Tales of the Open Road Read online

  ‘I hope the road will soon be ready,’ I say in parting. ‘I hope you will make lots of money. I hope you will be able to go to Delhi for your operation. And I hope I can come this way again.’

  Hillman or plainsman, we have only our hopes to keep us going.

  Meetings on the Tehri Road

  The human personality can impose its own nature on its surroundings. At a dark, windy corner in the bazaar, one always found an old man hunched up over his charcoal fire, roasting peanuts. He died one summer a couple of years back.

  Then, some weeks later, there was a new occupant of the corner, a new seller of peanuts. No relative of the old man; but a boy of thirteen or fourteen, cheerful, involved, exchanging good-natured banter with his customers. In the old man’s time it seemed a dark, gloomy corner. Now it’s lit up by sunshine: a sunny personality, smiling, chattering. Old age gives way to youth; and I’m glad I won’t be alive when the new peanut-vendor grows old. One shouldn’t see too many people grow old.

  Leaving the main bazaar behind, I walk some way down the Mussoorie-Tehri road, a fine road to walk on, in spite of the dust from an occasional bus or jeep. From Mussoorie to Chamba, a distance of some thirty-five miles, the road seldom descends below 7000 feet, and there is a continual vista of the snow ranges to the north and the valleys and rivers to the south. Dhanolti is one of the lovelier spots, and the Garhwal Mandal has a rest-house here, where one can spend an idyllic weekend. Some years ago I walked all the way to Chamba, spending the night at Kaddu-khal, from where a short climb takes one to the Sirkhanda Devi temple.

  If one were to leave the Tehri road, one can trek down to the little Aglar river and then up to Nag Tibba, 9000 feet, which has a good oak forest and animals ranging from barking-deer to Himalayan bear. But this is an arduous trek and you must be prepared to spend the night in the open or seek the hospitality of a village.

  Having wandered some way down the Tehri road, it is quite late by the time I return to the Landour bazaar. Lights still twinkle on the hills, but shop fronts are shuttered and the little bazaar is silent. The people living on either side of the narrow street can hear my footsteps, and I can hear their casual remarks, music, a burst of laughter.

  Through a gap in the rows of buildings I can see Pari Tibba outlined in the moonlight. A three-quarter moon is up, and the tin roofs of the bazaar, drenched with dew, glisten in the moonlight. Although the street is unlit, I need no torch. I can see every step of the way. I can even read the headlines on the discarded newspaper lying in the gutter.

  Although I am alone on the road, I am aware of the life pulsating around me. It is a cold night, doors and windows are shut; but through the many chinks, narrow fingers of light reach out into the night. Who could still be up? A shopkeeper going through his accounts, a college student preparing for his exams, someone coughing and groaning in the dark.

  Three stray dogs are romping in the middle of the road. It is their road now, and they abandon themselves to a wild chase, almost knocking me down.

  The rickshaw stand is deserted. One rickshaw catches the eye because it is decorated with dahlias and marigolds, most of them still fresh.

  A jackal slinks across the road, looking right then left—he knows his road-drill—to make sure the dogs have gone. A field rat wriggles through a hole in a rotting plank on its nightly foray among sacks of grain and pulses.

  Yes, this is an old bazaar. The bakers, tailors, silversmiths and wholesale merchants are the grandsons of those who followed the mad sahibs to this hilltop in the 1830s and 1840s. Most of them are plainsmen, quite prosperous even though many of their houses are crooked and shaky.

  Although the shopkeepers and tradesmen are fairly prosperous, the hill people—those who come from the surrounding Tehri and Jaunpur villages—are usually poor. Their small holdings and rocky fields do not provide them with much of a living, and men and boys have often to come into the hill station or go down to the cities in search of a livelihood. They pull rickshaws, or work in hotels and restaurants. Most of them have somewhere to stay.

  But as I pass along the deserted street, under the shadow of the clock tower, I find a boy huddled in a recess, a thin shawl wrapped around his shoulders. He is wide awake and shivering.

  I pass by, head down, my thoughts already on the warmth of my small cottage only a mile away. And then I stop. It is almost as though the bright moonlight has stopped me, holding my shadow in thrall.

  If I am not for myself,

  Who will be for me?

  And if I am not for others,

  What am I

  And if not now, when?

  The words of an ancient sage beat upon my mind. I walk back to the shadows where the boy crouches. He does not say anything, but he looks up at me, puzzled and apprehensive. All the warnings of well-wishers crowd in upon me—stories of crime by night, of assault and robbery. But this is not Northern Ireland or Lebanon or the streets of New York. This is Landour in the Garhwal Himalayas. And the boy is no criminal. I can tell from his features that he comes from the hills beyond Tehri. He has come here looking for work and he has yet to find any.

  ‘Have you somewhere to stay?’ I ask. He shakes his head; but something about my tone of voice has given him confidence, because now there is a glimmer of hope, a friendly appeal in his eyes.

  I have committed myself. I cannot pass on. A shelter for the night—that’s the very least one human should be able to expect from another.

  ‘If you can walk some way,’ I offer, ‘I can give you a bed and blanket.’

  He gets up immediately—a thin boy, wearing only a shirt and part of an old track-suit. He follows me without any hesitation. I cannot now betray his trust. Nor can I fail to trust him.

  So now there are two in the sleeping moonlit bazaar. I glance up at the tall, packed houses. They seem to lean towards each other for warmth and companionship.

  The boy walks silently besides me. Soon we are out of the bazaar and on the footpath. The mountains loom over us. A fox dances in the moonlight and a night-bird calls. And although no creature of the forest has ever harmed me, I am glad to have a companion as I walk towards another Himalayan dawn.

  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 through the forty or so 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 some years ago 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 5000 to 6000 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 noon sun; it looks like
a set for a gunfight like in old westernsl. 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 suburban 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 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.

  Where Rivers Meet

  It’s a funny thing, but long before I arrive at a place I can usually tell whether I am going to like it or not.

  Thus, while I was still some twenty miles from the town of Pauri, I felt it was not going to be my sort of place; and sure enough, it wasn’t. On the other hand, while Nandprayag was still out of sight, I knew I was going to like it. And I did.

  Perhaps it’s something on the wind—emanations of an atmosphere—that are carried to me well before I arrive at my destination. I can’t really explain it, and no doubt it is silly to make judgements in advance. But it happens and I mention the fact for what it’s worth.

  As for Nandprayag, perhaps I’d been there in some previous existence, I felt I was nearing home as soon as we drove into this cheerful roadside hamlet, some little way above the Nandakini’s confluence with the Alakananda river. A prayag is a meeting place of two rivers, and as there are many rivers in the Garhwal Himalayas, all linking up to join either the Ganga or the Jamuna, it follows that there are numerous prayags, in themselves places of pilgrimage as well as wayside halts en route to the higher Hindu shrines at Kedarnath and Badrinath. Nowhere else in the Himalayas are there so many temples, sacred streams, holy places and holy men.

  Some little way above Nandprayag’s busy little bazaar, is the tourist rest-house, perhaps the nicest of the tourist lodges in this region. It has a well-kept garden surrounded by fruit trees and is a little distance from the general hubbub of the main road.

  Above it is the old pilgrim path. 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 two hundred 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 3000 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 tirne a wonderful energy has been at work on architectural carvings, and the little place is full of gem-like 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 re
st-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.’