by Ruskin Bond
Above it is the old pilgrim path, on which you walked. Just over twenty years ago, if you were a pilgrim intent on finding salvation at the abode of the gods, you travelled on foot all the way from the plains, covering about 200 miles in a couple of months. In those days people had the time, the faith and the endurance. Illness and misadventure often dogged their footsteps, but what was a little suffering if at the end of the day they arrived at the very portals of heaven? Some did not survive to make the return journey. Today’s pilgrims may not be lacking in devotion, but most of them do expect to come home again.
Along the pilgrim path are several handsome old houses, set among mango trees and the fronds of the papaya and banana. Higher up the hill the pine forests commence, but down here it is almost sub-tropical. Nandprayag is only about 3,000 feet above sea level—a height at which the vegetation is usually quite lush provided there is protection from the wind.
In one of these double-storeyed houses lives Mr Devki Nandan, scholar and recluse. He welcomes me into his house and plies me with food till I am close to bursting. He has a great love for his little corner of Garhwal and proudly shows me his collection of clippings concerning this area. One of them is from a travelogue by Sister Nivedita—an Englishwoman, Margaret Noble, who became an interpreter of Hinduism to the West. Visiting Nandprayag in 1928, she wrote:
Nandprayag is a place that ought to be famous for its beauty and order. For a mile or two before reaching it we had noticed the superior character of the agriculture and even some careful gardening of fruits and vegetables. The peasantry also, suddenly grew handsome, not unlike the Kashmiris. The town itself is new, rebuilt since the Gohna flood, and its temple stands far out across the fields on the shore of the Prayag. But in this short time a wonderful energy has been at work on architectural carvings, and the little place is full of gemlike beauties. Its temple is dedicated to Naga Takshaka. As the road crosses the river, I noticed two or three old Pathan tombs, the only traces of Mohammedanism that we had seen north of Srinagar in Garhwal.
Little has changed since Sister Nivedita’s visit, and there is still a small and thriving Pathan population in Nandprayag. In fact, when I called on Mr Devki Nandan, he was in the act of sending out Id greetings to his Muslim friends. Some of the old graves have disappeared in the debris from new road cuttings: an endless business, this road-building. And as for the beautiful temple described by Sister Nivedita. I was sad to learn that it had been swept away by a mighty flood in 1970, when a cloudburst and subsequent landslide on the Alakananda resulted in great destruction downstream.
Mr Nandan remembers the time when he walked to the small hill-station of Pauri to join the old Messmore Mission School, where so many famous sons of Garhwal received their early education. It would take him four days to get to Pauri. Now it is just four hours by bus. It was only after the Chinese invasion of 1962 that there was a rush of road-building in the hill districts of northern India. Before that, everyone walked and thought nothing of it!
Sitting alone that same evening in the little garden of the rest-house, I heard innumerable birds break into song. I did not see any of them, because the light was fading and the trees were dark, but there was the rather melancholy call of the hill dove, the insistent ascending trill of the koel, and much shrieking, whistling and twittering that I was unable to assign to any particular species.
Now, once again, while I sit on the lawn surrounded by zinnias in full bloom, I am teased by that feeling of having been here before, on this lush hillside, among the pomegranates and oleanders. Is it some childhood memory asserting itself? But as a child I never travelled in these parts.
True, Nandprayag has some affinity with parts of the Doon valley before it was submerged by a tidal wave of humanity. But in the Doon there is no great river running past your garden. Here there are two, and they are also part of this feeling of belonging. Perhaps in some former life I did come this way, or maybe I dreamed about living here. Who knows? Anyway, mysteries are more interesting than certainties.
Presently the room-boy joins me for a chat on the lawn. He is in fact running the rest-house in the absence of the manager. A coach-load of pilgrims is due at any moment but until they arrive the place is empty and only the birds can be heard. His name is Janakpal and he tells me something about his village on the next mountain, where a leopard has been carrying off goats and cattle. He doesn’t think much of the conservationists’ law protecting leopards: nothing can be done unless the animal becomes a man-eater!
