Human interest

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STILWELL ROAD (PART ONE)

This article is composed of two separate but convergent stories. One is narrated in normal text; the other is in italics.

Stilwell Road between Nampong and Pangsau Pass (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Stilwell Road between Nampong and Pangsau Pass (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Mid-January 2010.

Assam Rifles camp at Jairampur, Arunachal Pradesh.

The wooden table, covered in clean white cloth and moved by smartly dressed soldiers to a sunlit spot for photography, resembled the typical setting to display captured arms. It appears often on television – rocket launchers, AK-47s, rounds of ammunition, all stacked, labeled and kept on a clean, white tablecloth. That day however, as I got my small camera ready, the soldiers brought forth rotting pieces of weaponry. Two machineguns of World War II vintage, rusted to golden brown with yellow streaks, several parts missing. They kept it reverently on the table and as soldiers do, faded to the backdrop. Some days before, just behind the camp’s administrative block where I stood, men were tilling a patch of land to cultivate plantains and papaya, when the foot-deep blade of the tiller struck metal.

Welcome to Stilwell Road.

Officially it was National Highway 153 running in from Assam. Earlier, past the dusty, coal-smeared roads of Ledo and opposite another military camp, a large board with an overgrown path nearby and a long forgotten railway track leading to a long gone bridge had announced start of the Stilwell Road. Across the river, the old track now partially covered by earth, led to the Lekhapani station with its plaque reminding us that it used to be the eastern most tip of the Indian Railways. The last train to the erstwhile coal loading station was in February 1997. On the road nearby, a truck lay overturned on the road, its load of coal being shoveled into gunny bags by workers. It must have begun its trip at Ledo, a coal town with an open cast mine operated by Eastern Coalfields; long stretch of road bordered by heaps of excavated earth and a stream colored yellow with effluent. For those in search of Stilwell Road, this was the Ledo of World War II, from where General Joseph Stilwell of the US Army built a road into Myanmar to connect with the famous Burma Road leading to China. It was a Herculean task involving the Americans, the British, the Chinese and Indians; a road that cut across high mountains and dense jungles, best captured in an oft published black and white picture – one snake of a road slithering down a mountain.

At an outdoor camp in the Himalaya in 2007, I met Pearly Jacob. She was from Mizoram in North East India, working in Bengaluru (Bangalore), the South Indian city made famous by the IT industry. Despite my desire to visit the North East, I had never made it anywhere that side. Courage, especially the courage to travel alone, was in short supply. Much of my so called adventures had been with others. It usually embraced conquest of something – a peak or a pass – as objective, while real adventure lay already lost through sticking to familiar group. Perhaps she would travel with me? Pearly laughed off the suggestion, asking why I would need company. Instead she cited a friend – Malayali, brought up in India’s IT capital – who had gone exploring in Myanmar. I didn’t seek details, for the person’s whereabouts appeared hazy and more important, somebody taking off just like that made me feel like an abject coward. Couple of years later, Pearly herself reached Thailand. In a remarkable journey, this former radio jockey at World Space, cycled through a few countries in South East Asia into China and then traveled right across to Mongolia.  Late November 2009, after a long gap, I checked Pearly’s travel blog and saw a remorseful entry on Arun’s demise in Dali, Yunnan. That’s how I found the name of the man who went off to Myanmar, obsessed by the Stilwell Road. An Internet search then threw up Arun Veembur’s obituary from The Hindu: Young Writer and Intrepid Traveler Dies in China.   

The Stilwell Road’s construction and the preceding airlift, flying in supplies from Assam to Yunnan in China across mountains exceeding 10,000ft in elevation, was considered one of the most remarkable chapters of World War II. It was necessitated following the Japanese invasion of China and the consequent inability of Allied Forces to supply China by sea. To make matters worse, the Japanese land thrust towards India from South East Asia, cut off access to the Burma Road once Myanmar fell. The airlift from Assam – called `Flying the Hump – became a legend in aviation history. Flown by American and Chinese pilots, several aircraft were lost on this route at a mountainous knot on the planet where the combination of altitude, rain bearing clouds and powerful winds made flying terribly difficult. The jungles below were called an aluminum trail for the aircraft debris strewn around. Needless to say, the terrain made rescue operations difficult. Yet rescues were carried out. The planes transported items ranging from ammunition to fuel and even currency notes, often making for a combustible mix when kicked around by turbulent weather. There were two flight paths across The Hump, the dangerous upper one from Assam and an easier lower one from Calcutta. In 2010 the lower one was being used by China Eastern airlines for flights linking Kolkata and Kunming. Some of the air strips associated with the Second World War airlift had since come under Indian Air Force charge and were still functional at Dibrugarh. As were the tea estates which lent their names to the air strips, provided accommodation for the airmen and whose personnel – through the Indian Tea Association – were associated with building railways and roads in these parts, not to mention, taking care of the refugees that poured into India when Myanmar fell to the Japanese. The 3727ft-high Pangsau Pass in the Patkai Hills was where they had crossed into India; that’s where the Stilwell Road was headed.

The Stilwell Road’s construction and the preceding airlift, flying in supplies from Assam to Yunnan in China across mountains exceeding 10,000ft in elevation, was considered one of the most remarkable chapters of World War II.

Several years ago, a civil contractor was intrigued by the bricks he was being supplied. They were old and unlike the regular ones. Investigations exposed theft from a local cemetery. That’s how state authorities and the Assam Rifles stumbled upon what is now an official World War II cemetery, with almost 1000 graves, many of them Chinese. I sat before the grave of Major Hsiao Chu Ching of the “ Independent Engineers of Chinese Army stationed in India,’’ born July 1913 in Hapeh Province and died, December 1943. Less than 100 feet away was the newly erected memorial and a row of Assam Rifles soldiers gearing up for the arrival of Pallam Raju, the then Minister of State for Defence. He was on his way to the 2010 Pangsau Pass Winter Festival at Nampong, last settlement on the Stilwell Road before it crossed the pass into Myanmar. The festival had built a buzz around the road, a buzz that highlighted its potential place in trade. This one was compelling, running as it did from Assam through Arunchal Pradesh to Myanmar and eventually, Kunming in China’s Yunnan Province. No other road did this. At the festival’s inaugural ceremony attended by Arunachal Pradesh’s then Chief Minister, the late Dorjee Khandu, speakers welcomed the tribal artistes from both sides of the border and hoped that the road would be opened for trade.

The old rusted guns unearthed at the Jairampur military camp (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

The old rusted guns unearthed at the Jairampur military camp (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

You know that a person born in the noisy 1980s is different, if he likes Buster Keaton, Hollywood actor from the era of silent movies. Unusual tastes, often dismissed as eccentric, are typically the product of investing in a fascination. It betrays curiosity. Arun was unusual, often entertaining friends with a Keaton or Charlie Chaplin act. He was an only child. His father worked with the DRDO in Bengaluru. His mother was related to E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Kerala’s most famous Communist leader. The parents moved to Thrishur in Kerala. As a young man shifting from engineering to a course in journalism, Arun displayed a craving to know. He was an avid reader, a keen quizzer and passionate biker owning a RD 350 and a Yamaha Crux, but had a penchant for trouble. “ With him around, the darnedest things used to happen,’’ Darshan Manakkal, who along with Robin Browne, had been Arun’s seniors at Christ College in Bengaluru, said. It all started with holidays in Assam, where Robin’s parents lived. The first visit was to Tezpur; the second was to Dibrugarh with forays to Margherita and Ledo. That was how Arun came to know of the Stilwell Road. On return to Dibrugarh, he found books on the subject in the personal library of Robin’s father, who had an interest in the World War II history of the region. It probably began focusing his life for the Stilwell Road began to grow as an objective. In appearance he was a scrawny individual, possessing many of the habits of the contemporary urban youngster. “ But he had this urge to show that he was capable of what seemed difficult,’’ Arun’s uncle, Rajesh P, said. According to friends and family, he also had another under-estimated virtue. Arun could make people feel special and he never hesitated to strike a conversation with anyone, rich or poor, big or small. Not long after he stumbled across the Stilwell Road, he did his basic mountaineering course from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and made a third visit to Assam, this time traveling down the Stilwell Road with a view to hit the Pangsau Pass. Manu Neelakandhan, Arun’s cousin, believed that he was turned back just before the border by the guards. Arun had worked with Deccan Herald. After returning to Bengaluru from this third trip to Assam, the young journalist took up jobs – he worked at Silicon India and Mid Day – purely to fund what he realized he should do next, go to Myanmar. In his mind, a book on the Stilwell Road was taking shape. It became an obsession and for a brief period the bug bit Rajesh as well. One day he called up Arun from the Blossom book store on Church Street and said there was a copy of General Joseph Stilwell’s autobiography available. “ Pick it up,’’ Arun said, thrilled. By now it was official to family and friends that Arun would head off on his little project.

