TWO TRAINS

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

The express train was soon cruising.

About twenty minutes out of Howrah, the pretty young woman on the seat opposite me exchanged her assigned berth with the middle aged housewife gazing disinterestedly at the world outside. Right upper berth gained, she hauled herself up to its privacy. The housewife on the left lower berth put on a sick expression; the sort that requires no hospitalization, merely attention, a little fussing over. Her husband, a businessman bound for Bhiwandi, rubbed his sleepy eyes and worked the cell phone. The morning sunshine on the side lower berth – the short one parallel to the aisle, if you know the anatomy of a typical Indian railway coach – bothered him. It was settled quickly. There was an exchange of berths with a less tired middle aged man, owner of the right lower berth in the main coupe. Within the air conditioned compartment, the latter immediately spread out railway bed sheets to mark his new acquisition warmed by sunshine. He sat on the compact berth with his back to the aisle, cross legged, staring at the passing landscape like a trader in his shop awaiting customers. I wondered what he would sell; sunshine perhaps? Bottled sunshine to cure the world’s problems; a shop laden with shiny glass bottles flashing by in an express train. All this – exchange of berth and setting up shop – happened in five minutes.

The Bhiwandi bound-husband was now seated next to me.

He gave me pleading looks.

“ Which is your berth?’’ he eventually asked.

“ I suppose you want to sleep,’’ I said, trifle annoyed at this rapid collapse of people around me.

He nodded like a neglected child.

The wife, probably angry with him and his cell phone, had already gone to sleep, blanket over her head.

I knew it was my turn to move.

I was on the Duronto Express; non-stop from Howrah in Eastern India to Mumbai on the west coast, save a technical halt at Bilaspur in the country’s middle. The train had just been introduced. It was fast by Indian standards but certainly not so by standards elsewhere. The Indian Railways meant a lot in India. It was one of the world’s biggest railway networks with portions – like the Mumbai suburban system – ranking among the busiest worldwide. The Railways meant so much that they struggled to keep pace with the demands India’s huge population heaped on it. Right now as I edit this piece, relentless inflation, unstable oil prices, the depreciation of the Indian rupee leading to costlier imports – all have conspired to make road and air travel expensive for the average Indian. Under such circumstances, the country counts on its government owned-railways to guarantee affordable transport. It may be over two decades since economic liberalization started and we may be now trillion dollar economy. But if you want to meet India, you still have to take a train. On busy routes, tickets are usually hard to find unless you book early. Speed can’t be a priority on overcrowded rails. What could be done instead and which the Railways do despite protests, is reduce halts en route for semblance of super fast and express travel. My Duronto Express was unique for its single halt, that too, technical. The train was painted in strange fashion; its facade sported illustrations of meadows, forests and trees as though a child had sketched it. At that time, if I recall right, it was the only Duronto in the country. Now there are several.

It may be over two decades since economic liberalization started and we may be now trillion dollar economy. But if you want to meet India, you still have to take a train.

Non-stop rail travel made the experience a bit like an intercontinental flight minus pretty air hostesses and luxury. You felt trapped in a long, air conditioned tube of an ecosystem. Half an hour from Howrah, with me now on the left upper berth, our coupe settled into the pattern it would hold till Mumbai next day. I read the biography of Slovenian mountaineer Tomaz Humar till my eyes ached; then I listened to rock music till my ears throbbed, after which I tested my left leg to see how long it could bear the cold blast from the overhead AC duct. With people genuinely asleep or lazing around on the lower berths, tea, breakfast and lunch – everything was had sitting in C-shape on the upper berth. Bored, I looked towards the pretty young woman who had occupied the right upper berth. She was busy talking on her cell phone. I began praying that the instrument would conk off forcing her to seek conversation elsewhere. She was the only one around doing anything more than eating, sleeping, eating and sleeping, even if the difference was endless whispered nothings to her boyfriend over that phone

My mind drifted to the Kamrup Express. Two weeks earlier, life aboard that train had been as different as alive from comatose.

I had the lower berth on the left. Seated opposite was an elderly trader headed for Guwahati. In half an hour he found devoted following in a young man from the same community, employed with an engineering firm. An extended family tree was discussed; shared branches located. They conversed like two cozy birds on the same branch dipping into that tradition of centuries of unchanged sunrise and sunset. Somehow Indian conversations – especially those tinged by mercantilism – drift to endorsing unchanged society. I suspect money likes to keep everything else the same so that it multiplies undisturbed. That’s why, if you sit in on it, conversation among traders can seem depressingly mono-cropped. It’s shaped to single dimension. Knowing the state of my purse, I end up feeling that I have no future. Not that other Indians make it any easier; money is obsession everywhere here. The compartment’s aisle stayed busy with soldiers visiting coupes hosting friends. It was probably their last socializing before dispersal to far flung military camps. The army had a strong presence in North East India. The lone person from the air force sat tracking the stations to his halt; it was his first time in Assam. A cell phone blared Malayalam film songs from the next coupe, while not far off Tamil held forth. The Marwari engineer sat reading a book called Making Breakthrough Innovation Happen by Porus Munshi. It fetched a strange visitor from the next coupe. Taking charge of the book the man said, “ I am a Lieutenant Colonel in the army. Promoted out of turn; all my batch mates are still major.’’ I remember that introduction for its utter strangeness. Later, he kept calling up people – I suspect from the conversation, they told him to spare them the trouble. Past midnight, he was still getting ticked off, offering a quick, “ okay, ta-ta, bye-bye, good night, sweet dreams, ‘’ to every person slamming the phone down. The last time I saw him, he was sitting alone on the coach attendant’s seat near the wash basin, cell phone in hand, train’s rhythm on rail for company.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Early next morning from New Jalpaiguri onward, the train became a bazaar. It was an invasion of vendors. My favorite was a man selling popcorn, peanuts, roasted green peas and a whole lot of similar eatables. His signature call was, “ ta-ta-time, pa-pa-pass.’’ Put together that became `time pass,’ the Indian solution to tackle many things in daily life – from delays caused by gargantuan bureaucracy  and the queues of huge population to a moment of restless standstill in cities of constant rush. He also had soft items for “ old men with no teeth,’’ crunchy ones for the young and peanuts, sold as catalyst for conversation between lovers. The sales pitch in the latter attracted questions. “ Nowadays people overlook peanuts and talk on the cell phone. With phones you need towers and signals to talk to your lover, peanuts need none of that, ‘’ the vendor explained before moving off to another chant of, “ Ta-ta-time, pa-pa-pass.’’ What amazed was the array of goods sold by these vendors – there were pen drives, flash lights, film rolls, mobile chargers, mobile batteries, cameras, watches, track suits, massagers, foot pumps, flasks, jackets, hand held sewing machines, DVDs, carpets. China had changed even vendors on trains; their talk was now peppered with megabyte, cyber, digital, MP3, I-Pod and like. Some of the vendors were dexterous; the gamcha vendor was a heap of clothes on two legs, as was the carpet seller. The soldier from the upper berth, traveling to Dimapur, struck a deal with the young engineer to buy DVDs. Using the engineer’s laptop, they scanned disc after disc for good, pirated prints till it drew loud protests from the vendors. “ You are scanning all my discs and buying only one. I would have sold ten by now,’’ a vendor remarked as a coupe-load of people helped the soldier bargain down DVD price from Rs 60 to Rs 20. Half way through the exercise, the engineer, mindful of new found uncle nearby, reduced his involvement to pure technical assistance with no say in film selection. Curious, I thumbed through the soldier’s selection. It ranged from 3 Idiots and Avatar to Emmanuelle and riskier beyond. Uncle looked stoically into the distance. The engineer buried his nose in his book.

The train was now two and a half hours late and politely making way for every other train to pass us by. Occasionally, when we had the benefit of a platform nearby, we got off to stretch our legs. “ That’s the Amritsar train, that’s the Rajdhani express,’’ the ticket inspector would clarify oblivious of our self-arrest. He was like a railway historian giving us a guided tour of the why, how and several other qualities of a journey disrupted. Standing so, on the platform at Barpeta Road, I saw a man wearing a T-shirt that said, “ Japan-US at war, 104 die in Hawaii raid, McArthur in Australia.’’ It appeared topical for the only region in India to have experienced real fighting in World War II. The Battle of Imphal and the Battle of Kohima were major turning points. As the crow flies, Imphal and Kohima were not hugely distant from where I was although actual travel along hill roads meant distances in the North East were often deceptive. The T-shirt also appeared topical, given the purpose of my trip to Assam and from there to Arunachal Pradesh to write about the Stilwell Road. The train crawled on. A harried coach attendant arrived muttering, “ people give me thousand rupee-notes and demand a bottle of water. What am I to do?’’ The matter was giving him a headache. As if to soothe his headache, the China connection made itself heard once again; a blind vendor produced three different sized-vials of “ China Vicks.’’ Meanwhile, the upper berth bearing the DVD obsessed-soldier, emitted kung fu shouts, bomb blasts, machine gun fire and full throated passion. The laptop stayed up there with the soldier through the day; the engineer sat reconciled to Porus Munshi. At night, our coupe converted into a cinema theater, laptop on the small folding table with soldiers from nearby coupes converged there to watch 3 Idiots. Film over, a bizarre incident occurred. A passenger woke up from deep slumber inquiring why he was on the train. Co-passengers comforted him and hushed him back to sleep. Morning brought mist, winter chill and Tinsukhia. As with several stations before from Barpeta Road to Guwahati, I got off the train to `set foot’ on a platform I may not see again. It was my little conquest-of-Everest act. It was also perhaps a measure of my meek character for the truth was I was still in India. Yet these were parts I hadn’t been to before. Indeed one of the things I discovered as I grew up was how little I knew of anything in India; I didn’t even know my neighborhood well. In the desperate Indian life, we reach other countries before we discover the places we were born in. In middle age, I was doing what I should have done earlier. After Tinsukhia, we moved on tracks bordering a road beside tea estates, to Dibrugarh. I remember looking at those tea estates on vast, relatively flat ground and wondering how different they seemed from Kerala’s tea estates situated on hillsides. Somewhere out there, not far, lurked the architect of Assam’s geography – the mighty Brahmaputra; a river wide enough in parts to seem a small sea.