A shower of rain descends on us, and so do the pilgrims. Janakpal leaves me to attend to his duties. But I am not left alone for long. A youngster with a cup of tea appears. He wants me to take him to Mussoorie or Delhi. He is fed up, he says, with washing dishes here.
‘You are better off here,’ I tell him sincerely. ‘In Mussoorie you will have twice as many dishes to wash. In Delhi, ten times as many.’
‘Yes, but there are cinemas there,’ he says, ‘and television, and videos.’ I am left without an argument. Birdsong may have charms for me but not for the restless dish-washer in Nandprayag.
The rain stops and I go for a walk. The pilgrims keep to themselves but the locals are always ready to talk. I remember a saying (and it may have originated in these hills), which goes: ‘All men are my friends. I have only to meet them.’ In these hills, where life still moves at a leisurely and civilized pace, one is constantly meeting them.
After the Monsoon
TOWARD THE END of the year, those few monsoon clouds that still linger over the Himalayas are no longer burdened with rain and are able to assume unusual shapes and patterns, chasing each other across the sky and disappearing in spectacular sunset formations.
I have always found this to be the best time of the year in the hills. The sun-drenched hillsides are still an emerald green; the air is crisp, but winter’s bite is still a month or two away; and for those who still like to take to the open road on foot, there are springs, streams, and waterfalls tumbling over rocks that remain dry for most of the year. The lizard that basked on a sun-baked slab of granite last May is missing, but in his place the spotted forktail trips daintily among the boulders in a stream; and the strident sound of the cicadas is gradually replaced by the gentler trilling of the crickets and grasshoppers.
Now, more than at any other time of the year, the wildflowers come into their own.
The hillside is covered with flowers and ferns. Sprays of wild ginger, tangles of clematis, flat clusters of yarrow and lady’s mantle. The datura grows everywhere with its graceful white balls and prickly fruits. And the wild woodbine provides the stems from which the village boys make their flutes.
Aroids are plentiful and attract attention by their resemblance to snakes with protruding tongues—hence the popular name, cobra lily. This serpent’s tongue is a perfect landing stage for flies, who, crawling over the male flowers in their eager search for the liquor that lies at the base of the spike, succeed in fertilizing the female flowers as they proceed.
One of the more spectacular cobra lilies, which rejoices in the name Sauromotum Guttatum—ask your nearest botanist what that means—bears a solitary leaf and purple spathe. When the seeds form, it withdraws the spike underground. And when the rains are over and the soil is not too damp, sends it up again covered with scarlet berries. In the opinion of the hill folk, the appearance of the red spike is more to be relied on as a forecast of the end of the monsoon than any meteorological expertise. Up here on the ranges that fall between the Jamuna and the Bhagirathi (known as the Rawain) we can be perfectly sure of fine weather a fortnight after that fiery spike appears.
But it is the commelinea, more than any other Himalayan flower, that takes my breath away. The secret is in its colour; a pure pristine blue that seems to reflect the deepest blue of the sky. Toward the end of the rains it appears as if from nowhere, graces the hillside for the space of about two weeks, and disappears again until the following monsoon.
When I see the first comme
linea, I stand dumb before it, and the world stands still while I worship. So absorbed do I become in its delicate beauty that I begin to doubt the reality of everything else in the world.
But only for a moment. The blare of a truck’s horn reminds me that I am still lingering on the main road leading out of the hill-station. A cloud of dust and a blast of diesel fumes are further indication that reality takes many different forms, assailing all my senses at once! Even my commelinea seems to shrink from the onslaught. But as it is still there, I take heart and leave the highway for a lesser road.
Soon I have left the clutter of the town behind. What did Aunt Ruby say the other day? ‘Stand still for five minutes, and they will build a hotel on top of you.’