Lobbying to reopen the Stilwell Road had been on for some time. A news report from Kolkata dated August 4, 2004, said that the Eastern Region Chairman of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations had pitched for reconstructing the road. In November 20, 2008, a report quoted the Chairman of the China Council for Promotion of International Trade, saying in Kolkata that reopening the road could be a vital trade link. Another report cited then Minister of State for Commerce, Jayaram Ramesh, symbolically handing over a sack of salt to a Myanmar army officer at Pangsau Pass. He said the Commerce Ministry wanted to reopen the route by 2010. Then a June 18, 2009, report from Guwahati quoting B.K. Handique, then Minister for Development of North Eastern Region, said that plans to reopen had been shelved following Myanmar’s objection on security grounds. At Nampong, I asked Pallam Raju what the government’s official position was on reopening the road. He declined comment and referred me to S. Sharma, Secretary of the Border Roads Development Board who said, the Border Roads Organization had nothing yet to do with the Stilwell Road. Reconstructing the road was probably important for Arunachal Pradesh. The state with China to the north and west had only Myanmar to probe for international trade route. Setong Sena, then Finance Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, had been among those who visited the Prime Minister’s Office to seek the reopening of the Stilwell Road. According to him, the government had put the Stilwell Road as a third priority after routes opened in Mizoram and Manipur. Now in retrospect, it appeared that the Myanmar authorities having seen India build a Friendship Road into Myanmar from Manipur were possibly wanting similar work this side. Indeed, much of the Stilwell Road in its World War II form reportedly lay on the Myanmar side. That was great history but it raised the question – how can there be trade if the road was too bad for modern transportation?

(…TO BE CONTINUED)

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. He would like to acknowledge the assistance provided by Ripunjoy Das and Pranab Phukon while doing this story. An abbreviated version of this article – ie part one and two – was published in The Hindu newspaper. That article has a photo of Arun. This is the link to the article in The Hindu http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/05/02/stories/2010050250140400.htm A bit more elaborate version was published in Man’s World (MW) magazine.)

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STILWELL ROAD (PART TWO)

This article is composed of two separate but convergent stories. One is narrated in normal text; the other is in italics.

Past the cemetery at Jairampur, the only reminder of World War II on NH153 aka Stilwell Road was a narrow Hamilton Bridge.

Stilwell Road between Nampong and Pangsau Pass (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Stilwell Road between Nampong and Pangsau Pass (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Nampong resembled a market town spilling with activity for the festival. There was a designated spot for traders from Myanmar. Business was brisk and the articles on offer included packaged food items, garments, toiletry, cosmetics and small gadgets. A lot of the stuff was Chinese but some, like the instant tea and coffee, was from Myanmar. A particular attraction were knifes and ceremonial swords. Although there were instances of the same tribe spanning both sides of the border, not everyone there for the festival succeeded in communication. Plenty of gesticulation and intonation sealed a transaction. The currency was always rupees; that’s what the Myanmar traders preferred. Border policing in these parts worked on the principle that people residing in the neighborhood of the international divide be allowed to cross. There were specific dates for visits by either side. Previously a visitor from Myanmar crossing over to the Nampong market was identified by a rattan basket. Then, the basket while still around, was overshadowed by weather beaten 4-stroke step-thru motorcycles. They were allowed to be driven till a small clearing overlooking Nampong, where all vehicles were parked and the visitors walked down. The Stilwell Road was in the process of being widened here. It alternated between very narrow stretches that emphasized the lush green jungle around and bulldozed patches of orange earth betraying the soft terrain that had made work difficult in the 1940s. Past the last Assam Rifles check post, the road deteriorated into a bouncy, mud track. Tucked behind a couple of bends was the real boundary line between India and Myanmar with an old stone marker and alongside, an overgrown path – the old alignment of the Stilwell Road. Few more turns and the first check post on the Myanmar side drew up followed by a cracked building with a derelict Lifan truck parked in front. Ahead, the village of Pangsau in Myanmar was already busy with people who had crossed over as part of the festival. Behind the market place, a steep road ran down to the edge of a beautiful lake – The Lake of No Return. It was associated with the region’s World War II history as a lake into which planes crashed. Its shores were utterly peaceful.

I found Khaing Tun’s diary on the Internet. In an entry in Yangon, dated February 3, 2007, Khaing noted on the upcoming trip she had organized, “ Arun (from Bangalore) has many questions and continued to be so enthusiastic.’’ Unlike in India where there was little tourism in the North East around World War II sites, there were regular trips in Myanmar, usually availed by Second World War veterans who had fought in the region. Arun had got himself on to a similar trip to the Myanmar side of the Stilwell Road. Khaing met Arun on February 16 at his Yangon hotel along with Peter, whose interest in the Burma Campaign of World War II was triggered by Louis Allen’s book `The Longest War.’ The next day, a third person, Ron, arrived. The team hit the road for Pangsau Pass and Myitkyina on February 18. Photos of Arun from the trip show a T-shirt clad, bespectacled young man, busy scribbling on a note book or standing with camera in hand. On February 21, after traversing through a lot of harsh terrain, the team was advised not to proceed towards Pangsau Pass and instead turn back from Nanyun. The main problem had been the three foreigners in the team – an Indian, an Australian and an American. Apparently, permits were only as good as the goodwill of local military officials and to the team’s bad luck they had a newly posted commander put his foot down. They withdrew to Shinbwiyang, which as per the Stilwell Road’s old alignment was 105 kilometers from Pangsau Pass, and from there to Myitkyina, 342 kilometers from the pass according to old estimates. There the team took a plane back to Yangon. However Arun and Peter got off at Mandalay to travel to Kunming in China. Little was known of this trip likely down the Burma Road; when built the Stilwell Road was connected to the old Burma Road at Wandingzhen. Arun was believed to have reached Kunming in typical backpacker fashion with no money and just happiness for the journey done. He eventually found a base at The Hump, a backpackers’ hostel with a colorful bar. It had a lot of World War II memorabilia for theme, especially the aviation part including those flights from Assam to Kunming. Arun loved this place where all sorts of travelers and people with crazy projects washed up; he also became a good friend of the hostel’s owner. According to Pearly, much of the `work’ Arun did subsequently was basically anything to further his stay in China.

Shop at Pangsau in Myanmar (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Shop at Pangsau in Myanmar (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

What struck me that day in Pangsau was the absence of the Myanmar military. At the first check post I had seen a policeman; at the second I saw one person in olive green surrounded by men who looked like villagers. A senior officer of the Assam Rifles later said that overt military presence had been relaxed on either side for the festival. Nevertheless it felt strange to be in a country ruled by a military dictatorship with no passport or visa on oneself. You worried when the veneer of welcome would crumble. Either side of the border in these parts had experienced insurgency. In Myanmar it was the Kachin rebels. There was reportage on the Internet by the Kachin News Group on the Stilwell Road in Myanmar; about reconstruction, accidents and life along the road. On the Indian side, Dibrugarh from where one proceeded to Ledo, was the home town of Paresh Barua, leader of the ULFA while Jairampur and Nampong fell in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district, which along with neighboring Tirap district, were part of the Greater Nagaland claimed by Naga militant groups. Consequently, Naga rebels had been active in these districts. Further, Indian militant groups have operated from foreign soil and militancy everywhere had links to narcotics. In Dibrugarh, I met Dr Nagen Saikia, former Member of Parliament and former President of the Asam Sahitya Parishad. He wrote in a newspaper article that reopening the road would be a blunder.  Dr Saikia felt that the government’s `Look East Policy’ was both an oversimplification of the North East’s cultural roots and a boost to international trade from the region earlier than required given China’s confusing stance towards India. “ Assam also does not have so many products to trade with Myanmar and China,’’ he said.

I did not speak to Arun’s parents, who at the time of writing this article, were still in mourning. It appeared that the variety of work Arun did to stay in Kunming and complete his book, ranged from content development for The Hump and tourism in the area to work with the Yunnan Chamber of Commerce and helping Indian businessmen in Yunnan. He learnt Chinese. Both Rajesh and Manu recalled conversations involving potential business contacts between China and India. In 2008, Arun briefly visited India; then returned to Kunming. Around this time, Pearly who was passing through met Arun in Kunming. He had been her senior in Christ College. In her blog, Pearly captured the emergent core of Arun’s travel philosophy. He had moved on from Lonely Planet-totting backpacker to staying and knowing. Pearly was in Kunming for a month, she then moved to Dali. Arun, who had by now started developing content for a website related to the historic city, initially made periodic visits as part of his assignment and then after Pearly resumed her journey to Mongolia, himself shifted to Dali. On the fateful day in early November, Arun was out on a solo hike in the Changshan Mountains. During descent, he slipped at a dry waterfall and injured himself badly. Having informed his friends in Dali of the accident, Arun who was on a less frequented trail, crawled under a ledge for shelter. By the time rescuers found him, it was too late. He was 28 years old. “ He had told me that traveling and writing was what he wanted to do. After Stilwell Road, he had planned something in Peru and another trip in Europe,’’ Rajesh said. The family was trying to compile Arun’s notes from China.   

Lake of No Return (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Lake of No Return (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

The road came with a fan following attached to it. At Nampong, I met Professor H.N. Sarma from Digboi, former Principal of the Margherita College and acknowledged locally as an expert on the Stilwell Road. There were a couple of vintage jeeps driven in for symbolism. Teams continued to attempt traversing this link between India, Myanmar and China; some like the Cambridge / Oxford team of 1955, Eric Edis in 1957 and Donavan Webster later, wrote memorable books. Others plotted travel in Internet chat rooms. None of this mattered for local people crossing the border. Quirks of history and accumulated neglect had made their everyday life an adventure for others. The irony of the Stilwell Road was that not long after its completion and the first convoy of Allied supplies reached China by that route in February 1945, the Second World War ended. Hundreds of lives had been sacrificed building the road but its use in entirety for the purpose it was meant for – a transport link between India and China, was hardly tapped. In the years following the war, the forces supported by the Allies shifted to Taiwan and mainland China became a Communist nation. Then in 1962, China invaded India in a war that contributed greatly to the mistrust which came to characterize relations between the two countries. Economic growth only made them competitors. Post World War II, Myanmar enjoyed a brief fling with democracy before slipping to military rule in 1962. Over the last decade, while India initiated steps to work with Myanmar including the opening of trade routes and proposing a sea port at Sittwe, the latter’s proximity to China was arguably more. In recent years, the junction of India, Myanmar and China has been called the setting for a new Great Game of sorts. Sixty eight years old, the Stilwell Road awaits realization of intent.