As with several stations before from Barpeta Road to Guwahati, I got off the train to `set foot’ on a platform I may not see again. It was my little conquest-of-Everest act. It was also perhaps a measure of my meek character for the truth was I was still in India.

Luckily for me, the young woman on the Duronto Express was as bored as I was. She was moving to Mumbai on work. Conversation served well to distract her from the approaching huge city she had transited through before but had never wanted to live in. Now she was going to live there. She seemed happy to talk. I missed that vendor on the Kamrup Express. He could probably teach a marketing lesson or two to the Railways on the real USP of the non-stop Duronto Express.

Introduce peanuts for a start?

(The author, Shyam G. Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. A smaller version of this article was published in The Hindu Business Line newspaper.)

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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.)

by

WINDOWS TO THE MIND

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Many years ago, when studying in Thiruvananthapuram, I used to be active in a small society called Literary & Debating Forum. On days when the onus of organizing a debate fell on my shoulders, I would go to inform the college principal of the chosen subject, seek permission to use the auditorium and put up some posters for publicity. In the early part of my time at college, my father died. I suspect, the principal who saw some promise in me, kept a distant watchful eye on how I was faring. By my final year of graduation, I had both nose dived in academics and grown a beard. One day, I went to the principal’s office for the routine appraisal of upcoming debate. He heard me out without taking his eyes off my bearded face. Then he asked me, “ Shyam, what book are you reading now?’’

Those days, books were prime fertilizer for beards. Youngsters read books, beards grew and some years later, they were usually lost to navigating a confusion that the more pragmatic avoided and chose decent careers instead. The principal’s concern was spot on. In retrospect, I am glad somebody bothered to ask that question too. If my principal had any worries, they came true. For after college, I meandered for long in a maze of impractical ideas and idealism. I was never a fan of ideology. But ideas hook me easily and I am never above an impractical pursuit if there is a journey in it, even a short lived trip. I am therefore not the type anyone can use to build a nest or fiefdom. The moment I detect territory marked and stamped by ownership – which is the problem with ideology too – my trip ends. For I know well that the compulsion to defend turf will kill the original idea. It is not that this trait doesn’t bother me. It does. The world’s money lay in the family-fiefdom-kingdom-empire-country sort of social arrangement and to be useless for it is to embrace penury. Indeed any perspective that doesn’t make sense to people fetches no money for money is a human construct found only with people. Yet the thing is – the way of money is just one way to live and life was never all about one way. That old beard is no more there on my face. But as you can make out from my writings, its ghost lives!

The reason I brought up my principal’s question to me is because when I wrote on Madhavan Nair, who was a fine collector of music (please refer earlier post – Remembering Madhavan Uncle), I remembered that nobody asked me of the music I liked the same way they asked me of what I read. We think books are a window to people’s souls. We assess people by what they read. But why not by what music they listen to? And the thing is – for most people, the music they like is far more personal than the books they read, save of course the books you are told to read for salvation and such, like our religious books, where anyway it isn’t inquiry but blind faith. For me, someone who likes pop music is different from someone who likes classic rock as is that person from someone who likes film music. Or to dig into my own tastes and give a very Indian example – I like Hindustani classical for its seemingly unfettered exploration of universe and its reduction of life to a relation between self and universe. Carnatic music in comparison leaves me cold. I feel it emphasises laid down structure and appreciates in terms of loyalty to an established perfection. Maybe that’s because I don’t know enough. But that’s my aural perception and I usually don’t labour to understand music through explanation. Music is what it does to your atoms and molecules when you hear it. It is that simple. Take it or leave it, but PLEASE – respect what you leave too, for it is plain stupid to conclude that an arrangement of atoms and molecules as you are is the best arrangement nature could ever manage.

Perhaps somebody with an appetite for anthropology and social research can enlighten us on why we are conditioned to place appreciation / knowledge of words above appreciation / knowledge of music. For sure, the world has disseminated itself more on words. Sometimes I wonder if music’s comparative relegation is because our words are inadequate to articulate what unravels through music. For after all, the vibration of a drum or string appears closer to the wealth of vibrations that seems the universe itself. Are we paying the price for mastery over what is only a second or third language of the universe? Yet we never even give it the benefit of doubt. If you reach home lugging books everybody approves it as opposed to landing with headphones on your ears and spring in your step. No boss asks you in an interview, “ so, what music do you like?’’ leave alone celebrating a discovery of matching tastes, with a jig around the table. Maybe they should read Sherlock Holmes for one of the mysteries of his character is how that alchemy of astute observation, chemistry, the occasional drug and violin, converged to crack a case.

Commuting in Mumbai, a city of travel given its distances, my small backpack may or may not have a book to read. But it will rarely miss out on my old portable CD player (go ahead and say it: this man should be in a museum!). Right now some songs have to be at hand. They mean the world to me. None of them arrived at the same time and any such favoured playlist keeps changing. However some songs stay long. From the first time I heard the song `I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ I was hooked. It was the very essence of journeying. In my opinion, journeying is different from journey. Many people go on journeys, but few actually journey in the sense that they allow what they are experiencing to come within and move them, shift existing patterns. This song and the album `The Joshua Tree,’ more than any other song and album I had heard till then, embodied seeking and they did so, as a wholesome body of music, not through recourse to lyrics. Through thick and thin, through the ups and downs of life this song by U2 and the album, `The Joshua Tree,’ have stayed with me. Although acquired much later `Dear Mr Fantasy’ quickly grew to be a permanent fixture on my playlist. Herein I am not referring to the song’s original version as recorded by the band, `Traffic,’ but the version performed by Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood at their 2008 reunion concert in Madison Square Garden. Hanging on in the periphery of these two songs and for now, rounding off my essential playlist are the songs, `Imagine’ by John Lennon, `Bridge over Troubled Waters’ by Simon and Garfunkel, ` Silent Lucidity’ by Queensryche, ` Closer to the Heart’ by Rush, `Maa Rewa’ by Indian Ocean, `Drive’ by REM, `So Much to Say’ by Dave Mathews Band, `Snow Flower’ by Anand Shankar, `Midnight Rider’ by Allman Brothers Band and `Farm on the Freeway’ by Jethro Tull. You don’t have to like them. They happen to be my choice for my current days in Mumbai. Days change; so does the playlist.

Music is one of the most under-estimated windows to what we are. It encroaches upon the terrain zealously guarded by the old fashioned, feudal question of who we are. That question is typically answered by disclosing names of parents, family roots and details from the circumstances of one’s birth. After holding forth on that, play the music you genuinely like, watch those swaying to it and you are left wondering – really? If the above mentioned songs are currently fundamental to my sanity then is an explanation of who I am by the circumstances of my birth adequate or inadequate? And if I am born in accordance with what answers who I am, to merely then cross over to the pleasurable confusion of what I am, then of what relevance is this question – who am I? And if I am happy with whatever musical tastes are compliant with my identity by birth, then does that bar me from whatever I can be by way of wider empathy for music? Chances are music will leave you belonging to bigger universe against which, the whole feudal rigmarole of who you are looks petty. Of course, you can cap the inquiry for convenient outcome or profit – that’s beside the point, not to mention being dishonest to the spirit of inquiry. 

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

My college principal, Fr Thomas Kottarathil, did the best he could. Except him no teacher ever asked me what books I read. Maybe someday in the future, a principal will ask students, in addition to what books they read, what music they listened to. In the more informal setting of outdoor experiential education courses, I have often seen this happen – we stand around in a circle and try to open a window to what we are by listing one or two songs and singers / bands we like. The effect is usually nice because music is not seen as part of our weaponry for mutual competition. Sadly however, that wonderful privilege is eroding. Attitudes encouraged by the industry of marketing, which sells by loading every product silo with attributes, is making music seem more physical than the fluid medium for journeying it actually is. Now that you read this article, why don’t you reflect on the songs and music you like and see what they tell you about yourself? A word of caution: they don’t tell you everything, they just tell you something.

