I Float, Like a Peacock Blue Butterfly…
A family of three bulbuls. Perched on the fence. Chirping in joy. Suddenly flying to the citrus tree, still young, growing under the mature shadow of the big tree of walnuts, then back to the kafal tree, the peach tree, and finally, happily positioned on the delicate branches of the deliciously bitter neem tree, its dew-soaked leaves dancing with the wind.
They seemed to be waiting for us this moist, sweet, sunshine morning high up in the hills of Pauri Garhwal. I could see Gangotri-Gaumukh range shining in the distance, like a gem in the blue sky. The origin of a great, epical river, ravaged the moment it hits the plains.
The origin of shrishti, in the original lap of an impossible and fierce nature, surrounded by mighty waterfalls, the blue-inky glacier at Gomukh, with its open mouth, soon after Bhujwas and Chitwas, where Oxygen starts getting low. Above it is Tapovan, icy, frozen, where a woman tapasvi lived for ages, until she felt seriously ill.
This is where Bhagirathi, the river’s journey begins, from the beginning to the end of infinity, mingling with so many other mountain rivers with exotic names – Bhairvi, Jahanvi, Alaknanda, Bhilangana. Till they all submerge at Ganga Sagar and the Bay of Bengal.
Every time we went out, even for a while, we were greeted by the three bulbuls when we arrived back home. Hello, welcome back, they would say. Their little wings shining in the sunlight. A streak of sharp red below one eye, complementing another bigger streak just below the stomach where the tail begins, its black beak, ready to sweet-tweet.
They knew that we were friends, overlooking little, empty, beautiful mountain villages, with their tiled roofs and a small forest surrounding them, now dead and sad in their emptiness, migration having left an eternal emptiness that not even birds go there anymore. Their terraced crop fields lie barren, the fruits of their light green kafal tree – no one eats, and the sound of kids playing, you can hear no more.
For a picturesque little state, with its simple, soft-speaking, hard-working people, the ideal could be a ‘small is beautiful model’ where every small village of a few families could make their communities a creative, life-affirming collective of dream-like self-sustenance, an ecological utopia with a little help from the State; but it all seems so impossible in North India, trapped in an relentlessly corrupt power establishment of successive regimes. Even after a hard and protracted struggle for a separate hill state, after facing such brutal repression, the dream has remained crushed. Now, it has all but forgotten.
The ‘secular’ Congress cared a damn. However, at least, it did not believe in polarization and division. Now the misty mountains have been decisively poisoned by the vicious politics of hate and Hindutva, the latest lab of the BJP-RSS.
Small is no longer beautiful out here in Uttarakhand, so close to my soul, and my imagined homeland. In our childhood in small town Saharanpur in Western UP, we would travel to Haridwar, Rishikesh, Dehradun, Dhanaulti and Mussoorie, as and when we wanted, walking on the Camel’s Back Road, onwards to the Mall.
Later, as teenagers, we would drink a chilled beer on the sly at the famous restaurant, ‘Whispering Windows’, where the clouds, sometimes deliciously icy, would enter the windows, bathe us with its exotic aura, and fill our hearts with sensuous, eclectic, anticipations, and a strange, insatiable desire.
Refuge From Sweltering Cities
From the heat wave of Delhi, which starts with the dawn, mornings in our village high up in the Himalaya, are soaked with a foggy, dream-like substance, spreading like a creamy-white blanket, hiding the trees within their fold, slowly creeping in through the windows like memories. A cup of steaming hot brew, mixed with miscellaneous herbs and Assam tea, and a cigarette smoke with it, on such mornings, are a miracle.
Sooner than later, the fog disappears, and a lucid, clear, sunshine arrives, warming the heart and soul, making you feel lighter, as if the cool wind from the distant hills can lift you, body and soul, into the lightness of eternal light. I float, like a peacock blue butterfly.
Afternoons depart to bring in the chill early, so typical of higher altitudes. You can start imagining of how to build a small fire, so that the home and the hearth finds its familiar completion after another fulfilling day, and stories from the deepest recesses of the subconscious can emerge in the darkness, while we sit in a circular collective, a glass of rum in hand. Ghost stories, tiger stories, mountain stories, stories of loves lost and broken hearts, stories of falling and getting up, stronger and resilient then ever. Jim Corbett is my favourite.
For lunch we walk up to the nearest dhaba at the crossroad. The food is so lovely that you have no option but to come back again. Hot, steaming, rice full of fibre, black, local dal, and raw onions with a green chilli and green pudina chutney. Delicious.
The young man, who works here, is a kind of legend. He rarely smiles, even when he cracks a joke. Like in most of Uttarakhand these days, leopards (called Bagh by locals) have come to make their homes here. They have multiplied, and spread, stalking human settlements, especially dogs, their most easy prey. The young Garhwali, after the dhaba shuts in the night, treks through the forest to his humble home. The only protection he has is a couple of glasses of rum in his stomach.
In The Forest of The Night
Going after dark, through the forest, can turn out to be dangerous. But the young man is brave, and not because of the rum in his stomach. He knows his way. This is his childhood home. The leopard knows that.
Now, a leopard has been seen all over, even strolling after dark on the main road. As and when I would venture out of the house into the garden for a smoke in the night, my friend, a local and a non-smoker, would come out. I wondered why.
As darkness would descend, thunder, lightning, and a drizzle would follow. The rain-sound, on the metal roof, makes me dizzy with joy. I love this vast nocturnal expanse of dense, moist, darkness, with little lights twinkling in the distance up in the hills, like stars have descended on earth for a quiet celebration. The wind would be so chilly and fierce, that you want to drink it all up, inhale and absorb its sharp tang, and soak in this terrible, terrible beauty. My friend loved this too. He would refuse to go back to the cosy warmth inside.
Then I realized the mystery. He would not leave me alone – because of the leopard.
It was freezing cold. The rain would be creating such romantic music on the roof, the thunder would appear like a lullaby, and lightning would enter the window like a streak of revelation. I did not need to remember a Jim Corbett story to fall asleep.
Sleep arrived like love. Sublime. Serene. Sweet, like sleep.
Until the next, misty morning.
(All pictures clicked by Amit Sengupta)