Arun was a good writer, peppering his observations of China with wry humor. But what got me off my chair and off to the Stilwell Road was an eight point-declaration of intent written in September 2009 at Dali that he subsequently mailed his friends and they in turn, mailed me upon hearing my queries. The eighth point said, “ I stand firmer than ever in my dedication to the avoidance of boredom. This boredom is not the situational one, like when a reputed bore buttonholes you at a boring dinner (well, even there I would try my best to flee to the loo and dodge out the back door). It is a boredom of existence.’’ That last point had visceral connect for it described the state of the world around me. There were those of us who tried to break free from that boredom but never succeeded in getting past its strong gravitational pull. There were those who manufactured a picture of virtue from their daily surrender to boring rat race. Privately they admitted they were bored. But soon after, they constructed a magnificent justification for ignoring the obvious. In fact, it had become one of the challenges of my times – everything becomes boring; how do you avoid pattern susceptible to such entrapment?

Arun seemed aware and he tried. Significantly, he articulated the predicament beautifully and bluntly as a “ boredom of existence.’’

The least I could do to commend his spirit was, be at Pangsau Pass.

(CONCLUDED)

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. He would like to acknowledge the assistance provided by Ripunjoy Das and Pranab Phukon while doing this story. An abbreviated version of this article was published in The Hindu newspaper. That article has a photo of Arun. This is the link to the article in The Hindu http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/05/02/stories/2010050250140400.htm A bit more elaborate version was published in Man’s World (MW) magazine.)

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THE CAVES OF MEGHALAYA

This story is written weaving two streams of thought.

One is in normal text; the other is in italics.

PLEASE READ FOOTNOTE AS WELL FOR UPDATE.

Below the ground in Meghalaya (Photo: Simon Brooks)

Below the ground in Meghalaya (Photo: Simon Brooks)

Many years ago in Meghalaya, North East India, a group of school students from Shillong were in Cherrapunji on a picnic.

Those days, Cherrapunji was famous for having the highest annual rainfall in the world.

Nearby was a large cave.

One of the boys, eager to explore the dark passage, sought company from his friends. None were ready. Dejected, he hung around. Given to reading, he was unhappy to be denied an adventure of the sort books talked of. Just then two boys from the locality turned up offering to lead him in. They made a crude hand held flame torch, walked the entire length of the cave and exited through a small shaft at its end to the other side of the hill. The boy finished schooling, graduated in physics from the local college, gave his bank test and became an employee of the State Bank of Mysore (SBM). For several years he worked in various parts of distant Karnataka, removed from family and friends in Meghalaya.

His appeals to be near home fetched him a transfer to SBM’s branch in Kolkata. But that didn’t satisfy for although Kolkata was closer to Shillong on the map than Karnataka, as a journey, home was still long way off. He sought to quit but the bank was reluctant to let him go for he was a good officer. Staying alone, work was his life. Eventually his relieving order came, just the day Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Back in Shillong, his qualifications and background could have got him a high profile job. Instead of that he accepted the post of CEO at a local bank passing through difficult times. Decades later, the Shillong Co-operative Urban Bank was in fine shape and Brian Dermot Kharpran Daly, 63, although of retirement age, continued to get extended tenure. It may have seemed SBM all over again, but then Shillong was home.

It was May, 2010.

Inside a cave in Meghalaya (Photo: Simon Brooks)

Inside a cave in Meghalaya (Photo: Simon Brooks)

Meghalaya is home to the longest cave passages in India.

They run for several dark kilometers under the beautiful, green carpet of this land of hills and rains. “ Three factors – limestone, heavy rains and elevation – work in unison here to make these caves,’’ Brian, the state’s best known cave explorer, said. Limestone is easily eroded by water. Meghalaya still receives some of the heaviest rainfall in the world. Additionally, the hilly state has sufficient slopes for water to develop the kinetic energy needed to sculpt and carry off debris, leaving behind marvelous limestone caves. The caves now find mention on the state’s tourist brochures although entry into complicated systems is possible only with expert guides. At the time of writing this article, some 1200 caves had been reported, around 800 of them explored and roughly 360 kilometers of cave passages had been mapped, including India’s longest cave – Krem Liat Prah-Um Im-Labit System – as yet estimated to be 31 kilometers.

The exploration was continuing.

In India, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Mizoram and Uttarakhand also found mention for caves. However when it came to the ten longest caves in India, all ten were in Meghalaya. Ranked for depth, nine were in Meghalaya and one was in Mizoram. That was how much North East India dominated in the subject. The study of caves or speleology was yet in its infancy in India. There was no university department or chair dedicated to the topic including at the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU). A few dedicated and seemingly networked scientists scattered nationwide maintained interest. The only institutional names in the field were the Raipur based-NGO, National Cave Research and Protection Organization headed by Dr Jayant Biswas and the Shillong based-MAA. Every year during Meghalaya’s dry months, expert cavers from overseas reached the state to explore its caves in league with the MAA. That’s how the underground map of the region evolved. Both the Indian Army and the Indian Navy had links with the MAA to partake in the adventure.

The entrance to a cave in Meghalaya (Photo: Simon Brooks)

The entrance to a cave in Meghalaya (Photo: Simon Brooks)

There is more to caves than adventure and geology. Darkness coupled with other changes to environment as one went deeper and deeper into caves, molds exclusive cave life, the study of which is called bio-speleology. Cave fauna typically falls into three categories: (1) Trogloxene – species which visit or take shelter in caves but do not complete their whole lifecycle there (e.g. bats, frogs, lizards) (2) Troglophile – species which live permanently in the dark zone but some of which can also survive in a suitable environment away from the cave. They could be called future troglobites (e.g. fish, salamander, crayfish and millipedes) (3) Troglobite – species which live wholly and permanently in the dark zone of caves. They are mostly blind, albinic and having extra sensory organs (e.g. same as for troglophile). Ilona Khar Kongar, scientist with the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), said that there had been reports of fauna unique to Meghalaya’s cave systems. They awaited further study.

Caves are also known to hold fossils and in Meghalaya’s case, marine fossils going all the way back to a prehistoric age when the land was submerged by sea. Additionally, the region’s caves had become academically interesting from another angle – the several thousand year-old stalactites and stalagmites possessed details of past climate. For any curious mind therefore, these caves may seem the stuff of heritage. In Meghalaya however there was no such official declaration in favor of the caves and cavers like Brian were defending before authorities why this underground network of pitch dark passages was fascinating.

Inside a cave in Meghalaya (Photo: Rainer Hoss)

Inside a cave in Meghalaya (Photo: Rainer Hoss)

Somewhere in the early 1990s, Brian sought to spice up his life in Shillong with adventure. He thought of treks. But nothing really attracted. Born and brought up in Meghalaya, he knew there were caves around. He floated an organization called the Meghalaya Adventurers Association (MAA). The group started to explore caves. Shortly after the activity began, at one location, villagers spoke of a team of foreigners who had come looking for caves. Since caves were sculpted on rock that yields itself to shaping by water, tracking the distribution of such minerals helped locate cave-rich zones. Limestone is a fantastic cave-building medium. Deposits of soluble rock are called karst and in Meghalaya karst exists at the state’s southern portion, in an east-west line, curving to the north at the eastern end. The foreigners had done their homework. Brian’s inquiries showed that the British team included respected names from international caving. The MAA tied up with them and soon expeditions to explore the caves of Meghalaya began in right earnest.

The results would amaze anyone fascinated by the planet. Deep under Meghalaya are subterranean passages; gushing rivers, crystal clear ponds, natural rock dams and vast chambers you can only crawl into. “ People now come and tell me of caves,’’ Brian said. In 2004, he was awarded the Tenzing Norgay National Award for Adventure in the land category. However, leaving aside the cavers’ battle with the mining lobby, he wished that the younger generation responded more enthusiastically to caving. The reason for the low key response he saw till then probably lay in the nature of the challenge.

Near Lad-Rymboi (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Near Lad-Rymboi (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Mining was a well entrenched industry in Meghalaya.

H.H. Mohermen had lived in the thick of it.

Following a stint in London studying theology, he became a lone crusader for environment in the much mined Jaintia Hills. “ A relative who had served on the local hill council once told me that coal mining was allowed to grow unfettered because it resembled a cottage industry,’’ Mohermen said.

For a taste of Meghalaya’s mining country, I passed through Lad-Rymboi. Here pastoral Meghalaya took a hiatus. There was heavy truck traffic, the roads were awash in slush, grease stained automobile workshops repaired vehicles and a labor force of strangers roamed the town with numerous wine shops. Closer to Shillong, on the periphery of mining country one found the smallest unit of the coal business – tiny bunks typically managed by local women, selling excess coal dumped by passing trucks. Few years ago, the color of some rivers in the Jaintia Hills changed, dead fish turned up and in places, water became undrinkable. Hydroelectric projects complained that the water was corrosive. While activists attributed it to pollution from unchecked rat hole-mining, an official of the State Pollution Control Board said that given the high sulphur content of Meghalaya’s coal this was bound to happen even naturally.

Cave formation is a million year-old chemical process.