When my principal asked me of the book I was reading, my answer was – James A. Michener. Thanks to good friend Rajagopal, who started the trend, we were both onto one Michener after another. To my mind, Michener and U2 or ` The Joshua Tree,’ aren’t exactly the same spirit by different names but they belong to the same region in imagination. Michener’s huge books, if you have the patience for it, engage for their vast canvas of people, history and times. It is a journey. But it also resembles a giant fresco that is all about reporting a million movements but needn’t really move you, for it is a frozen account. That’s where music scores over words. Starting with our heart beat and breathing, humans are naturally rhythmic. Music adds a dynamic dimension to words that words are simply bereft of. U2 captured the spirit of journeying with `I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ and some other songs in `The Joshua Tree.’ That album moved. You felt wind in the hair, solitude and moments of utter standstill. The Madison Square Garden-version of `Dear Mr Fantasy’ too falls in the same league. It evokes imagery of journeying and multiple perspectives. Does that in turn provide a clue or two about me? I suspect it does.

There is however one danger, we should be aware of in this sort of profiling. The human being nowadays is way too intelligent for his / her own good. We reverse engineer like crazy. We ask ourselves what impression we need to strike and then arrange the required pointers in place. We quickly learn what music we should like to impress the boss; what books to read to impress a teacher, what degrees earned and from which university structure a great career, what picture of self indulges our own vanity for a blog. A few screeches on the violin, some time with the magnifying glass and a few puffs never made anyone Sherlock Holmes. Sadly that works in our world. Everything is bio-data for competition; not understanding a journey. It is success by formula, till the chemistry of pretention wears thin and reality emerges.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)

JASON AND THE JOURNALIST

There goes lunch on a matchstick! (Illustration: Shyam G Menon)

There goes lunch on a matchstick! (Illustration: Shyam G Menon)

I don’t know how this catamaran business got into my head.

I was quite terrestrial, mediocre swimmer; yet prone to trying things beyond me. That often meant embarrassment for oneself; entertainment for others. It didn’t take long to realize that the ultimate getaway was the sea. Its blue expanse is much bigger in size than land. And what better way to be at sea than in that tiniest of crafts – two or three logs stashed together; a catamaran.

Derived from the Tamil word, `kattumaram,’ the British fashioned it into catamaran and took the description overseas. The word was used to describe the multi-hull boats of South East Asia and Polynesia as well. No better than a big float and deeply enmeshed into man’s history of seafaring, the ancient craft was ubiquitous on the Kerala coast, where it was called kattamaram. Every time you saw a fisherman or two in the distance bobbing up and down in the waves as though they were sitting on the very ocean itself, you knew it was a catamaran below. The minimalist design, almost the lack of it, held a raw appeal. At the onset of monsoon local newspapers loved to publish the photograph of fishermen throwing themselves and their catamarans from a cliff top, into the sea.

I did not have to explain all this fascination to Jason, who had suddenly surfaced just outside the low boundary wall of the resort at Poovar near Thiruvananthapuram. I tracked his movement, shoulders and head visible above the wall and gauged from the smooth, mildly bobbing drift that he was standing on a canoe or something similar. He was hawking his day’s catch of a few small fish and oysters to the resorts bordering the estuary. I looked down from the wall and saw a frail catamaran under his feet. “ Can I sit on it?’’ I asked. He studied me for a second and simply said, “ take it. Go out into the estuary.’’ Then realizing he had dropped a bomb in my brain, he offered, “ don’t worry, I will swim alongside.’’ That presented a dilemma. For the journalist, no matter how badly he writes thinks himself as descended from the first revolutionary. The sahib-servant relation was abhorrent, unthinkable. This was just that – me on a catamaran, Jason in the water. Slavery!

“ No, no, that can’t be,’’ I said, sweating as a pantheon of ghosts, from Abraham Lincoln to Mahatma Gandhi, admonished me for even hearing the suggestion made. “ How could you?’’ they thundered. I cringed fearing their wrath.

But Jason’s problem was real – his catamaran of three thin logs could take only one person. Add a second and it would become a large overturned log; the sort ship wrecked sailors of yore clung to as they drifted to a remote Pacific island. Eventually, we decided – I would venture out into the estuary, Jason would instruct from land.

There were two possible postures on the frail craft. Jason preferred what I call the geisha pose, on your knees with legs tucked painfully under your butt. Given a painful middle aged knee, I couldn’t do that. So, I opted for the normal kayaking position. With one powerful push, Jason launched craft and me into the estuary. We shot out like an arrow into the silence of the deep. As the distance between me and land rose, my mind became a multiplex and playing on screen was the shark’s view from below – there goes lunch on a match stick. And as though to serve my imagined predators well, Jason’s energy transferred to the craft petered out and lunch-on-match stick slowed to a solemn halt. I looked into the water waiting for a shadow that would grow bigger and bigger till it erupts out of the water, the world goes black and Spielberg says, “ cut!’’ Jason must have sensed my nervousness. “ Take the oar and paddle,’’ he shouted from ashore. I took the oar – oar? Here I was, seated in the best kayaking position copied from TV and I had a five feet long wooden plank for oar. It was uniformly broad, thick and heavy. How the hell was Jason using this? He has to be a superman – I thought.  Several strokes later, I was a panting mess beginning to question what I had got myself into.

This was my predicament somewhere in the middle of the estuary when the sound of outboard engines came from my right. Two boats were bearing down on me. Panic is not plain fright; it is the fright over what can be. In other words, the less you know the braver you seem, the more you know, the more panicky you get. And I knew what could happen (journalists always do).  Those boats would generate waves high enough to upset me. Throw me into the water. Now technically speaking, the catamaran is deemed more stable at sea than the popular mono-hull boat. In fact when the multi-hull design emerged from Asia, western boat builders were both taken aback and too prejudiced to acknowledge its capabilities. It took many years for the catamaran to find acceptance, that too after several western interpretations that were no more than reinventing the Asian wheel. Today it is the stuff of power boat races. However, this debate was likely truer for the multi-hull. When you have two logs stashed together like the home made contraption I was balanced on, science was a luxury. Greater certainty seemed an unwanted exploration of marine life in the estuary. My paddling went askew. The tips of my `oar’ splashed frantically on the water’s surface hardly moving the craft, then from being wood, the oar metamorphosed to cast iron and my aching hands stopped paddling altogether. Resigned, I did the next best thing – kept the oar on my lap and sat there like a Buddha contemplating the mysteries of life. Both shores were far off, the bottom was far below, the sky was high above – so sat the hermit impervious to the outcome as two ferocious boats ploughed through the water at him. In reality the journalist was outthinking everybody else; TV crew interviews the eyewitness and he says, “ man, wasn’t that guy calm?’’

I sat there like a Buddha (Illustration: Shyam G Menon)

I sat there like a Buddha (Illustration: Shyam G Menon)

The first boat with its load of tourists whizzed by in front; the second followed on the other side. One swell, then the next – surrender worked, I rode both pretty well. My little matchstick was a toughie. It was to remind me later of a yacht I had boarded in Kochi. The Australian couple who owned it was sailing around the world. It was a beautiful, well appointed boat with a sense of security to it. I looked at the other yachts in the harbor, particularly a small one. “ That man should feel scared crossing a vast ocean,’’ I said. The husband narrowed his eyes. “ Look carefully. You see those hammer marks, like dents on the hull? That’s a home-made boat. He probably built it in his garage. Looks unsafe but when in trouble he would know it like the back of his palm. And he won’t be troubled often either for his boat is small. Unlike a big ship that has several stress points, this one will ride the waves like a matchbox; too small for the ocean to break.’’ At that moment in the estuary though, two swells tackled and the remaining ones dissipating into gentler bobs, I was just relief incarnate.

“ Keep going,’’ Jason shouted. But I had had enough even though I was slowly getting used to that oar. Direction now set toward Jason, I set off. Strangely even as I moved toward him, he drifted off to my left. The current was carrying me in a straight-right direction; like a general at a military parade with everything going past. The guard of honor – by now a couple of idle watchmen from the nearby resorts had also joined Jason – stared open mouthed at this demonstration of paddling skills. The battle now was to stop the drift, which I did by somehow heading for a resort’s wharf. Except that the current carried me under it; I was now safely lodged among a dozen wooden pillars that supported the structure. “ Hello…Sir?’’ If it was the Buddha garb in deep waters, I now responded to Jason with the air of an accomplished engineer, “ doesn’t anyone maintain these things? They look rather worn out underneath.’’ It struck me then that I had said the obvious and the best thing to do, was get out. But before that vanity struck. I glanced out to see if my antics were causing general alarm. My cousin Rajeev appeared settled into a hammock, reading a book. His mother, sister and family were chatting. Only Jason, watchmen and journalist seemed involved. Good. I nudged the craft inelegantly out from its refuge. And so, the greatest catamaran journey of all time ended with an emergence from under the wharf and on to Jason’s side.

