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.

Hardwar 2018

Let me put up this long and winding post. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago.

-----------------------

Where do I begin for this post? Andy Williams would say something, and Julie Andrews would say that one might as well start from the very beginning. But where does the very beginning begin? I could reminisce about looking at pictures from back in school when I was in class VIII, and seeing pictures of a clear green, sparkling river and a river bank and known smiling faces, and how I had been wishing I could have been there. I remember lingering over a couple of pics while trying not to. Or should I just zoom forth – some two decades through – and consider January this year? A smooth ride on the highway and sit-ins and conversations in a garden with a riot of flowers and squirrels and my best friend, and delightful fat puppies to cuddle in the early evenings before the sun went down? Or should I mention how I found myself in Delhi a month ago – because if I hadn’t been here and hadn’t joined work – there was going to be no holiday – stolen from that thief of time. I’m not sure whether the beginning is really located in any of these beginnings – so I’ll jump to the jumbled middle.

I didn’t really think I would be going for an utterly unexpected holiday for a whole day off to Hardwar. Even when I booked the tickets – back on the 28^th of January, once Suvro da told me to – there was a part of me, which was quietly and stoically sceptical. But the holiday did happen.

Early one morning, a week ago, I took the train from New Delhi Railway Station. I do not mind waking up early to take trains or buses or aeroplanes. In fact, I usually prefer early morning travel for varied reasons. The taxi ride to New Delhi Railway Station was my first in remembered memory. I rather enjoyed it. The roads were dark, empty and looked clean. Yet I couldn’t see how that road could be traversed in less than 55 minutes during normal hours. The train journey was quite nice too apart from a passenger who nudged me by accident while sleeping. I nudged him back hard and instinctively and he waved his hand in apology while still sleeping. The journey was not too terribly long and yet it was long enough to be able to catch mini snoozes, mini phone calls and a breakfast. There wasn’t much of a view apart from one short stretch where there were emerald green wheat fields and a couple of lonely farmers.

At Hardwar, I got a rickshaw at the station and soon enough then came the narrow, winding alleys with colourful shops, set (merry) cheek by (happy) jowl selling everything from bells to blankets to bangles. I was awfully tempted to buy bangles or take pictures but I did neither. But there was a flash and flurry of colours and mixed fragrances, and I could quite see why foreigners would find the medley of colours and narrow alleys – for better or worse – exotic. Just as suddenly – when I started wondering how the Ganga would appear in the midst of what I was seeing – the sinuous shop alley ended. Before I knew it – there was the Ganga to my right. I paid the rickshaw driver and hopped off. I looked at the Ganga and smiled before knowing I was smiling. It felt cooler even though the afternoon sun was hot.

I reached Hotel Teerth and getting a room was a two minute deal since Suvro da had already mentioned that I would be arriving. And there up on the balcony – I gazed at the Ganga. I love small ponds and even little fountains. I find water bodies – small or large – magical. I love rivers and mighty seas and oceans. But this was something else – and I know why. I searched with my eyes for I knew I’d find “Shiva guarding his own”, and I did. I had to bend low from my balcony to find him though. He was turned away and at an angle, and looked jauntier and haughtier and grander than I remembered him from a picture seen close to a decade ago.

Suvro da and his mum arrived from Mussoorie, and I skipped up the flight of stairs to their room. Shiva from Suvro da’s room was not hiding. He was standing there all tall and grand and I didn’t have to bend low to find him from that balcony! The afternoon was blissful even though there was an annoying hammer that started hammering away at some point. I didn’t think I was going to snooze – in fact, I had no intentions of snoozing and I was determined to stay awake. But at some point I was dreaming that I was falling from a great height and jolted awake – and I went back to snoozing.

At four it was off to the Manasa Temple. Suvro da and I stopped at a roadside shop for tea and a flaky biscuit that the French would have been proud of. We walked along those alleys, and the bangles and bells and blankets kept beckoning at me. I was half-loping through and half-looking at those colorful alleys with all kinds of smells floating through from incense to fried food to even the fragrance from the bells (or was that in my head?) so as to not lose sight of Suvro da. I had no idea how we were getting to Manasa Temple but I was all-in for anything really. Suvro da had earlier pointed out to the landmark and said there was a view up there. Soon enough he was getting the tickets for the ropeway. I didn’t bat an eyelid but to think I had stayed away from ever taking the ropeway from the time I was an 8-year old stubborn mule along a lakeside in Switzerland, and had loudly claimed for a long time that I never would. Let me not go into reasons. Even some three years ago when a whole bunch of 70 people took the ropeway (Gondola) in Gulmarg – I had gone off for a walk in the snowy mountains.