Wasn’t it Lot’s wife who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the doomed city that had been her home? I have an uneasy feeling that I will be turned into a pillar of cement if I look back, so I plod on along the road to Devasari, a kindly village in the valley. It will be some time before the ‘developers’ and big-money boys get here, for no one will go to live where there is no driveway!
A tea shop beckons. How would one manage in the hills without these wayside tea shops? Miniature inns, they provide food, shelter, and even lodging to dozens at a time.
I tackle some buns that have a pre-Independence look about them. They are rock hard, to match the environment, but I manage to swallow some of the jagged pieces with the hot sweet tea.
There is a small shrine here, right in front of the tea shop. It is no more than a slab of rock daubed with vermilion, strewn with offerings of wildflowers. Hinduism comes closest to being a nature religion. Rivers, rocks, trees, plants, animals, and birds all play their part, both in mythology and in everyday worship. This harmony is most evident in remote places like this, and I hope it does not lose its unique character in the ruthless urban advance.
The Road to Anjani Sain
FOG, MIST, CLOUD, rain, and mildew—these were the things the British must have looked for when selecting suitable sites for the hill-stations they set up in the Himalayan foothills 150 years ago: Simla, Mussoorie, Darjeeling, Dalhousie, Nainital, all soggy with monsoon or winter mist and dripping oaks and deodars. The climate must have reminded them of their homes on the English moors or the Scottish highlands.
I have survived all that some thirty mountain monsoons that have been thrown at me; and having gone through the annual ritual of wiping the mildew from my books and a certain green fungus from my one and only suit, I decided to leave cloud country behind for a few days and be the guest of Cyril Raphael, at the Bhuvneshwari Mahila Ashram (a social service organization), at Anjani Sain in Tehri-Garhwal.
Pine country this, dry and bracing, with the scent of pine resin in the air. I have always thought 5,000 to 6,000 feet a healthier altitude to live at, but perhaps I’m prejudiced, having been born in Kasauli, which is pine rather than deodar country. Anjani Sain is about the same height and gets the sun all day. Given adequate food and pure water, it’s a healthy place to live. Contrary to what most people think, Garhwal is not a poverty-stricken area. Almost everyone has a bit of land and does at least have the traditional do-roti for sustenance, which is more than can be said for the urban unemployed in other parts of northern India. But medical facilities are certainly lacking.
This area has always been known as Khas-patti, probably because it was special in several ways—climate-wise and probably economy-wise too. Down in the flat valley, there are green fields and even mango trees, the descent to lower altitudes being quite sudden in these parts. The small Anjani Sain bazaar, with its single bank, post office, and chemist’s shop, shimmers in the noonday sun; it looks like a set for the gunfight at the OK Corral. But this is, generally, a peaceful area.
At the ashram, I am in time for an early lunch—thick rotis made from mandwa (millets)—two of these are more than enough for me! Endless glasses of milky tea will see me through till supper time.
Towering over Anjani Sain, and blessing all those who live or pass beneath, is the Chanderbadni temple, dedicated to one of the incarnations of the goddess Parvati. As this is not one of the main pilgrim routes, the temple does not get as many visitors as some of the other sacred shrines in the hills. Below the Chanderbadni peak is a rest-house, for those who wish to break their journey here.
Anjani Sain lies midway between Tehri and Devprayag—a two-hour bus ride from either place. I came via Tehri, the road climbing steeply above the hot, dusty town that is destined to be submerged by the waters of the Tehri Dam. The dam should have been ready by now, but having been the subject of a great deal of controversy, work on it has progressed in fits and starts.
I am told that this entire region is ‘eco-fragile’, one of those words bandied around at seminars all over the world. Well, I am not an expert in these matters, (and who is, I wonder?) but I should think most of our earth is ‘eco-fragile’, having had to put up with hundreds of thousands of years of human civilization.
Do we stop all development in the name of preserving the environment? Or do we move on regardless? Proceed with caution would be the rational person’s answer. But are human beings really rational?