He reluctantly accepted fifty rupees; lingered to finish a smoke with the watchmen and then neatly paddled off to his fishing village nearby. On the estuary, Jason looked like a monk with divine powers, seated on water and using mere will power to navigate. The whole thing worked like a well oiled piece of machinery – his effortless paddling, comfortable position and the catamaran, skimming along on the surface of the estuary. It could have made for a movie: Flying Jason; Hidden Catamaran – Ang Lee’s missed opportunity. Jason didn’t look back. I stood there watching him; the watchmen stood there looking at me. The British adventurer and buccaneer, William Dampier, is considered the first westerner to report on the `kattumaram’ of the Coramandel coast in the 1690s. “ They call them catamarans. These are but one log or two, sometimes of a sort of light wood….so small, that they carry but one man, whose legs and breaches are always in the water,’’ he had written. Dampier circumnavigated the globe thrice.

Pretty big connections for one really small craft, I say.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)

by

A RIVER STORY (PART ONE)

FROM TONS RIVER TO RUPIN PASS

Looking towards the Upper Rupin Valley (Photo: Suma Rao)

Looking towards the Upper Rupin Valley (Photo: Suma Rao)

On the frail suspension bridge to Mora village in Uttarakhand the mind easily surrendered to blissful disorientation.

The wind blew as it pleased while the Tons River flowed furiously in a direction set centuries ago. Right below was a swirling eddy. What you stood on was too narrow and minimalist to intrude into the frame – you felt afloat like a feather. Looking down into the river seemed great to unwind; as an element, water was soothing, the patterns of flowing water were as soothing. In the near two months spent rafting and hiking in that region, I did this quite a few times to forget Mumbai and occasionally my outdoor camp, not all students there committed to making life easy for an instructor. That day however, the last batch was in progress. Once the camp ended four of us planned to hike upstream and cross the mountains into Himachal Pradesh. Although meant to relax after extended work, in my journalist mind it was assuming the shape of an unexpected river story.

The Tons was a tributary of the Yamuna, joining the latter at Kals in the north western part of the Dehradun valley. It was born from the confluence of two rivers – the Supin, which arose from a glacier near the Har-ki-dun valley in Garhwal and the Rupin, traced to a glacier in the environs of the Rupin Pass on the border of Uttarakhand and Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh. Between the two originating rivers, the Supin, draining waters from the Bunderpunch, Swargarohini and Black Peak massifs, was the greater volume generator accounting for a bulk of the flow in the Tons. The unassuming Tons, tucked deep into the folds of the Himalayan foothills was in the news during the days of the Vajpayee government, when much interest was shown in rediscovering the vanished river of the Vedic period – the Saraswati. Some researchers had argued that the present day Tons represented the upper reaches of that mythological river.

The Tons was a tributary of the Yamuna, joining the latter at Kals in the north western part of the Dehradun valley. It was born from the confluence of two rivers – the Supin, which arose from a glacier near the Har-ki-dun valley in Garhwal and the Rupin, traced to a glacier in the environs of the Rupin Pass on the border of Uttarakhand and Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh.

If I remember right, I first saw the Tons after I quit my regular job to be a freelance journalist. That would be post-2006. Our camp then was in a wooded spot on the river’s bank. It was a damp place with occasional rain and the river’s sound for constant company. Just before and after the camp were small beaches, ideal for a few moments of solitude.  Across the river was a rocky cliff. Perfect. However, in the summer of 2008, much confusion had preceded the arrival of the annual rafting camps. The authorities wanted a shift in camp site; we found ourselves considerably upstream bang in the path of the daily storm. Every afternoon we hung to our tents to prevent them from flying off and when the wind became too powerful, we simply collapsed the tents ourselves and waited out the swirling dust. Strictly speaking, this area while mountainous qualified to be the approach to the real giants beyond. We were in the foothills. From camp, you could easily do treks that took you to 8000 feet or more. That was nothing in the Himalayan world. But then, the very scale used for measurement here was different.

I clearly remember realizing this on my first mountaineering expedition in Zanskar – how small the hills of the Western Ghats (a long north-south mountain chain in peninsular India, not far from the west coast) seemed when compared to the sprawl of a bump in the lower Himalaya. Mountain features are universal but scale made every inch of this terrain engaging And that, included the hills surrounding our river camp. The Tons River though had to be viewed differently. For those fascinated by size, the enormity of the Brahmaputra’s waves would probably make a passage down that river the big mama of Indian rafting experiences. I haven’t been on that river, famous for its high volume of water and in river rafting, the size of swells it sported as a result. One river guide who worked there annually on a near 200 kilometer-stretch told me, “ if you can handle those swells you should be able to endure the trip.’’ The Tons was a pigmy compared to that colossus barreling down from Tibet, but it was a tricky pigmy.

River runners considered the Tons to be a technical river, which indicated requirement for skill. The river was shallow in parts, the waters were fast flowing and rocks abounded, to the extent that a prominent danger if thrown overboard was foot entrapment. You could get pinned down. It was also a chameleon of a river. For long in May, it maintained uniform temperament and the daily ritual of rafting grew to being predictable. The student groups came and went but the instructor stayed. Slowly, you came to know by heart the next curve in the river, the next rapid, the angle to hit it and even how the raft would behave as it cleared the section. Something was lost. Looking at the safety kayakers skimming by – a lone person in a tiny boat – I longed to taste their freedom.

River runners considered the Tons to be a technical river, which indicated requirement for skill. The river was shallow in parts, the waters were fast flowing and rocks abounded, to the extent that a prominent danger if thrown overboard was foot entrapment.

Then one day, the regular valley weather with its occasional light shower and heavy wind, befriended a larger system blowing in from far. There was heavy rain. The region’s main village was Mori. Located at a turn in the river, it was a cluster of buildings on either side of the road; eateries, provision stores, couple of saloons, fuel shop and a flour mill. It was a village settled into its own pace those two months, except when the inter-village cricket tournament started at Khunigad, few miles down the road. The game was a serious affair and Mori had a team in it. The area was clothed in pine forests, the pine trees here being quite tall with one late specimen having ranked as the tallest in Asia. When the downpour came, villagers counted the number of vehicles coming in from Netwar and Shimla and concluded that the Shimla road downstream was in trouble. They could sense it from the volume of vehicular traffic. They were right. That road was blocked by intermittent landslides, something we discovered the hard way after our small pick-up truck got bogged down in landslip-mud.

Waiting for a bulldozer to nudge our stuck vehicle free, I noticed the change to hill streams pouring into the Tons. Their waters were dark brown, caused by erosion and landslips up in the hills. That was not a good sign. With the normally clear stream water rendered murky, it would soon become imperative for hikers in these hills to either boil water or at the very least add chlorine tablets for safety. Working and hiking despite the weather, I was soon a candidate for antibiotics. What else can I say; it just got you – the damn bug. I am no botanist but from what I have heard, those pretty pine forests had much to do with soil erosion and probably, all that mud in stream and river waters. Although pine was dominant vegetation, environmentalists reminded you that pine was not indigenous to forests in these parts. Identified for its merit to make sleepers for railway tracks, the British had planted it purposefully. Growing aggressively, the pine found a new home in the Himalaya. It also extracted a price. Unlike a tropical rain forest canopy that split heavy rain drops into gentler ones, the tall pines had no such leaves to do the job. The drops landed like bullets on soft soil, which, having only a carpet of pine needles for cover was quite unprotected. The needles had another property – they made the soil too acidic for other trees to grow; trees that could have held back soil with their extensive roots. The result was alpine beauty and monsoon misery.

Meanwhile in Mori, the Tons had become an angry, muddy flow, crashing into rocks and attacking its banks. It stayed swollen for three quarters of that day spent freeing our vehicle. By evening, its original grey color returned. A week or so later, it rained heavily again. The river went through the same transformation with an added twist – a dense fog hugged its surface. It was a fog confined to the river, tracing its shape and course. The water was terribly cold. At camp, friends housed in tents close to the river shivered through the night. At least one came down with high fever. Rafting the usual stretch next morning was a surreal experience. You couldn’t see beyond fifteen feet, it was smoky white all around. The ice cold river slapped against the sides of the raft while dense fog settled on the water to a certain height, before the craggy cliffs on either side broke through and towered above. What made the ambience unique was the silent passage of the rafts, river guides straining to see the next raft and the way this scene appeared – like a mysterious boat-load of people emerging from the mist to make contact.

Rafting the usual stretch next morning was a surreal experience. You couldn’t see beyond fifteen feet, it was smoky white all around.

That afternoon, it rained again.

Next day, the lead river guide stopped me on the way to the usual rafting spot. He had brought a raft with him to try the river from quite upstream where the rapids had always been of a higher grade. “ I have never seen the river so furious before,’’ he said. Looking back, I am unsure if he actually meant that or whether that was bait dangled. The fish in me fell for it hook, line and sinker. For me, it was an adrenalin moment, the sort outdoor enthusiasts found difficult to ignore. As in climbing, where routes on rock had specific names and grades; so did rapids in a white water river. From the Tons, I recall names like `Let’s Go,’ `Give Me More’ and `Sticky Sarla.’ And like climbing routes which changed grades depending on prevailing route condition, so did these rapids. That meant, the river’s new found fury changed everything.