Indeed you can call a cave, a laboratory, with processes running at terribly slow pace. But it is undeniably chemistry; tamper with ingredient, quantity or concentration and you altered the experiment. According to Brian, that’s what mining did. To start with it deforested, causing soil erosion, sending soil down into caves and altering the cave’s drainage pattern. Coal mining also impacted indirectly – that same acidic water worrying humans on top, got down into the caves changing cave chemistry. With resident mining culture and wanting the modern motifs of economic growth, Meghalaya leveraged its limestone deposits to attract the cement industry.

That had direct impact on caves.

According to Brian, the attraction he felt for caving was that it wasn’t any one activity but a convergence of many – there was the adventure, the exploration, the science, the mapping, the planning, the skills and finally, the philosophy and literature you indulged in even away from caves. Brian had authored many articles on the subject; written books and compiled poetry. All this pointed to the need for an evolved mind; something rare in today’s world of adventure where everything is the stuff of snapshot success.

Negotiating bats; inside a cave in Meghalaya (Photo: George Baumler)

Negotiating bats; inside a cave in Meghalaya (Photo: George Baumler)

Further caving had its anxious moments. Once, Brian was injured by falling rock in a vertical shaft. Some caves didn’t have horizontal entrances; they had a shaft plunging into them. There was little room for escape should anything fall from the top. Shafts could be deep; India’s deepest at Krem Shrieh in Meghalaya was 97 meters (320 feet), several times longer than a single rope length and therefore requiring `pitches’ as in rock climbing. Lowering yourself into one of these passages could be tricky because they typically have narrow mouth and wider bottom. That meant a rope anchored at the top progressively stayed off the side leaving the abseiling caver wholly dangling on rope in a growing void.

On another occasion, in a cave with multiple entrances, a few cavers having entered through different passages met at a point. There, an experienced woman caver decided she wasn’t feeling well and retraced her steps. Somewhere she got lost in the labyrinth of passage ways. Her absence was noticed only after everyone had exited the cave complex. A search was launched and after several hours, she was located sitting crouched to preserve body heat, in utter darkness. Her headlamp was broken; the consequence of a fall. “ Hypothermia is a real danger in caves, particularly those with water and streams inside,’’ Brian said.

Limestone formations near the quarry in Lumshnong (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Limestone formations near the quarry in Lumshnong (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

At Shillong, there were visible signs of the cement industry’s status in the North East.

`Times change, Taj does not’ – said a hoarding for Taj Cement. Another one sponsored by Star Cement featured well known personalities like Bhupen Hazarika, Mami Varte, Sourobhee Debbarma and Lou Majaw, the Shillong singer famous for his devotion to Bob Dylan. Meghalaya’s cement companies were not big names nationwide; they were local giants. The lone cement multi-national that entered the state made a conveyor belt to ship the mined limestone to adjacent Bangladesh. Lumshnong, over 100 kilometers away from Shillong, was a couple of curves on the highway with a few shops and houses. Home to cement plants, a large limestone quarry loomed next to the highway here. If you looked at the stray rock formations behind the adjacent houses, you got an idea of what the quarry must have looked like originally – fluted, termite nest like outcrops of limestone. Now all that remained was a large crater. Jack hammers drilled away on its sides and trucks carried away the raw material. The crater floor was soggy mud. At one end, atop a rocky cliff, a worker was demolishing rock. Directly below, thirty feet or so, hugging the pit floor was a three feet high horizontal gash in the rock from which a stream flowed to the outside world. That, I was told, was one of the access points to the Kotsati-Umlawan System, at 21 kilometers explored till then, India’s second longest network of cave passages and its second deepest. At the other end of the pit, closer to the highway, piled up debris soaked and shifted by rains, had sealed off a claimed large entrance to the cave. Gregory Diengdoh from MAA hunted futilely for a third entrance, a vertical shaft, known to be somewhere around.

The fourth, an erstwhile `show cave’ for tourists where we went in, had become inexplicably muddy. Behind us, the sunlit entrance gradually diminished to button-size and at the first fork, altogether disappeared. We navigated with headlamps in pitch darkness. A thick film of slippery, gooey mud covered the floor, the cave’s boulders and its sidewalls. It was very slow, slippery going. Deep within, you heard the roar of the underground river. Not far inside the cave, I decided to wait for a dry month to progress further. It didn’t make sense to load the risk and risk at day’s end, was a personal assessment. The cavers though had a different explanation – although we were just weeks from monsoon and hence into sporadic showers, the excessive mud inside the cave could be due to river water periodically backing up as a consequence of blocked passages, courtesy the overhead quarrying.

Unproved, that was yet speculation.

The quarry at Lumshnong. The stream, I was told, was one of the entrances to the Kotsati-Umlawan System (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

The quarry at Lumshnong. The stream, I was told, was one of the entrances to the Kotsati-Umlawan System (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

“ Somewhere thousands of miles away, not too far from the nation’s capital

A little posh town rose up from the desolate and barren land

It grew in width and length, it steadily grew in height

Where once the land was flat, today a mountain of flourishing complexes

A miracle indeed unfolds

As the buildings of Gurgaon tower to the sky, the limestone hills of Meghalaya

Leveled to the humble ground.’’

–          Extract from a poem Brian wrote imagining the journey of Meghalaya’s limestone.

My visit to Lumshnong was in May 2010.

As of then, for a state so much into mining, Meghalaya which saw 24 chief ministers in 38 years did not have a Mining Policy. “ Every time we ask, they say it’s getting ready,’’ Patricia Mukhim, Editor, Shillong Times, said. In its absence, officials acknowledged that unorganized coal mining was subject to few restrictions, while limestone quarrying by large companies followed Central Government norms. At least that was the official explanation.

There was a Mining Policy taking shape.

The urgency for it was partly fuelled by Public Interest Litigation (PIL).

In 2006, realizing that it was only a matter of time before unbridled mining destroyed Meghalaya’s caves Brian approached Subhas Dutta of Kolkata, who had filed PILs before. With his help the MAA moved the Supreme Court. Such litigation was not new for Meghalaya. Local journalists recalled a previous lawsuit against the logging business. However unlike in logging, there was no interim stay on mining till the case was disposed of. The journalists and activists I spoke to attributed this to Meghalaya lacking an environment movement and the state’s peculiar land holding pattern; land was owned by the tribes. Protection of environment may work in a specific area (Samrakshan Trust in Garo Hills found mention as successful example). But another stretch of land was another tribe’s property and therefore their headache. This inhibited a larger environment movement.

While activists may want a movement, the mining industry – they said – dealt with specific tribal leadership. Theoretically, this appeared participative industry and the way forward. Two and a half months later, in August, even the central government, responding to the Maoist issue (extreme left movement largely based out of the forests and hill tracts of Central and East India), was recommending a participatory model that advocated sharing 26 per cent of a mining company’s profit with tribal communities. Yet it wasn’t that simple because to work properly, any model needed a learned, holistic view of development. That included a tribe knowing how much they were losing irreversibly and how much should be mined.

From inside a cave with headlamp switched off. The faint light in the distance is the entrance (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

From inside a cave with headlamp switched off. The faint light in the distance is the entrance (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

In Meghalaya, some of the stories I heard wasn’t pretty. There were occasions, I was told, when villagers seeing mines on their land exhausted, tried to encroach on someone else’s. Then, there was the story of villages with gates to fend off likely fights. One story was generic to the problem of land exploitation in India – that when the potential of a land was revealed, powerful people began to amass real estate anticipating profit.

I could not independently verify any of this background talk.

Nevertheless so much was clear – in a state with few opportunities, mining was prime opportunity. A casual perusal of academic studies on the state, available at Shillong’s book shops, underscored this point. Mining was a major source of livelihood in the state. When information spread of his opposition to mining, Brian’s caving expedition was once threatened with disruption.

Devoid of support by powerful masthead, `freelance journalist’ fell to the bottom of the media heap. When I called up a senior official in the state government requesting for an appointment, I was initially shouted at. Then he cooled down and gave me a time with cautionary advice – there was a Cabinet meeting and I may have to wait. I waited from 3PM onward at the secretariat. By 5PM or so, the visitors and staff left. The officer’s peon and I sat sharing jokes in an empty building. Around 6PM, the power failed plunging us into utter darkness, quite like being in a cave. I thought of my visit to the Kotsati-Umlawan System; how it had been pitch dark inside the cave with our headlamps switched off. An hour later, power returned to the secretariat. The peon and I laughed, seeing each other’s faces again. Close to 8PM, the official arrived. He was tired but spared time for the freelancer.

Entrapped in government bureaucracy, struggling to balance ecology and economic development, he vehemently insisted that caves could not be surveyed as the MAA had done. This was when caving had for long been an international pursuit and modern instruments permitted cave passages to be plotted (right up to 3D images if required) as the cavers proceeded. It illustrated the tenor of divide in Meghalaya in the name of mining. The same Brian had authored the book on cave systems published by the state’s Directorate of Information and Public Relations and one of his essays on caves was included as chapter for study in the state’s Class XII syllabus.

Still the MAA irked officialdom.

“ Shouldn’t we have economic development?’’ the government official asked.

I had no answer.

In the years following my Shillong-visit, this question would become a national dilemma. The matrix for viewing it at macro level was simple: India’s high population, the emergent scale of human needs and the scale based-model of global industry couldn’t do without exploiting minerals. At micro level, this combination of interests cut formidable imagery before anyone living in the lands due for exploitation by mining. Tribes and marginalized communities, living on those lands, hit back becoming villains in the eyes of those advocating industry from rich cities.