The ropeway ride was marvelous. If there was something I was sad about it was that it came to an end too soon. On the ropeway, Suvro da said “And now you’ll tell me that you’ve never been on a ropeway…” to which I had to grunt in affirmation and mumble under my breath. Suvro da pointed out that the odds of being hit by a random vehicle back in Muchipara were higher than falling off a cable car and breaking one’s neck. He pointed out to the curving hill road, which he and his entire troop had taken during the school excursion back in 1989. We reached the Manasa temple and took a sandy rocky slope to the view-point. The path wasn’t too terribly precarious if one were wearing sneakers but Suvro da went about in his flip-flops and I kept muttering ‘don’t go that close to the ledge…’ Apparently, the monkeys at the view-point are a menace. Just before taking the ropeway there was a panda who was trying to get Suvro da to buy a bag of offerings not for the deity but for the langurs! They take the food offerings but there seemed to be random stuff like pictures and boxes that people had left up there at the view-point, and a couple of curious monkeys were going through the stuff. One monkey also took a bag of puffed rice offered to it by a visitor, and ran off and sat with it next to the ledge. The view from the top was kingly. Hardwar lay like a toy town way down and Suvro da pointed out to the original route of the Ganga, which the British had diverted, and he pointed out to the dam they had built. I could have sat there on the view-point just admiring the view and watching the Ganga winding about at a distance if it hadn’t been for the pesky monkeys, I guess. I took a couple of pictures, on Suvro da’s bidding, but my pics look nothing like what I saw through my eyes. I am reminded of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.

I half-skidded and slid down the sandy ridge while we were going back down. Suvro da did better in his flip-flops. We had piping hot samosas and great big jalebis at a shop next to the temple, and we wondered what made people decide that they would set up an eatery next to a temple up on the hills… I didn’t pray at Manasa temple. They say that one can make a wish (or wishes, I suppose if one is so inclined) and tie a thread and do the perambulation around the Sanctum Sanctorum, and if the Goddess is feeling benevolent and grants one’s wish – one goes back at some point and unties one’s thread. But how does one find one’s own thread? – I wonder. Anyhow, I didn’t know what exactly I could pray for when I was ambling about up there, and so I shook my head at the thought of praying any prayers at Manasa Temple. I made all the clear prayers I could at 22 and I haven’t changed any of them since then.

We came back on the ropeway and I managed to take one hasty picture but I watched the descent carefully trying to record every bit in my mind and greatly enjoyed it. I don’t know why I had been so scared of ropeways almost all my life…

Suvro da was racing back along once we were on flat ground because the Ganga aarti was to begin at 6 p.m. We walked over to Har-ki-Pauri and it was already full of people. But we edged along and took our places. I was sort of in a dream-like state by then. Maybe this is what the Durkheim-ian collective conscience is all about? Or maybe I was looking at and feeling only what I wanted to feel. The fire lamps and the chanting in the background felt incredibly familiar. My gaze was fixed and I don’t even think I cared too much about the crowds thronging the ghat. The aarti came to an end in ten minutes, and we walked off and away from the centre. I had thought there would be a sudden river of human beings leaving the ghat but I didn’t feel the crowd dispersing. I saw a couple of chaps sitting next to the Ganga with their feet in the river and I very badly wanted to do the same. In fact I had been wanting to quietly dip into the Ganga and take a swim since the afternoon. But I did nothing of that sort. The current of the waters looked very strong but Suvro da pointed out to some people who were wading about in the middle of the Mother Ganges. She wasn’t in full swell. I still didn’t leap into the Ganga nor did I go about on a canoe. Back in the work-place, folks asked me later whether I had had fun white-water rafting in Rishikesh. Somehow people had assumed that I had gone for rafting or canoeing or for some water adventure sports with my mentor in Rishikesh.