We had two safety kayakers this time. Aboard we were a team of five in the lone raft. The moment we hit the current, the gravity of the challenge crashed home in full measure. The river was fast, water volume was sizably up and the rapids’ grades had risen correspondingly. I noticed that the safety kayakers were also playing it by the book, avoiding direct confrontation with the rapids and staying secure by the side to keep a vigil on the raft’s progress though the heavy stuff. Usually with clients and students, outdoor instructors were a well mannered lot, role-modeling to the best of their ability. Now for the first time in weeks, expletives laced the commands on the raft, as we struggled to face the angry river with some dignified rafting. Save an impression of people watching high up from the bank I have no clear memory of anything beyond what immediately mattered – the guide, my raft, the river and the safety kayakers. That was my world. At the end of the run we were a happy, exhausted bunch. “ Please excuse the outburst and expletives. But somehow in India we work well only when the whip is cracked,’’ the guide said. Everyone smiled.

Weeks later, an Internet post on kayaking down the Rupin would correct my euphoria and bring me firmly down to ground level. The post highlighted the essence of river running in these parts. Paddling much upstream from where we had been the Canadian author – he too had been working at a rafting camp near Mori – assessed gradient at approximately 200 feet for every mile of the river and cited falls ranging from three feet to ten feet in the “ boulder filled creek.’’ If you are trying to imagine the mentioned parameters, add gushing river water to complete the scene with a kayak in it.

River guides added character to the Tons valley around Mori. Rafting being the main sport here, they upheld the outdoor tradition. Every smile was valued. Give one and you got one back with a wave thrown in for bonus. Stay long and you saw them on their daily outings. Mornings were usually busy, spent rafting with clients. Mini-trucks carrying rafts and guides plied the narrow roads. By evening, the small river running community, split into several camps along the river, paid visits to each other or went for a stroll to Mori. Hard work and long weeks in the outdoors had made them athletic. Needless to say, it was a matter of pride for me to acquire after many days, a similar spring in step and confidence in self. In all my extended visits to wilderness this eventual transition to a life of few wants – a trimmed lifestyle – was the best return on investment.

(…..TO BE CONTINUED)

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. He would like to thank Suma Rao for permitting the use of photos from her collection. A slightly abridged version of this article – ie parts one and two of the river story, combined – was published in Man’s World magazine.)

by

A RIVER STORY (PART TWO)

FROM TONS RIVER TO RUPIN PASS

In accordance with our plan, a day after the camp at Mori ended, we drove upstream to Netwar.

I saw more furious sections of the Tons. The water was slowly thinning in color from Mori’s brooding grey to a playful shade; its froth and foam, a clearer white. Yet its power was uncompromised. Memories of rafting the flooded Tons still fresh in mind I engaged myself with imagined visuals of negotiating these rapids.

The temple (Photo: Suma Rao)

The temple (Photo: Suma Rao)

Past Netwar, we picked up the Rupin and spent the next week, hiking upstream on its banks. Popularly called the Rupin Pass trek, the mood was set as soon as one left Netwar for Dhola. The half hour-drive on a narrow road was ethereal; the Rupin flowing furiously beside that uneven terrain of bouncy road, thick foliage all around and ample shadow. The road ended ahead of Dhola village, on land cloaked that rainy day in squishy, black mud giving it the look of an oil prospecting outpost. The imprints of vehicle tyres and peoples’ boots ran deep in the mud, each depression gathered water in the pouring rain. Curious faces peeped out from a nearby shop to inspect the visitors. You almost expected to see a John D. Rockefeller or at the very least, Daniel Day-Lewis as mineral prospector Daniel Plainview, brooding harsh capitalism in one of the decrepit shacks around.

Near Dhola and from Dhola to Jakha village, the river’s flow was taut. There was crisp freshness to its waters although the occasional human settlement stood mired in dirt. The route passed through the villages of Sewa and Jiskon. The former had a well stocked store selling everything from noodles to coffee and adjacent to it, a beautiful wooden temple.

It was about twenty years-old, square tower with pagoda for roof. It was a style that strangely left you thinking about Japanese and Korean design sensibilities with a dash of the Hindu tribal, thrown in for flavor. The village had hung several shields and trophies to its wall. “ We won them playing cricket,’’ the shopkeeper said. The trophies seemed gifted to the local deity in return for blessings to the village team. The first flood plains since leaving Dhola were also in these parts. The broad swathes of sand guarded the river’s deceptively obedient course.

You almost expected to see a John D. Rockefeller or at the very least, Daniel Day-Lewis as mineral prospector Daniel Plainview, brooding harsh capitalism in one of the decrepit shacks around.

On the trail; Rupin River below (Photo: Suma Rao)

On the trail; Rupin River below (Photo: Suma Rao)

Jakha, perched high on a cliff, was waking up to commerce from the tourist trail. The owner of its first lodge – a still incomplete wooden structure with a couple of rooms ready – was waiting at the entrance to the village with claims of the Rupin Pass trek being the toughest in the Himalaya and the consequent importance of rest. “ This is the toughest,’’ he said shaking his head; then for good measure, “ a group, which went ahead of you is already in trouble.’’ Strange were the compulsions of commerce – where there was money to be made, the trail was tough; where there was no money to be made, the trail was easy even if what was amiss was the trail itself! Amid all that hard sell, I was enamored by two unforgettable sights – the region’s lovely wooden houses and the view from the balcony of the lodge with the Rupin flowing way below in the valley. The buildings were made of wood from the Deodhar tree and according to the lodge owner villagers had free access to fallen trees in the surrounding forest. That restricted his material cost to transporting the wood and getting the structure built. The lodge was pretty, even amusing given the posters of Hindi film heroines inside the rooms. However, the architecture lacked the sophistication of similar woodwork from South India, where mathematically precise joints and wooden pegs characterize traditional wood work. Up here, it was hefty sections and big nails; hammer and go. The simplicity of the craft was evident in the carpenter’s tools, a glimpse of which we got later near Sangla. An old carpenter there worked with just three tools; a small saw, a heavy planer and a mini-axe to both chisel and hammer. Under prevailing law, land could not be sold to outsiders even if they loved the place and the houses. Perhaps it was best that way. Yet truth be told, sometimes I have wished for a small house somewhere up there, my window to the snows.

Camped beside the Rupin River (Photo: Suma Rao)

Camped beside the Rupin River (Photo: Suma Rao)

It reminded me of a conversation once had on the drive from Ranikhet to Kathgodam. “ If you like the hills so much, why don’t you marry a girl from here? You will get land and house,’’ the taxi driver had said. I laughed and inquired of his life. He had shifted with family to the plains. Wife and children were all down, only aged parents remained up there. “ What is there in these hills?’’ he had asked. For a brief while, I tried explaining what I liked about the mountains. Then I gave up, for it seemed lost on him. Besides my habit of attempting to articulate the best clarity within me always muddled my talk and confused others. Although born to the mountains the driver’s baggage in life seemed no different from the social baggage of the plains, mono-cropped so by marriage and family. To me, the compulsions of marriage appeared universal. In the backseat of the car, I had wondered – would I want to be in the mountains in such a fashion? No – was the answer I heard upstairs.

Beyond Jakha, you got the first of several snow bridges, structures that some crossed blindly but would do well to test for a route before walking over. Snow bridges were typically found on streams and gullies used by running water. Snow deposited there, lasted longer than snow in areas more exposed to sunshine. Thus below your feet, when on a snow bridge, would be flowing water. If it was minor stream, the consequences of bridge breaking were limited, save a wetting in ice cold water. If it was a major stream, the worry was more. If it was a river underneath, you had to be seriously careful when plotting a path on that slowly melting bridge with varying weaknesses and trajectories of slide, should you slip, in place.

Looking towards the Upper Rupin Valley (Photo: Suma Rao)

Looking towards the Upper Rupin Valley (Photo: Suma Rao)

Roughly a day’s hike from here, you reached the Upper Rupin Valley. It had the shape of an amphitheatre with a valley as exit to the lower hills, now behind us. At places, the Rupin had braked to a gentle flow with beaches alongside. You could see through the reflected blue of the sky, into the aquamarine water and read the surface texture of rocks way below. Where an eddy or rapid formed, the froth went past the best traditions of pure white to add a touch of blue. In the right season, it should be a very pretty place sporting colorful blossoms, agile small birds, the patient vulture and plenty of cattle let lose to graze and multiply. You may also see trekkers clients and their porters, the former on holiday, the latter with a 25 kilo-load on his back. Still upstream, the verdant landscape was traded for severe terrain as the altitude gained and the river disappeared again under snow bridges. Beyond the last snow bridge in the valley you saw the river gushing out from a rock face. And high above that was a magnificent waterfall. It was a cascade that presided over the entire valley and visible in the distance from the moment you stepped into the amphitheatre. From its lip, you could look down into the whole valley and see the Rupin’s course. At your feet, it was a thunderous spray leaping off the edge into thin air. For some distance back from the precipice, the river had carved a narrow channel through hard rock packing force into the waterfall.

Beyond Jakha, you got the first of several snow bridges, structures that some crossed blindly but would do well to test for a route before walking over.