I knew why interest groups like cavers irritated government and industry. They were not even the owners of the land in question. They espoused interest in science, adventure, even aesthetics – all irrelevant to the daily reality of survival by money. But which was the higher philosophy and ethic – deciding human lifestyle by ownership of planet or doing so by fascination for planet?

Brian Kharpran Daly (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Brian Kharpran Daly (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

While the lay individual may presume that cavers go in leaving physical traces to identify the trail back that wasn’t always the case. “ I advise people to periodically look back and remember cave features for navigation because entry and exit points in subterranean chambers appear different when the direction changes,’’ Brian said. It was also important to never break team (there may be several independent teams exploring different parts of a cave, but each team should stick together) and systematically map the passage as one went along so that the data for navigation was available right there. A typical cave survey kit would have nyloflex tape measure, compass, clinometer (for measuring gradient), plastic coated cave survey book, pencil and GPS. Back at camp, a day’s survey data was processed with specialized software to generate a detailed map. A lot of this work had been rendered easier by the Disto-X, a device that measured distance, direction and inclination at one stroke. It could be linked to the cartographer’s PDA inside the cave itself, to make a detailed map. Interestingly, the cave explorer’s credo was not to always retreat but proceed with the faith that multiple entrances and exits existed For Brian, it was like a spiritual quest. A vast underground chamber glistening with cave pearls (sand particles covered in calcium carbonate) was like an audience with God.

State authorities, I spoke to, insisted that the mining industry followed Central Government guidelines preventing such work from anywhere near archeological sites. But then as of May 2010, none of the caves had been declared `heritage.’ Following the PIL, the state government commissioned studies by agencies like the Indian Bureau of Mines and the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research. From the documents I was shown, the first had given a clean chit to the impact of mining near the Mawmluh cave in Cherrapunji while the other said the Umlawan cave hadn’t collapsed and there was no adverse effect to caves in the Lumshnong area from blasting. In a paper on the Mawmluh cave published in Current Science (April 10, 2009 issue) Dr Biswas observing the influx of mining effluents into the cave through the river at its entrance had said, “ It could be presumed that the cavernicoles (cave organisms) belonging to the twilight zone of the caves are already under extinction.’’

Brian had the conservationist’s approach.

The ideal model in his eyes was to absolutely protect some caves in the interest of science and exploration. In the case of other caves, villagers could protect them as heritage with revenue from well managed tourism for upkeep. To the journalist tuned in to both sides, what stood out was the unbridgeable divide – the MAA sought strict conservation; the government responded with the language of mining standards. The reason for opposing Brain was comprehensible – how can human livelihood and economic development be held to ransom by a bunch of exotic caves hosting strange life? In their separate worlds, both sides cut logic. Somewhere in between was the sheer joy of beholding mammoth caverns underneath, their spectacular beauty and the world of trogloxenes, troglophiles and troglobites – inhabitants of a fragile ecosystem. Government officials said that a Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court had recommended the installation of an Expert Group to look into Meghalaya’s caves.

Cave exploration in Meghalaya (Photo: Hugh Penny)

Cave exploration in Meghalaya (Photo: Hugh Penny)

With a copy of the 2006 PIL not available, I asked Brian what his demand was. According to him, his wish was for a prioritization of the caves, listing out those that were important from an exploration and scientific point of view. They should be protected. As for the rest – he thought – local villagers could protect some caves and manage them as tourist attractions. He knew that the going would be tough even then because the Shnongrim Ridge in the Nongkhlieh area where caves proliferated was prized by industry for its limestone.

“ Wherever you mine in Meghalaya you are going to destroy caves. It is like Swiss cheese,’’ he said.

All this was in May 2010.

In September that year, it was reported that the Court had dismissed the PIL.

The news reports cited mining bodies in the state, welcoming the Court decision.

Brian’s son and daughter have joined him on caving expeditions. His son, a trained mountaineer, worked then with a leading Indian private bank at their branch in Jowai. Besides his passion for caves, Brian made one of the best homemade wines in Shillong. Strangely, here too, he learnt the ropes late, worked systematically at improving his craft and took the art to a superior level.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. He visited Meghalaya in 2010 to do this story. A slightly abridged version of this story was published in Man’s World [MW] magazine. A smaller story on Brian was published in The Hindu newspaper. The photos taken by Simon Brooks, Rainer Hoss, Hugh Penny and George Baumler were provided by Brian and have been used here with his permission. An April 2013 news report from Shillong, quoting Brian, said that 19 new caves had been discovered in the Jaintia Hills, taking Meghalaya’s total to 1350 caves with 887 caves spanning 387 kilometers explored. When contacted late August for this blog, Brian said that Meghalaya’s Mining Policy was passed by the state government in 2012. However its specific rules and regulations were still awaited. Aside from official mention of the need to protect caves, they haven’t been declared heritage yet. Brian retired at work in 2012. He became honorary Vice Chairman of the Shillong Co-operative Urban Bank, where his son also now worked. Brian’s new book on caves has been published. An overview of it can be accessed at http://sbpra.com/briandkharprandaly/) 

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TALKING TO DR GEORGE SCHALLER

Dr George Schaller (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Dr George Schaller (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

`GS’ – that was all I knew of Dr George B. Schaller.

GS was the finest field biologist in the world, one of the founding fathers of wildlife conservation and author of several books. He was additionally Vice President, Panthera, Senior Conservationist at Wildlife Conservation Society and Adjunct-Professor, Centre for Nature and Society, Peking University.  He had also received many awards.

Early October, 2010, as I awaited my chance to interview him on the sidelines of the Mussoorie International Writers’ Festival, Peter Matthiessen’s book `Snow Leopard,’ about a journey to Crystal Mountain in the Himalaya with GS, was all I had for reference.

I explained my position.

The man didn’t disappoint one bit.

He kept the conversation simple.

Excerpts:

Conservation and the problem of over-consumption

Conservation basically from our selfish standpoint means human survival on this planet. The last century in many ways was easy. People thought in terms of reserves, as for instance with the tiger. But remember population growth. There are three times as many people in India today when compared to the early sixties when I was first in India. All of them want to make a good living. So it is not just population growth; the consumption has grown at a much more rapid level. Where do the resources come from? If you are talking about sustainability – don’t use more than what can be replenished – it has been calculated that the world is already at minus thirty per cent. In other words, the environment is going down steeply because of over-consumption of everything. What can you do? You need to be more inventive; you need to be more efficient, you need to be more productive, so that you don’t waste resources. Which state in India has a decent land use plan? People develop, develop, develop and nobody thinks of what it is going to be like at the end of this century. It is thinking ahead and planning that is the responsibility of governments, corporations and communities.

I get so frustrated when I see the lack of planning, the lack of care – for example in the United States. How much money has been raised for wars and armaments that could go for the benefit of people and environment; for the long term good of the country? I consider it highly patriotic to think of the future of one’s country and not fritter away money and resources because you are greedy now. The question is – how can you change the perception of wanting to consume more and more of things that you don’t need?

The finite system we know little of

People think that technology will solve their problems. Well, it can solve various problems. But you have a finite system of which, we know very little. We don’t know much about the ecology of rainforests, woodlands and so forth. How many species can a system lose before it collapses? We don’t know how all the species in a forest – from the microbes in the soil, little worms to big trees – interact to function as a system. We don’t know that. If it collapses because we killed too many species, directly and indirectly….then what happens? This concerns me because yet again, looking at it from a selfish human perspective – we need medicinal plants. At present we know only a few. What plants are out there, which in the future can produce food for a starving planet? The way things are going now we have famines somewhere in the world all the time. The countries that grow a lot of grain like Canada and others – they don’t have enough to feed the world, they have to feed their own people. Countries have to seriously think now what to do. China has a good logging act. No more big, commercial logging of forests because the watersheds are being depleted causing huge floods that kill thousands of people. Alright, the country needs wood. Where is it going to get it from? You go to Congo in Africa; you go to Indonesia – get timber elsewhere. So to keep a good lifestyle countries are pillaging each other. The United States is the principal culprit. The United States has five per cent of the world’s people and it uses roughly 25 per cent of the world’s resources. Is this morally acceptable? It isn’t for me. I don’t know what to do about it.  Now China is expanding, India is growing rapidly and expanding – but unless countries co-operate more; become self sufficient, waste less – what to do? 

Photo: Shyam G Menon

Photo: Shyam G Menon

Big worries; small solutions

Conservation in the final analysis is politics. I can go to China, I can come to India, I can co-operate with local scientists in studying the issue. From the information that we collect, we write reports, we make suggestions – those go to government. Then it is in the hands of government if they want to do something or not. You can prod a little bit but I cannot do conservation myself. I can go to a community, hold a community meeting, listen to their problems and make suggestions, may be even find funds so that they can start – but again it is up to the community and the local politics to implement something on their own behalf.  I can’t come into a country and say you have to change your agricultural practices, you have to stop polluting. That is too big an issue for an outsider. The government and the corporations have to get together and handle that. Personally, I set my own limited goal where I feel I can do something positive for the environment. Everybody should work together on this. If you have a serious land use plan, retain it – then you have a goal. But the only economic measure you see right now is our Gross Domestic Product grew by eight per cent, four per cent etc! What kind of measure is that? It doesn’t measure your environmental loss. You have to measure – to gain that (GDP growth) how much have you lost as resources? You can put economic values on resources lost and I guarantee you that every single country would be in the minus column. They are worse off than they were. If you look at it in economic terms, the world is living off its capital rather than the interest. How many businesses can do that for long? So I have big worries but I focus on trying to do something small and useful.