Old Tehri was no beauty spot, and New Tehri (growing rapidly above it), is even uglier; from a distance it looks like a giant cemetery.
When the architecture of sub-urban Delhi is brought to the hills, what is there to say? You just look the other way.
Fortunately the defaced mountain is soon left behind, and as it slips out of sight and we ascend into the pine regions, the eye is soothed by the pretty, slate-covered houses of the villages and their little gardens ablaze with marigolds and yellow and bronze chrysanthemums. Chrysanthemums love this climate. Down in the fields there are patches of crimson cholai (amaranth) interspersed with the fresh green of young wheat.
And here be leopards! My companion tells me of one that strolls down the motor road every evening, forcing the local bus to go around him. His presence also accounts for the absence of stray dogs.
Suddenly in the distance I see what at first glance appears to be a cloud or a large white sailing ship. On approaching, it turns out to be the freshly white-washed buildings of the Bhuvneshwari Mahila Ashram, clinging to the steep slopes of the mountain.
Here, for two or three days, I find rest and sustenance. The manifold activities of the ashram, (directed mainly towards the welfare of widows and small children) are there for all to see, and I recall the relief work undertaken by its young field workers after the Uttarkashi earthquake last year—they had rushed to the area before the government agencies could swing into action.
However, as a social worker I am somewhat inept. I am just a frazzled old writer who never made it to the bestseller lists and who now seeks a refuge from the all-pervasive clutter of tourism that makes ordinary life almost impossible in our hill- stations.
I hope the land-grabbers and the real estate ‘developers’ never get this far. They are welcome to their malls and artificial lakes and concrete parks. Just so long as I am free to escape from it all, to sit here at Anjani Sain contemplating a large white rose in Cyril’s garden, while the rest of the world watches video.
The Fern
The slender maidenhair fern grows firm on a rock
While all around her the water swirls and chatters
And then disappears in a rush
Down to the bottom of the hill.
When I’m surrounded by troubled waters, Lord,
Let me find within a rock to cling to,
And give me the quiet patience of the maidenhair
Who has learned to live with the rock.
Time to close The Window
The Mountains Remain
Epilogue
THIS RECORD OF my years in the hills is based on journals, notebooks, diary entries and personal essays. That’s what life is really like—episodic, full of highs and lows and some fairly dull troughs in between. Life is not a novel; it does not have the organization
of a novel. People are not characters in a play; they refuse to conform to the exigencies of a plot or a set of scenes. Some people become an integral part of our lives; others are ships that pass in the night. Short stories, in fact.
My life can really be divided into two sections. The first thirty years, when I was fairly restless and on the move, never long in one place or with one set of friends; and the second thirty years, almost entirely spent in the mountains, when I became about as fixed and permanent as the horse-chestnut that I see from my window.
Only the other day, an old friend, Abha Saili, wife of the daffodil-growing professor, said, ‘Ruskin we’ve known you for thirty years, but we know nothing about you before you came here . . . .
I like to pretend that my earlier life was something of a mystery, but in truth it was fairly mundane—boarding-school life, a few years abroad, then working in an office in Delhi— and no, I did not get married, in spite of the rumours that come back to me from time to time!
There were only two occasions in my life when I came really close to getting married. Once in London, when I was twenty- one and infatuated with a very sweet and pretty Vietnamese girl, who promised me her hand until she met a rich American and found his signature more attractive than mine. And the second time, when I met a nurse from Ferozepur, who made it her business to take charge of me for several months. She was a fine, strapping girl, but I think I would have felt sat upon (literally, too) if I had been yoked to her for life.
Perhaps I should have married Miss Bun. But I don’t see myself writing stories in the back of a beauty parlour.
I am all for people getting married, for I think the human race should continue (in spite of its obvious limitations), but I think my own contribution to the quality of life must come through the written word and, of course, any encouragement I can give to others in their struggle for survival.