Upper Rupin Valley; waterfall in the distance (Photo: Suma Rao)

Upper Rupin Valley; waterfall in the distance (Photo: Suma Rao)

Further up, the Rupin was a playful stream that merged into the snows. As we moved towards the snow clad Rupin Pass, we veered off the river’s banks. Eventually, a frozen pond just ahead of the steep climb to the pass was all that indicated a river’s presence somewhere in that world of snowfields. Nothing moved. Even the water was mostly ice. Where it trickled off into the proto stream that would eventually become the Rupin, you could perhaps put your ear close to the water and catch a faint gurgle. Else, the only sound around was you crunching snow underfoot as you walked; your strained breathing at altitude. I thought of the Tons way downstream and its many shades, the people along its banks. I also thought of how different this whole journey had been from the typical mountaineering expedition, wherein I would have been focused on reaching a summit and judged for performance; never been at peace. Being on an expedition was like going to office. This time, I had just ambled up into the mountains after work. Here I must pause and mention that our already small team split into two teams in the Rupin Valley, to respect peoples’ itineraries. Ravi (he would later become Director of the outdoor school, NOLS India) and I had more time on our hands. So we spent an extra couple of days camped out in the Rupin Valley and made our way slowly up to Rupin Pass. The other group led by Suma Rao, camped a day in the Rupin Valley and moved on well before we us, across the pass towards Sangla.

Shepherd from the Rupin Valley (Photo: Suma Rao)

Shepherd from the Rupin Valley (Photo: Suma Rao)

My introduction to the outdoors had been through a trekking club that hiked hard and then, through rock climbers and mountaineers who obsessed with objective. Hanging out with Ravi in the Rupin Valley was the first time I was in the outdoors without an objective. It was initially tough for my city bred ways demanding entry and exit from outdoors with claims and photos to prove the passage to folks back in the city. But which city can you cross over to for immediate relief from the Rupin Valley? And quite frankly speaking – what was that need for proof; the need to tell others that you did this and that and feel vindicated by their appreciation? Slowly I adjusted to sitting still and concerning myself with simple things like maintaining a tent well, getting a fire going and cooking; or just absorbing the stillness. That was my first real education in the outdoors despite several years already spent frequenting the outdoors. In the Rupin Valley, I learnt to let the outdoors in.

Eventually our leisurely amble through the valley would take us to Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh. There were three mountain ranges in Kinnaur – the Great Himalayan, Zanskar and Dhauladhar. We seemed to be on the third. Besides the fact that the Dhauladhar formed the divide between Kinnaur and Uttarakhand, the mountains we were on fitted the classic description of the Dhauladhar as steep, dark-colored and rocky albeit of modest height. The exact height of the Rupin Pass was a bit of a mystery. On the Internet, estimates ranged from 14,000 ft to 16,100 ft. At the top of the pass, panting from the ascent, none of that mattered. A place full of `chortens’ and prayer flags, we sat down for some coffee from the thermos. For the first time, I understood what a mountain pass was. In that icy world the steep ramp which we had come up on, was the sole weakness in the nearby mountain walls for a crossing. I wondered how long it must have taken to find it and how prized it must be for people on either side of the barrier as a link to each other. Yet for all its elusiveness and fragility it was a historically important pass, for years back the Kinnaur kingdom used to have influence in the villages we had come through. The Tons area had an ethnicity that reflected this cultural mix. Pinpointing details may be difficult because history in these mountains, wrapped up in legends and oral traditions, was very different in texture from the better recorded history of the plains. One had to navigate with a few assumptions in place as context.

Being on an expedition was like going to office. This time, I had just ambled up into the mountains after work. The Rupin Valley was the first time I was in the outdoors without an objective. In the Rupin Valley, I learnt to let the outdoors in.

While there were references to the hill tribes as possibly people who were driven out from the plains by invaders, the first formal attempt at recognizing their strengths and organizing them for governance or military assistance seemed to have occurred during the time of the Mauryan Empire. Chandragupta Maurya actively involved frontier tribes in his efforts to establish a vast rule. Until then, quite the same way as life feels isolated in each valley even today, the tribes were independent and separate. The Mauryans brought them under one scepter. Remote Kinnaur was also believed – only believed – to have been part of these tides in Himalayan history. After the Mauryans, the next big emperors were the Kushans, whose greatest ruler was Kanishka. During his time, Kashmir became part of empire. Inclusion of the mountainous regions into the ambit of North Indian empire-building continued through the Gupta Age and up to the demise of Harsha who ruled from Kanauj. This last great ruler of the plains died in 647 AD and with that the mountainous regions were said to have relapsed to their old feuding principalities. This was further fuelled by princes seeking to extend their territorial sway.

According to some accounts, the area between the Sutlej and the Baspa rivers all the way up to Manasarovar had been under the Thakkers even during the time of the Maurya and Gupta emperors. From among them, the Thakur of Kamru emerged the strongest, annexed the territory of other nearby chieftains in the days after Harsha, and laid the foundations of the state of Bushahr, to which Kinnaur belonged. Its comparative remoteness worked to Bushahr’s advantage, helping it to persevere with a policy of territorial expansion even as some of the other hill states succumbed to Mughal rule during the Medieval Ages. But remoteness in relation to one side could turn out to be proximity for others. There were references that claimed Kinnaur came under the influence of the Guge Kingdom of Tibet in the ninth and twelfth centuries. What that actually meant historians know (I am not one), although centuries later the region was known as Chini Tehsil, tehsil (also spelt tahsil) being a small administrative unit. In the nineteenth century, Bushahr came under attack from the Gurkhas of Nepal. The ruler fled leaving behind a rich treasury in Sarahan, which the raiders looted. While the Gurkha invasion – it advanced till the Kangra valley – was checked by the ruler of Kangra and Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab, in ensuing years the development served to grow British influence in these parts. As part of protecting the region, the British eventually defeated the Gurkha King, Amar Singh Thapa, in 1815. Kinnaur, known by then as Chini Tehsil, was merged to form a part of Mahasu district.

In 1951, Chini Tehsil etched its name into the history books when a group of Buddhist residents, eager to cast their ballot ahead of the winter snows, became the first people to vote in a general election in independent India. This has been mentioned in the book `India after Gandhi’ by the well known historian, Ramachandra Guha. In it the author noted, “ One place even Nehru didn’t get to was the tahsil of Chini in Himachal Pradesh. Here resided the first Indians to cast votes in a general election, a group of Buddhists. They voted on October 25, 1951, days before the winter snows shut their valleys from the world.’’ While there was a side story in a book on trekking in the Himalaya that said Chini was renamed Kalpa to wipe out any Chinese claims to it, the present day Kinnaur district was born from a reorganization of these border areas that happened around 1960. I don’t think I will ever meet anyone in my lifetime who can tell me convincingly when the Rupin Pass was discovered. But it sure seemed a pass that had seen footfalls from many lifetimes before me.

Suma's group near the Rupin Pass (Photo: Suma Rao)

Suma’s group near the Rupin Pass (Photo: Suma Rao)

As always, hot coffee in the outdoors felt really good. There was nothing that could adequately describe the spread of warmth from cup to your hands and from liquid to your insides. Our passage through the Rupin Valley had seen occasional rain; once, rather heavy downpour. A touch of warmth for the insides invigorated. In the mountains, nothing is same for long. Gradually, the pass began betraying signs of approaching cold. The sky turned cloudy cutting off sunshine.  In the outdoors, if it rained or snowed, you try not to be at some high, exposed point. The descent on snow to the other side was labored, I started slipping. While ascending the pass we had kicked steps in the snow with the toe box of our shoes, creating small ledges to stand on. Unfortunately, I had come to the Himalaya prepared for work in foothills. The trek over the Rupin Pass had been an addition born at river side camp in Mori. I was wearing light trekking shoes, which bent when kicking snow, not to mention – no grip underneath. There was no solid heel to my shoes either. Atop it, I was also bit tired. After one inelegant slide, I decided on a tender traverse with steps again. It took time. Snow field done, we passed through mixed terrain of snow and rocks, then finally, grass.

Way below in a ravine was a stream. It had been visible from the pass. Over that day and the next, it led to the Baspa River. The Baspa valley had several passes – Rupin Pass being one – linking it to Uttarakhand and two major ones that took the traveler to Tibet. The river’s fury near Sangla in Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh had me thinking yet again of the Tons. But downstream from there, the Baspa gathered mud from the ongoing Karcham-Wangtoo hydro-electricity project and three hours down the road from Sangla to Shimla, the river ground to a halt in the brown slush of a reservoir. It was an eyesore. True the Baspa flowed beyond, even recovering its complexion, but a dam to a river was like a choke to your neck. Seeing it I hoped fortunes stayed better for the Rupin and Tons on the other side of the mountains.

(CONCLUDED)

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. He would like to thank Suma Rao for permitting the use of photos from her collection. A slightly abridged version of this article – ie parts one and two of the river story, combined – was published in Man’s World magazine.)

by

REMEMBERING MADHAVAN UNCLE

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

The first time I heard of him was when my maternal grandmother decided that she must hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Having read about the great German composer, she wanted to hear his famous composition.