His message to future conservationists

In one word, that would be – persistence. If you see that something is essential for the good of society, humankind and you have set yourself a goal – keep at it. You won’t necessarily get results immediately but keep emotionally involved, scientifically involved. Learn the politics to some extent because unless you have the backing of the local forest department or whatever that you are dealing with, you won’t get anywhere. And that – being an environmental politician, is something one has to learn whether one likes it or not.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. This interview was published in The Hindu Business Line newspaper in February 2011.)

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FIELD HOCKEY’S FAMILY FESTIVAL

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

March 2010.

For a festival of its size and uniqueness, the banners announcing the mid-April start of the Maneyapanda Twenty Ten were both few and hard to find.

In sport loving Kodagu (Coorg, South India), it was the latest edition of a then thirteen year-old annual ritual using field hockey to preserve a tradition of closely knit families. Started in 1997 by a former senior manager of the State Bank of India as means to reinforce family ties, the festival had since grown to be the world’s biggest field hockey event. It was recognized for its scale by the Limca Book of Records. The Guinness Book eluded it reportedly due to its exclusivity – you have to be a Kodava to participate. But that didn’t take away any sheen from this festival, for the region had for years been a major talent pool for the national men’s hockey team. Family teams sometimes included former members of the Indian squad, even Olympians. Both men and women played alongside. An unmarried woman played for the family she was born into; a married woman played for the family she married into. The youngest player may be just out of his or her teens. “ This year the oldest players could be B.A. Nanaiah and C. Vasu, both nearing eighty. They used to be good hockey players,’’ S. Appaiah, Chairman, Sports Committee of the Maneyapanda family, said when I met him.

In Madikeri, C. A. Karumbiah’s office sat next to the greenest spot, a patch of astro-turf. Formerly with the Indian Air Force, he was now Administrative Officer of the local Sports Authority of India (SAI) complex. In his prime playing years, he had been in the national hockey camp. He had also played thrice – with son and daughter – for the family he belonged to, Chandapanda. The roughly 150,000-strong Kodava community maintained its roots in family. Everyone was traced back to a male ancestor and there was a tradition of ancestor worship. Men had names with two initials, the first denoting family and the second, father’s name. There were no historical records to explain the genesis of these patriarchal family names, called manepedas. So when engineer turned writer C.P Belliappa, who became a coffee grower at Athur near Gonicoppal, dwelt on the topic in his book, “ Tale Of A Tiger’s Tail & Other Yarns from Coorg,’ he dipped into imagination for a delightful little chapter. Suffice to say, family ties were very strong in this hill province. Disparities in well being aside, most families had a large ancestral house that served as a magnet for periodic get together. When these meetings happened twice or thrice a year, a hundred to two hundred blood relatives may congregate. The house also reserved quarters for those in a family who had fallen on hard times.

Like the origin of their family names, the Kodavas I spoke to were hard pressed to explain why hockey of all games became so popular in the area. An explanation for the prominence of sports could be attributed to the British influence in these hills inhabited by a warrior community, the area later becoming the center of coffee cultivation in India. If you look around, vignettes of British influence in the region surface, ranging from Kodagu’s love of sports to similar tendencies in Malabar down to a quaint two hundred year old tradition of playing cricket in Thalassery ascribed again to the region’s coffee planters.

“ In our community there was always respect for the soldier and the sportsman,’’ Karumbaiah said. At Madikeri’s `Coorg Cuisinette,’ recommended locally as an eatery to visit for traditional food, I ran into young Subbaiah and Varun Cariappa, the former proceeding from third to the fourth standard, the latter, from eighth to the ninth standard. “ We go for hockey practice at five in the morning,’’ Subbaiah said, pointing to a tradition of elders proficient in the game coaching youngsters. When reading up for this article, I also came across a news report of Kodavas in the US forming a hockey team. Karumbaiah reeled off the names of several Indian hockey greats from Kodagu – M.D. Muthappa, M.P. Ganesh, B.P. Govinda, P.E. Kalaiah, M.M. Somaiya, K.M. Kusha, Ammanda Vasu, Chengappa, M.S. Monnappa, A.B. Subbaiah, Vinod Chinnappa, Koothanda Poonacha, B.K. Subramani, Chepudira S. Poonacha. More recently there have been Arjun Halappa, Len Aiyappa, S.V. Sunil, Hariprasad, Raghunath and Vinayak. Some of these players returned annually to play for their families.

The man who tapped this talent to create a huge family festival was 74 years old when I rang him up. “ I am very happy the way this festival has evolved,’’ Pandanda Kuttappa said over the phone. According to Belliappa, the former bank manager’s idea was a brilliant one. “ By March, the harvest here is over and people are generally free till monsoon. That’s the ideal time for a hockey festival,’’ he said.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

There appeared to be an estimated 700 to1000 families in the Kodava community. In the first inter-clan (okka) hockey tournament held in 1997 at Karada and funded by Kuttappa and his family, 60 teams showed up. In 2003, participation peaked at 281 teams. “ The family-hockey link works well because it is a team sport. It won’t work that well in something more individualist like athletics,’’ former international athlete Ashwini Nachappa said. Since it was an affair exclusive to the community, the festival’s administration was vested with the Kodava Hockey Academy (KHA) which had nothing to do with government agencies in the field. The umpires for the matches came from the mainstream Coorg Hockey Association. However, they too belonged to the Kodava community. Just as in international events, by the time one edition ended, the host family for the next edition was already identified and at work. While Kuttappa, who was President of KHA, had to dip into his own funds for the first edition, the tournament now had sponsors. But its implementation stayed ad-hoc and partly so for strong reasons.

At the government school in Ponnampet, where two hockey grounds were being prepared for the month-long festival, the mood was both professional and community service. Brigadier Devaiah oversaw preparations for the Maneyapanda family. According to him there was a reason for the festival shifting venues every year and not locating permanently at a fixed venue which would have made infrastructure efficient. In the distance one saw the Kunda Hill, sacred to the Maneyapanda family whose members lived in the vicinity. Many in the family had studied at this government school. “ It doesn’t have proper water supply. Alongside organizing the festival here, which would obviously need water, we also hope to leave behind a water supply infrastructure for the school,’’ the Brigadier said. On the other hand, every host family started its preparations from scratch. The KHA received several bids and usually selected the host family on the strength of prominence and capacity to implement. Once a family was chosen they proceeded to set up a core committee with sub groups handling specifics like finance, ground preparations, technicalities of the sport etc. Sadly however, work began every time from scratch with few documented practices from previous tournaments for template. Thus for Brigadier Devaiah, used to project execution in the army, the Ponnampet work was challenging. Work started from basics like collecting the addresses of all family members; collecting the addresses of women from the family who married into other families, working out the budget, requesting family members for funding (some contribute big, others small), informing the same to members married outside (their contributions were completely voluntary), readying the infrastructure etc. The overall budget for 2010 was Rs 50 lakhs.

For the finals due in May second week that year, the organizers were expecting a crowd of 30,000 people. Temporary stands were being constructed at the school ground. With one more ground nearby, two matches would be played simultaneously to expedite the knock out stage. There was space adjacent for several food stalls. Teams scheduled to play on a given day would play and return for further matches if required. “ Roughly twelve matches would be played every day,’’ Appaiah said. At Karumbaiah’s Academy for Learning & Sports in Gonicoppal, run by Datta Karumbaiah of the Maneyapanda family and his wife Ashwini Nachappa, I was told that around 185 families had submitted their entries for the hockey festival with a day still left for closing registration. The then Union Minister for Sports, M.S. Gill was expected for the April tournament as was the Air India hockey team for a friendly match. In Madikeri, C. A. Karumbaiah said that he had agreed in principle to using the SAI’s astro-turf ground for okka matches in the future. “ Since there is no age limit and many of the older players were groomed in the old style, there could be injuries if they play on fast moving astro-turf. But from quarter finals onwards, we are looking at good teams playing seriously. They should be able to handle astro-turf,’’ he said.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Despite its popularity, the family hockey festival was not the stuff that was tracked by committed talent scouts. The picture appeared to be one of the festival’s standing in sport being diluted by the festive flavor. More than hockey, it was an occasion for family members to meet, in some cases for the first time. It was also an occasion for match-making in the small community. As one person said, “ somebody might tell a young man: that’s the girl I told you about. See, that one in the red saree?’’ In a different context though, those sarees should intrigue Kodagu. The region’s prominence in hockey had been in men’s hockey. When it came to women, the talent pool today was up north and in the east. “ We need more women to come forward and play the game,’’ Karumbaiah of SAI said. That incidentally was a smaller problem in a larger trend becoming visible. Although talent scouts periodically visited interior schools to catch them young, great talent was slowly becoming rarity in Kodagu. Reasons were speculative and they ranged from smaller families with lesser children to so many other options available now for a person talented in sport.

However, that hadn’t dampened the intertwined model of family and sport.

Kodagu’s okka hockey festival was being emulated as model in the region’s taste for cricket and golf.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. This article was published in an abridged form in The Week magazine.)

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LADAKH’S ICE HOCKEY

June 2009.

Ladakh couldn’t comprehend its mixed fortunes in ice hockey.

In India, the game was first played in Shimla during the British times.

But it fizzled out.

Ice hockey in Ladakh (Photo: courtesy Chozang Namgial)

Ice hockey in Ladakh (Photo: courtesy Chozang Namgial)

Then in the 1980s, some say earlier, the Indian Army started playing ice hockey at its remote, cold postings in Ladakh.