Suvro da’s mum had also been there at Ganga-aarti and we joined her and strolled over to a roadside tea-shop. I saw the statue of Netaji. Barring his distinct INA uniform – he rather looked like he were in disguise. Suvro da’s mum later narrated a story about Netaji when he really had been in disguise and was about to cross the ice-cold Volga (I believe it was). His accomplice urged him to take a swig of Vodka. Netaji refused saying he had promised his mum and his Mother (his country) that he would never do such a thing. His accomplice told him that it would be better to take a swig and cross the river with the help of the warmth that the Vodka provided to cross the Volga than becoming incapacitated. That convinced Netaji and so he prayed a prayer, took a swig and crossed the river. We of course sat out there for our tea. The tea here is heavy, incredibly sweet and doesn’t taste too much like tea. However this cuppa wasn’t bad. I could hear the river as I sipped on the tea, had some biscuits that Mashi had brought along and heard gentle voices around me and in my head…

We went for a walk along the river banks and Suvro da shared a bit about the time that he had come over with a bunch of his school-boys back in 1989 and how they had stayed at the only lodge on the other side of the Ganga, and how he had got all of them – teachers included – to walk across to the other side for their daily meals…He even shared a wee-bit about a visit to Rajaji National Park during the course of that excursion. The National Park could be seen as a forest shroud in the distance, up in the high hills across the banks from the hotel balcony. While we were standing on the bridge and watching the river rush along below I was looking at the lit flower diyas, which were sailing with the river current, carrying their offerings to the river Goddess and perhaps her God. I wanted to float a diya. As we returned from our stroll down the river-side I was musing aloud that it would be rather nice to have a small shop selling colourful trinkets and who-knows-what-else right next to the river. Suvro da stated that the locals would never let outsiders in. I like to imagine that maybe in some lifetime I had become an insider – maybe far up The River. I was reminded of a vague story that had begun in flashes inside my head (when I was a trifle barmy many years ago), about a woman who had loved and probably lost in worldly terms, and left behind whatever she could, and went off to spend the rest of whatever remained in Hardwar…I never got to see more flashes and there never was a complete story.

I did float a diya. Suvro da remembered in his way matter-of-fact way. I had forgotten by then although I was looking at all the beautiful flower diyas along the way and on the way back from our river stroll. I bought one diya and was badgered into buying two and nearly caved in but I stuck to one. There was a priest who appeared. I was asking Suvro da whether I couldn’t just float my diya on my own, Mashi was watching, and Suvro da was telling me to take off my shoes. The priest asked me a question to which I shook my head while looking resolutely away, and then before I knew it – the chanting began and was over. I got to bathe my feet in the Ganga. I got to touch the holy waters. And then I floated my diya in the Ganga…

The evening came to an end with the roar of the mighty river and rather too soon and suddenly. It would have been too soon, for me, no matter when it might have come to an end. I fell into a deep sleep ridiculously early. I could hear the Ganga in the middle of the night. I woke up and sat out in the balcony for a bit. The waters were lovely, dark and deep and looked like they were cast in a magical light. I could hear the notes and the low roar of the waves. God knows when I went back in and fell asleep again. It came to me in my half-sleep state that the odd bouts of fever and the persistent body-aches had disappeared, and so I grinned when Fimh said something, and he said something else.

There was one delightful mini-walk by the Ganga early in the morning and a very strange cup of tea. Suvro da didn’t find the tea strange. He found it awful. And then there was the ride to the station through the dark. The train was late but it came along eventually to Hardwar. I think I could write a whole blog-post about the wait and the train ride back to New Delhi Railway station. But let that be.

The train was late in arriving at New Delhi, and it put a damper to my erstwhile envisioned plans. Suvro da’s mum and I sat put on an empty bench and chatted, Suvro da sat and chatted for a bit but walked about here and there for the most part, and as the afternoon lingered on, Aakash, Suvro da’s old student arrived. We had a neat lunch at the station. We walked over to Platform 13. Suvro da and Aakash went back to help a passenger with her luggage onto a train. Rajdhani chugged into the station and we all boarded. I was rather impressed by the clean and nifty interiors. Suvro da was telling me how there was originally only a Calcutta-New Delhi Rajdhani and a Bombay-New Delhi Rajdhani until all other cities like Madras and others started yowling that they too wanted a “Rajdhani” Express.  But soon enough it was time for Aakash and me to get off the train and Suvro da nudged us to get off. I couldn’t pretend that I too was a traveler. Aakash was loitering about on the platform as the train started chugging out. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was wondering whether to run alongside the train because that is what they used to do as children – and one can actually run “faster” than a train till a point. I sort of chuckled at the thought of Suvro da seeing two of his students running alongside his window. Suvro da and his mum departed on the Rajdhani for Durgapur in the late afternoon, and it was time to leave the station.