inside the room) from both Pupu and Suvro da, I wrapped myself up in a black and white harlequin-like printed blanket and dozed off into a deep sleep in my bed right next to the huge glass window.

One of the best things of traveling anywhere with Pupu and Suvro da is that one gets to walk about. So after the noon snooze, we went off on a walk. The precarious horsetrack was negotiated and I stayed as far away from the ledge as was possible. The French have some term for the feeling of being pulled and drawn by some force when one is looking down from a height or even glancing at the earth from a height. We reached the curving mountain highway, which was still bustling with trucks, buses and cars. An old, old Sikh man who gave off the distinct but gentle and harmless living-in-his-own-world air and who had greeted Suvro da earlier on in the afternoon when we were trying to locate the hotel road waved to Suvro da as though he were seeing an old friend after a long time. The old Sikh told Suvro da to visit Giani da Dhaba on the other side of the road. We did indeed cross the road after a bit and walked up the slatted stairway to the dhaba. There was an old Sikh woman manning the counter. I’m not sure any more whether we were supposed to have had ice-cream or something else but Suvro da spotted the sign of ‘Chilled Beer” and asked Pupu what she wanted. We ended up sharing a nice bottle of chilled beer among the three of us. The waiter brought out three paper cups and the old Sikh woman scolded the boy softly but roundly and told him to get the glass beer mugs for us. After the beer was over, we walked along the mountain road, enjoying the scenery and avoiding the traffic. A motorbike backfiring noisily made me leap up like a goat. It sounded like some rapid gunshots but otherwise the stroll was idyllic. We walked back to the pine forests along the sides of the hotel. The wind had stopped whispering. Maybe it had gone to sleep. We sat there along some edges and ledges and as the train, which quite honestly looked like a toy train to me with its six little carriages tooted loudly and sonorously – the sound and sights in the middle of the approaching dusk felt like the scenes from some book or film. Pupu and Suvro da were reminiscing about the time that they themselves had travelled on the train so many years ago.

We walked back to the hotel through the gathering dark. By then I couldn’t see much but managed to skip along without falling on my face as Suvro da and Pupu created some trail ahead of me. We went back to the terrace and sat there chatting and admiring the lights and views. Dinner was as tasty – well, even tastier than lunch with chicken curry, rice, yogurt, and a green salad. Thank heavens though that Suvro da had told me to inform the owner that half a chicken was going to be more than enough. I had rather rashly said a ‘sure, fine’ to a whole chicken for the three of us after my mountain-air appetite during lunch. We sat out in the night light for quite a while. The first evening had come to an end, but not quite.

Suvro da, Pupu and I were chatting about myriad things and then out came Parashuram’s book. Suvro da read out – nay, performed the story of the utterly eccentric, bizarre and loveable Lambokorno, the goat. I kept breaking out into hoots of laughter. Pupu couldn’t stop laughing at one point and even Suvro da was laughing while deftly donning roles in the story. The evening and night came to a close with that hilarious and marvelously read-out tale. I stepped out onto the terrace one last time for the night, and could hear the strange cicadas. They make a twanging noise like some musical instrument – a zither, I think would come closest to it. And they keep at it, twanging and twingging away. The lights in the dark and distant hills shimmered and swayed and flickered. Yet the lights closer by stayed still like little unmoving blobs. It was time to go off to sleep and I trudged back in and went off to sleep in my bed near the window. As I tucked up in bed with my black-and-white harlequin patterned blanket – I fell asleep even before I knew I was asleep.

I could feel the sun and the hills even before I fully awoke into consciousness in the morning. After leisurely cups of tea, we proceeded to Giani da Dhaba for a breakfast of aloo parathas, pickles and yogurt.

For the umpteenth time I wondered how lovely it must be for mountain folks (with some money) who can stay in the mountains all their lives and what a Godwaful wrench it must be for those who have to leave and be stuck in the plains for some reason or the other. I feel that way about people who might still have homes near or in the forests and near rivers and in the mountains and even right near the sea sometimes…if it’s the seas – it cannot be in the tropics. That merely gives one a headache in the blast of summer.

Post breakfast it was off to Kasauli – an army and air-force cantonment. We passed the military hospital along the way and I followed it from above the winding mountain roads. I was reminded of the T.V. series M.A.S.H from decades ago. Kasauli was so awfully clean, quaint, quiet, lovely and neat that it seemed like an unreal town. We drove past Christ Church and to the air-force base. Monkey Point or Manki Point – I’m not sure why or how “Manki” came about – is located right within the ramparts of the air-force base, and I found that more than peculiar. Suvro da pointed out that the “Monkey Point” had been there for ages and the vantage point offered to the air-force was something that couldn’t be passed up, and so some reconciliation was made. There were monkeys of all sizes and one toddler monkey was being fed some tidbits by a tourist, and the little monkey was far more polite and sweet than many human beings I have come across. We walked up the slope of a road, and sat upon a bench looking about and around, and then went over to a small shack for some excellent cold coffee. Many of the roads within the cantonment barring the steps leading to the Monkey temple were closed off to civilians. The coffee took awhile in the making but it was awfully good. I watched the dark green military trucks winding up one road and turning into the air-force base and uniformed men coming and going on bikes and on foot, and a little child running about not too far away from his caretaker. Soon it was time to leave and I downed the icy coffee in one lovely delicious gulp. On our walk back to the car, Suvro da shot off the names of the air-force fighter jets – the pictures were gracing the roadsides of the air-force base. From there, we went to the church and a walk around the town of Kasauli. The church itself also looked like it was out of a picture book but I would have preferred far fewer people running about hollering and shouting on the grounds. Inside the church, it was very quiet and there were more than a few lit candles at the altar. The stained glass window had one panel of the Christ on the crucifix. On one of the walls there was a long scroll with The Lord’s Prayer.