The Ladakh region has a severe winter. Dras, often cited as the coldest inhabited place in the country with altitude induced sub-Arctic temperatures sometimes plummeting to minus 45 degrees, lay in the adjacent Kargil district. Even today, a winter in Ladakh entails being cut off for months as regards access by road.  Water bodies freeze, the most famous and touristy of which is the annual freezing of the Zanskar River that makes the winter trek on it much sought after. In towns and villages, people live off stocks of food they carefully accumulated during the summer. Families gather around large decorated stoves which serve to both cook food and heat a room. The choice then looms of either restricting yourself to such life or getting out and doing something more active.

That’s where ice hockey fitted in.

When the army started the trend in Ladakh, ice hockey sticks were made from willow wood. The skates were locally fabricated and fixed to the soles of military issue shoes, tin cans were used for pucks.

It soon spread to other parts.

In Leh the game has been played for years on a frozen irrigation pond. The Ladakh Winter Sports Club (LWSC) was formed in 1985. It offered coaching and organized tournaments, slowly moving the game away from the army’s clutch and into civilian ownership. At present the military / paramilitary forces don’t anymore run the game but send their best teams to compete with that of the state and local clubs.

Equipment was a huge hurdle to cross for it had to come from abroad and was required in good quantities if the sport was to penetrate the remote hinterlands. Luckily with ice hockey’s ascent, it caught the eye of diplomats and expatriates staying in Delhi and Mumbai. Among them were Canadians. Through them Ladakh got the first real sets of ice hockey gear and several more of used equipment for dispersal to the interiors. “ Those days, it was difficult getting the gear cleared at customs. We lost one set,’’ Chewang Motup Goba, founder of Rimo Club, national champions in the sport, recalled.  He was also Vice President of the LWSC at the time I was writing this story. The game had state and national level competitions with an administering body – Ice Hockey Association of India (IHAI) – based in Delhi.

In March 2009, the national ice hockey team made its debut at the international level.

Ice hockey in Ladakh (Photo: courtesy Chozang Namgial)

Ice hockey in Ladakh (Photo: courtesy Chozang Namgial)

The team was wholly from Ladakh.

Shimla hadn’t been getting good ice for the previous 3-4 years and that led to its players being left out.

When Tundup Namgial turned up at the Leh View Restaurant for a chat, he was absolutely different from the typical skipper of an Indian team. He spoke to the point with a reluctance that hinted he would rather play or be lost in the folds of his Ladakhi landscape. At experiential education courses, my thoughtful journalistic persona has often found itself in spaces identified with the analytical, procrastinating, human company-loving type. Tundup Namgial reminded me of the active sort, which struggle to find the correct words because the active life is their equivalent of thought and conversation.

Some in Leh felt he should have spoken up at a certain press conference in Delhi when the national team was sent to Abu Dhabi to play in the Asia Challenge Cup. From the administrators of the sport they got team T-shirts. That was all. The team had no doctor; equipment kits were pieced together from the inventories of the army, Rimo Club and J&K Tourism. Stay and accommodation was courtesy the organizers. Travel cost would have been entirely the team’s onus had not the Jammu & Kashmir Bank agreed to sponsor tickets, reportedly at the behest of state Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

At Abu Dhabi, the team featured in the opening game of the tournament. It was routed owing to lack of international experience and more significantly, the absence of an artificial rink back home. “ Nobody plays competitive ice hockey these days on frozen ponds,’’ Namgial said ruefully. Abu Dhabi in the desert underscored it and the behavior of puck on the ice of artificial rink was dramatically different from the way it slid on Leh’s frozen irrigation pond. Yet the tough lads improved with each fixture and exited the tournament earning the respect of other national teams. UAE won the championship that year.

The IHAI attributed the limited support it gave the team to both the niche stature of the sport in India and its own early days as an association. It hoped to get funding from the International Ice Hockey Federation. Both J&K Bank and Volvo, companies that sponsored the national team that went to Abu Dhabi, were expected to continue supporting for the next five years. “ We are also getting a coach from the ice hockey school in Finland to visit India this winter,’’ Mr Akshay Kumar, Secretary, IHAI, had said then.

Ice hockey in Ladakh (Photo: courtesy Chozang Namgial)

Ice hockey in Ladakh (Photo: courtesy Chozang Namgial)

Ladakhis love ice hockey.

Their women fought for equality in the game.

“ Our youth have nothing to do in winter but play ice hockey,’’ P.T. Kunzen, President then of the LWSC, said.

A national team and aspirants for it must train year round.

The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) was installing a second rink, a natural one again with hopefully an extended period of frozen existence as grace. That may increase the playing calendar by a month or two.

But where was the artificial rink that Ladakh badly needed for all it had contributed to the sport?

In 2009, thanks to an Uttarakhand initiative with central funding – a proper rink was coming up at Dehradun, in time for the South Asian Federation Winter Games. Teams from Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Uttarakhand would thus find a rink close at hand. Meanwhile with the growth of shopping malls and such, recreational rinks have opened up or been announced as curiosity in several Indian cities. Late 2012, I would find a giant hoarding outside the Mumbai airport announcing that winter’s ice hockey tournament in Leh, sponsored by a leading hotel chain; months later in Kochi I would see a newspaper article about an artificial ice skating rick at a huge mall. In new India with no shortage of people and people packaged as market, there is no dearth of marketing to attract crowds. What is amiss is an understanding of sport and meaningful investment in it. Growing something patiently, organically – that is an art lost in these days of design by disruptive growth and utter impatience to reach where the Joneses have.

Thus in yet another one of the ironies of sport in India that artificial rink went many places, except where there is a readymade culture for using it.

Kunzen, Chewang Motup and Namgial were all at a loss to explain this situation.

They were sure Ladakhi players would travel to Dehradun for practice. Still the bad luck rankled. Against the backdrop of 60 per cent central funding for sporting proposals from the states, the IHAI felt Ladakh can get its rink if the state pushed for it. But the time I was in Leh, it didn’t seem simple. Gulmarg in the Kashmir Valley is a favored spot for the national winter games and all states humor Delhi to merit their share of opportunity. The question being posed in 2009 was – will the state risk Gulmarg’s fortunes for the sake of an artificial rink in Ladakh?

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

The only other alternative was to encourage in-line hockey – similar to using roller blades – during the summer and keep Ladakh’s talent engaged. Chewang Motup saw one silver lining. He said that the then union minister for sports was aware of Ladakh’s concerns. But today as I brush up the article for this blog, it is many months since the said union minister was shifted out from sports. In India, you can’t trust politics. Its notion of time – swiftly ending through human intrigue sometimes and carrying on eternally at other times – follows laws that are apart from the natural laws of physics.

Unlike in politics, a more natural form of time runs out on the playing field.

Namgial knew his time was up.

“ Another two or three years of playing, after that I plan to coach youngsters,’’ the captain of the Indian team said.

Hopefully by then, Leh should have an artificial rink.

Namgial is the only captain of an Indian team I was privileged to have tea with.

I met him a couple of times after this visit.

One of those meet-ups was memorable.

We were a group of journalists who had just landed in Leh to cover the Hemis Festival and write about a school run by the Drukpa Lineage. I ambled out from the airport to locate the vehicle assigned to pick us up. A large number of people stood waiting outside the building, most of them taxi drivers and chauffeurs of hotel owned-vehicles or lodge and home stay-owners come to collect their clients. In the crowd was a face that struck me as familiar. Eventually Tundup Namgial and I recognized each other. We shook hands, exchanged greetings. Later, we met for a chat on ice hockey at his house now sporting additional rooms for lodging tourists.

It is now August, 2013. I spoke to a friend in Ladakh few days ago. At the one place in India where ice hockey grew so much, an artificial rink wasn’t functioning yet.

Ladakh waits.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. This article was originally published in a shorter version in The Hindu Business Line newspaper in September 2009. It has since been tweaked a bit to reflect the times.)

 

by

SHILLONG AIRPORT

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Ten minutes before touchdown, the ATR was tossed around in air pockets.

It complemented the essence of leaving metro life.

The turbo-prop was flying as it used to be before technology stole aviation.

The airport below was similar.

It was a small building.

The arrival area was a single room as small as a Mumbai apartment, with attached toilet.

You waited for the baggage, picked it up and left. No conveyor belt, no sitting around.

Nearby a new terminal of glass and steel was being constructed.

A few taxis lay parked outside for the 32 kilometer-ride from Umroi to Shillong.

I got into a state transport bus. It charged less.

There was a brief wait for the plane to take-off, the airport staff to pack up and the bus to leave with everyone – staff included.

It was the end of a working day at Shillong airport.

Its only flight had come and gone.

Days later, my work done, I was ready to fly back to Kolkata.

At Shillong’s bus depot, I waited for the bus to the airport.

Nothing drew up.

Seeing one of the airport staff from my earlier trip, I asked her about the bus. She guided me to the assigned vehicle. We spent the next ten minutes discussing Meghalaya.

“ I wish I was busy but there is only so much work here,’’ Saira Khar Karang said. Many years ago, the government owned-airline, Vayudoot – it disappeared without proper successor for its invaluable role – flew small aircraft to Shillong. Later the ATR came. Flights used to be cancelled for want of passengers. During rains the plane may skip Shillong and proceed to the more reliable Guwahati airport. Passenger traffic had since improved but the monsoon’s grip remained.

Yet, Saira didn’t wish to leave Shillong.

“ Khasi people are open hearted,’’ she said, wary of big cities.

Every small city eventually becomes a big city.

 It’s the phenomenon of our times.