We lived in Thiruvananthapuram, the southernmost city of Kerala, a state in South India. It was a small place, and as state capital, its predominant feel was one of politics. Where in such a town would you locate Beethoven and hear his music in a manner that did justice to its orchestral splendour? My mother’s elder brother then took my grandmother to Madhavan Nair, a relative who hailed from the same native place near Kochi as we did. He owned a fine music system and had diligently assembled over time a good collection of music spanning Indian classical to western classical and much else in between.  My grandmother returned from the visit, a thrilled person. I wasn’t let in on this story. But I figured out that music was involved.

Curious, I asked my father, “ who is Madhavan Nair?’’

His reply was evasive and it was for a valid reason. Around that time, an obsession to hear music and hear it loud and clear, had taken root in me. The financial strain it potentially indicated was clear. We were a very middle class family with a youngster praying for Technics, Pioneer, Denon and now beginning to dangerously say, Nakamichi and NAD. I drooled over product advertisements. Those were the heydays of people from Kerala working in the Middle East. Most people returning on vacation brought a two-in-one, a boom-box. At the airport with boom-box in hand was both hallmark of Gulf-returnee and new found prosperity. For many, it was the sign of prosperity that mattered. I wanted the boom-box for what it actually was. On visits to receive relatives at the city airport I became notorious for missing people and seeing only the two-in-ones being carried home from Gulf countries. Not surprisingly, my father was wary of having me in any place with amplifiers at hand. It was therefore some months before I coaxed him to take me to Madhavan uncle’s house.

Those were the days of the LP record and the audio cassette. I gazed respectfully at his music system, which included a turntable with stroboscope, tape decks with restless needles in brightly lit dials, pre-amp and power-amp, graphic equalizer and deceptive book shelf speakers that could rock a room. The whole thing sat like a living, breathing entity, pensive brain in one place and powerful impact in another, all controlled by impressive knobs adjusted to precision. For me, newly arrived to the world of music with a National Panasonic mono two-in-one  and a couple of tapes of disco music (plus some more periodically borrowed from a supportive neighbour) this was stunning, heavy duty machinery.   

Madhavan Nair (Photo: courtesy his family)

Madhavan Nair (Photo: courtesy his family)

Madhavan uncle was a small, soft spoken person who worked at the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram. Away from work, he was a dedicated collector of music. He was also a good artist. In his free time he drew illustrations for other people’s short stories, published in a regional magazine. Like any music collector, he counted on friends, relatives, contacts and sometimes travellers passing through, to access new albums. On the occasions when he had to make a copy for his private collection, he would create his own cover design for the cassette and note down album details in a crisp, thin handwriting. It was all stored carefully and catalogued. An interaction with the man was a focused experience characterized by insight into music systems and genuine respect for all kinds of music. Slowly my father allowed repeated visits. I began to explore music as a collection of different genres. Back at home the old two-in-one was replaced by a car stereo, which we modified to play indoors. Then, we bought a proper Sonodyne music system, a princely investment those days. On my shelf, cassettes sporting Madhavan uncle’s crisp handwriting gradually grew in number.

As I moved from school to college, my pursuit of music became more serious. I discovered my tastes – classic rock, blues, jazz, country, folk, western classical and Hindustani classical. The occasional conversation with Madhavan uncle went beyond musician and band, to the quality of sound. He would mention about a newly acquired album, play it enthusiastically and we would concur on its elegance with a shake of the head or a short laugh. And then, just as you heard the most wonderful quality of sound, he would softly reprimand a rubber belt or connecting chord for the slightest variation audible to his ears, his ears only. A great relief you felt was the ability to approach music – any music – as such, without fear of being judged. With Madhavan uncle, you could sample Jethro Tull, Keith Jarret, Bach and Ustad Bismillah Khan in one visit without ever weighing one genre against the other. I guess that’s because he was also an audiophile. He may have had his personal preferences. What didn’t qualify for that, he probably approached it as sound that still merited being heard as perfectly as possible. Once in a while, I also met others who wished for good music and had come to know Madhavan uncle as a result. All our paths crossed at his house, which was a regular pilgrimage. The people who gathered around him became many things in life; from joining the regular army of Keralites working abroad to finding a career in custom built audio systems to – this I heard of one person – being an acoustic engineer on tour with a major American rock band. It was a small group of people and if I may say, to merely state an impression I had of them and not to indulge vanity one bit – they were seekers. My grandmother, who in her old age, sought to hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, was also probably one. We just failed to think of her so.

At present with the world getting whatever it wants effortlessly, seeking has increasingly become a lost art and its after-effect on person, a lost human quality. Seeking happened in a context of deprivation. Maybe it still can, as alternative to instant gratification; seeking for the heck of knowing life. Back then, you were plain not getting what you wanted – that was the state of affairs in the 1980s and early 1990s (not to mention – certainly the years before that), when many of the creative and technological offerings of the world reached Thiruvananthapuram through the bureaucracy of India’s protected economy. If you wanted more, you had to innovate and stretch. You requested people going abroad to get some music. News of any such album recently landed spread fast through the grapevine. For obvious reasons, a friend with a twin deck tape recorder was a very valued friend. My generation was born in the late 1960s. Its ear for music came alive in the 1970s. Many journeyed back to visit Elvis and Woodstock. Some ran ahead for a taste of synthesizer music. Seekers were thus an involved lot. And critically, because they had to actively seek, they valued what they found. Seeking made you stretch, the stretch provided journey, the journey was an education. People like Madhavan uncle, represented that trait. He was among early customers of the now familiar configuration of speakers – two satellite units and a separate base unit; he was also among early birds in town to upgrade that to Bose speakers. I remember the excitement this transition generated.      

The cassettes, the handwriting (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

The cassettes, the handwriting (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Several non-music factors also supported the seeking mentality. Around the late 1980s, if I remember right, both the local engineering and medical colleges made it to the last stages of Siddharth Basu’s iconic quiz competition on national television. While the music-crazy were anyway searching deep to know and access bands, this new found legitimacy by TV to being bizarrely informed provided value to maintaining a wider world view. It broad based the curiosity to know.  A reasonably interested college student bothered to be aware of musicians and actors not just from the state but also elsewhere. At the very least he / she tried. Looking back I sometimes feel amazed at what all my music loving friends in Thiruvananthapuram dug up – Buffalo Springfield, Travelling Wilburys, The Yardbirds, Grateful Dead, Traffic, Spencer Davis Group, Cream, Wishbone Ash, Emerson Lake & Palmer; these were besides usual suspects Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Def Leppard, Jethro Tull, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Queen, Rolling Stones, Beatles and so many others. You lived in a small town. But you knew that something much bigger lived outside. Later, some of these efforts would seem the first dots joined of small miraculous journeys to come.

Once, at PAICO, one of only two or three shops in Thiruvananthapuram that sold rock music in my college days, I was sufficiently intrigued by the art work on a cassette cover to buy the album of an artiste I knew nothing of. I think the album was,`The Extremist.’ It was fantastic to hear. The album travelled around in my small circle of friends. At the local YMCA, I recall discussing Joe Satriani’s style with Ramesh, a wonderful creative person who was then a student of psychology. Over two decades later, I would hear Satriani play in Mumbai and meet him to collect his autograph. Other friends, seriously into music and more knowledgeable than me on the subject, would similarly wait in queue to hear a host of artistes from Ian Anderson to Roger Waters and Mark Knopfler, perform in India. Many of these pilgrims knew Madhavan uncle for the collection he built up, the effort he put into cataloguing it, the equipment he invested in to hear it well and his down to earth attitude despite it all. I may still have albums that he copied and gave me. But the gift went beyond album to empathy for music. Anybody can secure albums. Very few pass on an interest in music by personal example. He did.       

Sometime in the 1990s, Thiruvananthapuram stopped looking beyond its shores. The satellite television age was kicking in and with it, a strident patronage of vernacular tastes to gain eyeballs. Regional channels aggressively promoted local programming. This was expected. But it changed the texture of life for seekers. Where there was no television till the 1980s, you now had a basket of channels. It meant world at your doorstep discounting that much the need to seek. It also prompted the rise of a popular self wrapped local culture. As these changes occurred, foreign music’s cassettes were giving way to imported CDs that were expensive. It gradually eroded shelf space for foreign music. Soon I was running into film songs, parody songs and loads of religious music on shop racks in the city. I wondered if greying society and the remittance economy becoming Kerala’s overwhelming reality with its accompanying baggage of incomplete households had anything to do with the trends. Or was it the effect of big media engineering a navel gazing market of the people at hand? Kerala felt strange – gold, weddings, ethnicity, fervent prayers to God, rituals and a peculiar conservatism. An era of curiosity was drawing to a close.