From there we took a long and winding walk about the town. The town is so clean and quiet that I loved it. It looked like a town from a dream. There were pretty and large villas dotted all along both sides of the road, and beautiful blooming flowers, and the sun dappled in and out magically from in between the trees. It felt like it should be a little cooler but on the whole, the weather was fine. There were military and army and air-force placards and posters all along the roadsides. A few of them made me wince (and I am a person who from her late 20s wished she had joined the army) There were pictures of military martyrs along with one poster, which kept appearing at intervals that said military men are always prepared to die but they never will. But the roads were lovely and long and a couple of the villas made me sigh. One was named ‘Pahari Villa”. We reached one army stop-post and took a detour and I spotted a little brown puppy sitting very smartly near the army check-point. The off-road track sloped down gently and wound around and along the way we spotted a place called “Blarney Place”. Both Pupu and I remarked that it sounded like it was from an Agatha Christie book. Suvro da painted a picture of words on how the place must have been more than a good century ago. I found myself imagining how the Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welsh and Irish had managed to come up 6000 feet on horses and some basic amenities. The detour road although it was well-shaded felt distinctly warmer and the sun felt like it was shining more brightly near Blarney Place. In a few gentle turns around the mountain road, we spotted the main road. We had made a complete circle back to the army check-point, and I found the brown little puppy whom I petted happily while he wagged his tail nineteen to the dozen. It tried leaping into Pupu’s lap as she bent down to pet the little mongrel. On our way back we paused at one of the rest benches and then stopped by Khushwant Singh’s Villa. It was right against a ridge, a little off the main road – a white house with red paneling. I couldn’t help wondering whether the old Sikh was watching us from somewhere above.

We returned via another road, and Pupu picked up a lovely like birdhouse from a market. I was playing with some bells and looking at the various colourful and interesting little and medium-sized knick-knacks for sale. Back to the car it was after that and the petulant driver wasn’t happy about even driving back to the hotel. Back at the hotel we lazed about and wandered about on “the banks and brae of”, if not the Scottish “bonny doon” of Burns – the Shivalik range. It was enchanting. Pupu asked her father at one point while looking intently at the sky whether it might rain. To me it looked like there was not the slightest possibility of even a wee drop – but what did I know. The pinewood forests had soft and clean turf and I slipped many times by accident and one time I slid a bit on purpose but not once could I slide down all the way with a whoopee or yippee or even a short whee. No. The turf had a mind of its own. Suvro da did not slip even once. Pupu slipped once. We took a few pictures, romped abut a bi’ and then it was back to the room with a view. I dutifully went off for a snooze and without a shred of guilt.

At some point I dreamt I was in the middle of a glorious hailstorm. I should have known it was a dream because I could feel the chill and I could see the hailstones. I woke up and it was raining in thick and wild sheets. One could hear the rain sheets as they flew down and hard and they were being whipped about by the wind whistling through them. And outside on the terrace – it was a sight to behold. I caught sight of one mesmerizing violet lightning fork shoot straight down the entire expanse of the sky. Otherwise there was the continuous rumble of thunder, the steady sheets of rain, the scudding clouds which looked as though they were racing along for a terribly important meeting or maybe carrying fragile news, the freshly washed trees swaying and almost dancing in the wind and the rains. The temperature had dropped suddenly and sharply. Pupu and Suvro da were wrapped in blankets and I was spreading my arms like Superman in my jacket. It doesn’t even feel very real when I remember the images. They feel like they are images from some dream.

The rain showed no signs of ebbing. It sounded like an intermittent magnificent drum roll and the wind kept hurrying into it and kept slamming against it playfully. The power had gone out and so we couldn’t make tea or coffee in the room but we ordered a huge bowl of egg bhurji, which was as tasty as could be, and we chatted a lot about this and that. Later on as the rain slowed down and the wind stopped playing with it – the sky looked like it had been painted with a soft golden paint made of light. The whole landscape looked clear and stark. I felt like I were wearing new glasses. And the trees placed artistically all along the hilltops really looked like they were from a fake too-good-to-be-true painting.

Once the rains stopped – the silence could be felt. We trooped out to Giani da dhaba later on in the eve’ and supped on some poori sabzi and the staple yogurt. I was so busy stuffing myself that I missed tasting the pickle on the side. The power was still out so there was one long and stern candle at the table standing like a sentinel in the dark. We walked back to the hotel, and before too long I was back in my bed tucked up under my blanket. The second day and night had come to a close.

The next morning, we left at 10.30 in the morning, and were back in Delhi by 5 p.m. Early in the morning or I guess that should be in the middle of the night, Pupu and Suvro da departed for Durgapur from IGI Terminal 3.