 “ Who knows what Shillong will be?’’ I asked.

Some more of the airport staff trickled in.

“ Flight is one hour late,’’ a young lady said.

En route to the airport, we picked up others I recognized from the bus ride, the day I arrived.

It was a small world.

The security personnel at airport were a mixed bunch speaking languages of the North East, Hindi, Kannada and Malayalam. A lone X-Ray machine sat in the departure lounge, which had aluminum window frames for modernity. No air conditioning. Next to the X-Ray machine was Air India’s ticket counter, a kiosk. Ground service had been outsourced to a local travel agency. A weighing machine with attached electronic meter checked for excess baggage. Once some passengers had gathered, the officials ran the X-Ray machine, weighed the baggage, tagged it and issued boarding passes. All hand written, no computer print-out.

A TV provided passengers taste of impending metro inanity: the program quizzed Indian film stars on size zero while the streamer said Jennifer Aniston had denied she was on baby foods to stay thin. An announcement over the PA system informed that the delay had risen to near two hours. The TV channel switched to Doordarshan, screening a Hindi film – an Indian Tarzan with Ruby for Jane.

Then Shillong’s daily power cut struck.

Somewhere a generator hummed, fans whirled again and Ruby, Tarzan and elephants returned.

There was fuss around the VIP room as a politician arrived.

Half an hour later, we queued before a room marked `Security Hold.’ The CISF personnel took us through security check then joined the airport staff in inviting us for tea and snacks. The manager apologized for the delay and the time it took to fetch snacks, the airport being distant from town. A CISF jawan took an elderly passenger’s water bottle and filled it for her.

Shortly thereafter, the lone plane for which the airport existed landed.

A quick frisking before boarding, seats taken and we were off like clockwork.

As Meghalaya receded to green hills kissed by fluffy white clouds, I imagined an airport below closed for the day and a bus with staff and passengers headed back to Shillong.

Someday, that politician or another would inaugurate the new terminal, jet planes would land and Saira would turn busy.

Where next for the turbo-prop?

I wonder.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. This article was written following a visit to Meghalaya several years ago. An abridged version was published in The Hindu Business Line newspaper. Shillong’s new terminal was inaugurated in 2011, reports on the Internet said.)

by

A FORGOTTEN STORY

In 2010, I happened to reach Kumaon a month after heavy rains caused widespread damage in Almora and Bageshwar. I wrote a small article from that trip, hoping it would engage a newspaper or magazine to publish. None I contacted carried it. Reading about the 2013 tragedy in Kedarnath, Garhwal, triggered by heavy rains, I remembered this old article. In the age of climate change, maybe there is something to remember from it still:

 Morning of September 18, 2010.

It was raining heavily.

Dhanuli Devi stepped out to check on her neighbour.

Water had collected inside houses at Dewali in Uttarakhand.  The previous day, in another part of the village, continuous showers had brought water into the house of Kamla Khulia, the gram pradhan. Authorities were informed and the affected portion of the building vacated. Suddenly as Dhanuli Devi watched, her neighbour’s house and some more nearby were swept off in a gush of gooey mud. Also lost was half of her own house; what remained as of late October was a cracked structure with a gaping hole on one side and a large mudslide next to it that had killed ten people. While compensation had reached those who lost their houses, Dhanuli Devi, who has no family, was yet to get relief. Technically, her house was only damaged. “ She should get the money in the next round,’’ Kamla Khulia said.

Besides lives lost, Uttarakhand’s road infrastructure took a beating in the rains. Travelling from Mussourie to Champa, Uttarkasi, Rishikesh, Shivpuri, Nainital, Ranikhet, Almora and Munsiyari – the road had sections to be carefully tackled. There had been massive landslides leaving buildings on edge, parts of the road had sunk and fallen off or developed cracks. Small stones kept rolling down from the top as traffic negotiated repaired segments. The road from Khairna to Almora, used by trucks, was shut for long. When it opened, it was half a road in some places and delicately poised with the river Kosi flowing below. In September, the bloated Kosi either directly washed off kilometres of this road or ate the hillside from below causing the road above to collapse. Vehicles were spectacularly trapped on isolated fragments of still intact road. “ The rains must have set us back by at least eight years,’’ a senior government official said. 

Dhanuli Devi in 2010 (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Dhanuli Devi in 2010 (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Some 200 people died in Uttarakhand, in the monsoon of 2010.

It was worst at Almora, where besides Dewali, there had been similar landslide and death at Balta. There were 44 monsoon related deaths in Almora district; 38 of that on September 18. Official figures say 323 houses were totally damaged; 3099, partially. In the wake of calamity, 178 relief camps were opened accommodating 4015 persons. The damage to Almora was billed at Rs 723.10 crore. It included both loss and what it would take to rebuild. On September 22, the Centre gave Rs 500 crore as interim assistance to Uttarakhand. Late October 2010, the Almora administration had received only Rs 40 crore for relief work. It may have changed since. On November 18, media reports said the Uttarakhand government had disbursed Rs 372 crore. It expected the balance to be exhausted in another month and wanted the Centre to expedite the relief package it had demanded.

Ironically in the recent past, Almora had been in the news for depleting rain and falling water levels. It was feared that the ground water fed-Kosi, which originates in the region, may soon dry off. Last monsoon, the Kosi was anything but that. The local office of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) had data for September 2010. To start with, from June 1 to September 23, Almora got 1263.4mm of rainfall as opposed to the normal 854.7mm. Within that it was: June – 78.2mm, July – 359.4mm, August – 292.2mm and September – 507.6mm. If you go years back to 1962, then the spread of rainfall is even: June – 302.51mm, July – 321.56mm, August – 321.82mm and September – 321.82mm. Take September alone: 1970 – 436.1mm, 1994 – 467.4mm, 2010 – 507.6mm. Now sample 2010 rainfall deficiency (or in this case, excess): June 1 to August 31 – +8 %, June 1 to September 23 – +48%, September 1 to September 23 – +275%.  The figures highlight two trends – a progressively uneven rainfall and shift in heaviest rainfall to September. Of the 507.6mm received in September 2010, 177.4mm happened on September 18. Four days – September 16, 17, 18 and 19 – were days of heavy rain.

Although September 18 was widely reported as “ cloudburst,’’ Prof J.S. Rawat of the Department of Geography, Kumaon University, said, “ it was an unprecedented long spell of unusually heavy rain.’’ The rain filled up the region’s underground aquifers causing external overflow. When land saturates, sub-surface flows also happen. Both Dhanuli Devi and Kamla Khulia said the muddy water that carried away homes and families at Dewali had erupted from the ground. Technically, the calamity at Dewali and Balta was called `slumping.’ However the rainfall of 2010 was yet considered an aberration in the otherwise declining average annual rainfall and water levels of the Almora region. The key to this paradox, it would seem, is the intensity of rainfall. In a healthy ecosystem, the natural rate of ground water recharge for these parts of the Himalaya is said to be 31 per cent. Against this, the Kosi area has a recharge rate of 12 per cent; in Almora town, it is two per cent. Senior residents, including Prof Rawat, remember a phenomenon called `satjhar’ that used to be there years ago. It featured a week-long spell of low intensity rain, which was the best way to recharge ground water. That’s why the intense rain of September and the deluge of September 18 mean nothing, except continued worry.

According to Prof Rawat there is a need to study how these trends affect Almora, which is in Seismic Zone 4. The professor maintained that many of the buildings that collapsed in the rain or were severely damaged had been new ones built on “ superficial deposition.’’ Result – water gets below the foundation. “ We don’t have a Master Plan yet that tells which areas to build on and which, to avoid,’’ he said.

Uttarakhand is a state trapped in mythology and natural beauty. The Himalaya made it scenic. It became the backdrop of epic, folklore and fairy tales. People flock there in large numbers. They seek God and a sense of space their own numbers have denied them in the plains little understanding that their moving en masse in a different direction, merely carries the lack of space also over. A young mountain chain like the Himalaya will be restless and its sides far less settled than the terrain through which roads and highways have been built elsewhere. Mix this with climate change’s ability for catastrophic weather – the consequences are a handful to deal with even under normal conditions with only the local people to take care of, leave alone the thousands who invade from the outside. In the media, Uttarakhand’s tragedies unfold in predictable fashion typically with shrill emotional note struck by focusing on what is happening to places of worship. It works as spellbinding visual on television for some people. It did in 2010 with much hysteria whipped up around a temple on the banks of the Kosi. It did again in 2013, which was anyway all about pilgrimage. On the ground too, people are quick to highlight to the reporter what happened to a place of worship even as their own lives are in tatters. 

In Uttarakhand, I suspect, this dovetails neatly into an existing tradition of staying mythological for the rest of India. Such perspective obfuscates the real story, which is one of geology, geography, human presence, rising population, climate change and the impact of economic growth featuring construction projects and such. This – especially business and projects – would be brought to sharp focus as the tragedy of 2013 got analyzed. Reports appeared of ill advised construction and ones that may have obstructed the natural flow of rivers – not much different in principle, from what Prof Rawat mentioned in a different context about lacking a Master Plan. Not to mention, detailed studies of rainfall pattern in the age of climate change and what that holds for pilgrimage seasons established by the realities of bygone eras. It is absurd to expect 2013 to be the same as a year from millennia ago.

In Dewali I remember asking Dhanuli Devi where she would go. She indicated a relative down by the road she could seek shelter with for the time being. But otherwise; she just looked into the distance, tears welling up in her eyes.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. This article was modified towards the end to tie into the developments of 2013.)