Madhavan Nair (Image: courtesy his family)

Madhavan Nair (Image: courtesy his family)

My last meeting with Madhavan uncle was special. I introduced him to a couple of blues musicians that he hadn’t come across before. It was the first time I could give something back for all the music he had brought to my life. Blues particularly, was something he introduced me to. Thanks to heavy duty marketing, the Madonnas and Michael Jacksons of the world get everywhere. But something off the mainstream, like blues? And that too, not just Muddy Waters, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton but others like Robert Cray, Tinsley Ellis, Son Seals, Elvin Bishop, Luther Allison, Otis Rush and so on. Had it not been for music collectors like Madhavan uncle all this would have been difficult to access in Thiruvananthapuram. But it didn’t take long for him to turn trifle philosophical and question the relevance in having a wide taste in music when all around insularity had become virtuous. Room was shrinking for those who appreciated the wider world. I remember him saying that despondently, the last time I met him. Sometime in 2007, I toyed with the idea of calling him up on the phone. It inexplicably persisted in my head till I finally told myself that I will meet him when I went home from Mumbai, where I worked and lived. I didn’t do that early enough.

One day, I got a call from home – he was no more. In all those years that I knew him, I never asked Madhavan uncle how he began collecting music. I only know how knowing him, changed world by music for those like me. And, I also remember those times.

In my life, I have met several people cast as seekers in several subjects. In music, some intimidated me by their ability to reel off statistics about bands and their history, some intimidated by their vast collection of music measured by external hard disk-space, some intimidated by the concerts they attended overseas, for some it was what device you heard music on – was it latest iPod or some other gadget? Much of this seemed music as armour; another one of the weapons stockpiled for self importance and distinction in life. Very few people lived the simple delight in hearing wonderful music of any type reproduced well by a decent music system – which was what Madhavan Nair seemed all about. Meeting him in his living room said all that has to be told. The music system would be playing something softly, yet so clearly that it felt like gentle rain. Madhavan uncle would be dressed in simple clothes – usually the white dhoti of the Keralite householder worn with a shirt or T-shirt. I would inquire of new additions to his music library. The brief conversation about music – including on genres originating overseas – was always in Malayalam, the local language. He had all the stuff that people stocked in their armoury of music with none of the airs.   

I miss that age of seeking gone by.     

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)    

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CAN’T SEE THE ELEPHANT

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Call it market or future workforce there is no escaping the fundamental truth that large population challenges a country.

India’s current population is probably on par or close to what the world’s population was at the start of the 20th century.  Dwell on it. Such imagination is what we refuse to do amid our chalta hai (its’ okay) ways. Our numbers seriously impact. The country’s economic problems, described as math, may seem lifeless digits. But they dovetail to human want. With high population in place, even self reliance as solution for import-dependence, resembles a fig leaf for modesty because there are still fixed costs like steep real estate prices to face. Add to it, high salaries as solution to address rising living costs with its resultant inflationary impact down the line. It is a vicious circle. And, this is without mentioning the known decay caused by excess numbers – poverty, malnutrition, unequal access to health care, unhygienic living conditions etc. Perhaps the argument is – once the economy revs up, India will be superpower thanks to its workforce and market.

Truth is – population is the elephant we don’t wish to see.

Population as market and workforce, matters for trillion dollar GDP. That in turn, contributes to everyone’s income. It is all correct. But try imagining from the perspective of quality of life. We have delayed the good life by a long margin by producing so many people. It will take years for India’s per capita income to rise significantly.  Most likely, we will have terrible wealth-inequality. It is already visible. Other pitfalls abound. Not long ago, a visiting German delegation expressed concern about the quality of available manpower. Indian industry too has voiced worry on the quality of skills training. Wilder stories exist on the periphery of our future workforce.

India’s current population is probably on par or close to what the world’s population was at the start of the 20th century.  Our numbers seriously impact.

High population affects quality of human upbringing. Few days after the rupee hit 68 triggering a sense of outrage for the way it left us monetarily weak, many felt shocked by the punishment awarded to the juvenile involved in the infamous Delhi gang rape case. This article is not about that case. But a juvenile involved in such degree of brutality should worry us. Those arrested in the recent Mumbai gang rape are youth. Similarly, who are those people ready to drop everything and fight for religion, culture and language? They appear off and on in photos of mobs wielding sticks and swords. Ever thought if belligerence rises with cheap availability of directionless youth? There are solid sociological concerns in our giant population. As rape cases increased in number, several writers commented on the outmoded mindset of the Indian male.

Population’s impact is the sum of human numbers and human behaviour influenced by the ecosystem of high numbers. Indian life is a rat race because of this. Its external manifestation is disorder and administrative systems crippled by overload. Corruption oils the wheels, extracts movement. Anna Hazare’s campaign brought corruption to focus. But the elephant went unseen. We allege external hand when capital runs away. Arithmetically, even a portion of 1.2 billion people living and working like the developed world, would suffice to enthuse investment and stock market. Market indices and economic indices capture delivered value; they don’t show ground reality. Fact is – when it comes to the act of investing, Indians themselves seek avenues that aren’t as suffocating as Indian existence. What else is states` rolling out the red carpet for industry’? Our own companies demand special treatment. We know the political and operational gridlock by human numbers. Knowing it well, we prize life overseas more than life at home. What can economic reform mean when no government will enshrine the need to contain population as part of overall strategy? At least mention the subject periodically, so that the citizenry is aware of how much they are party to a mess that denies India quality?

Population’s impact is the sum of human numbers and human behaviour influenced by the ecosystem of high numbers. As human numbers rise quality of life crumbles.

Population is not simply more people born. Despite the 20th century being the bloodiest century in recorded history, global population rose seven times in the last one hundred years because new life was born and thanks to advancements in medicine, the new survived and the old survived longer. Thus the old are also around in India. In various fields, particularly politics, they have voice. Imagining to their convenience, they nudge country to life by old idiom. Ample availability of young people willing to latch on to anything for direction provides followers. But is the perspective of 2013BC valid for 2013AD? Impractical and irrelevant aspects of the old way of life must fade. But they don’t. Old school actors like religion and feudalism periodically elicit toll through riots. Caste thrives. Rituals proliferate. Wealth and happiness are measured by property, vehicles, money and children.  There are other examples too. Sample patriotism – it is a highly misunderstood subject in India. Its most popular interpretation imitates old fashioned fort with cannons mounted on walls and soldiers ready to die. Anything less, you are not patriot enough. You plant trees for a country losing trees – that isn’t enough. You take public transport to save oil for the nation – that isn’t enough. You do your job sincerely to contribute to nation’s reputation in quality – that isn’t enough. You teach those who can’t afford school – that isn’t enough. You are not corrupt and thus adding to nation’s efficiency – that isn’t enough. For patriotism to be felt blood must be spilled; wars must be fought. Only that image satisfies. Adding to it, there is no problem if the same self proclaimed patriots bring administration to a halt or destroy public property through violent strikes, fights around religion, language and such. From where and how does such behaviour find social approval?

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Deep within heavily populated country, insecurity flourishes. Don’t think so? Then, what’s gold consumption by Indians all about? Put differently – we are forever insuring against insecurity. Why? What is our fear? What keeps compounding it? I have always suspected it relates to the nature and structure of our families. A family is never without worry about potential insecurity although being in family gives you sense of security. As rat race by population intensifies, so does the family’s perception of insecurity in the environment and its urge to move ahead at any cost. In the analogy of country as fort with cannons, family is the primary fort. The rich and well-connected get away with anything. The middle class, lacking such resources, battles differently. In big Indian cities, organized urban violence has approval traceable to families. That’s how violence became acceptable as a brand of urban politics. Violence in the name of religion and caste are all kept alive by families. It should highlight how insecure families have become thanks to exactly what they contribute to – high population. We consistently avoid this point. I say it not to load the dice in favour of lone rangers although I firmly believe that unless one realizes one’s vulnerability by standing alone, you won’t fathom the meaning of human respect, the need for it and the genuine merit in social values. Some Indian values are definitely good. Problem is – we are inheriting it without knowing why they exist because the family-trap is all about inheriting without the effort of knowing why. I merely wish to point out in this habitually marrying land, that neither family nor its larger groupings like community are implicitly states of grace. They edit out many crucial aspects of existence, particularly the individual as basic unit. They also do wrong. Remember honour killings, hit-and-run cases etc where family-imagination was either cause for crime or family ended up shielding the offender? In India’s instance, both family and community is also network of similar interests. Despite veneer of corporate governance on the surface, obfuscation of professionalism by family and community has often been a problem at Indian businesses. Long given to family, politics has become rule by dynasty. So what’s unquestionably great about family? In India, our family spaces badly need revision by new thinking.

As rat race by population intensifies, so does the urge with families to move ahead at any cost.

Thanks to giant population, we are the world’s biggest democracy. Our chosen method of administration requires plenty of efficient dialogue. India is chaotic in dialogue all the way up to state assemblies and Parliament, the very institutions expected to be examples of debate and governance for the rest. Why does dialogue fail? One reason has to be India’s caste system of several centuries that made the idea of inclusiveness alien despite our scriptures talking of world as family. The caste system was proactively attacked only after independence and adoption of modern constitution. The India from 1947 till now, is yet a dot on Indian history. Another reason could be that against the expanse of India’s history, its experience of inclusive, democratic administration is limited. We have a tradition of great minds and great debaters. But did they flourish in an inclusive environment? The larger question therefore is – how often in the past were we genuinely inclusive of us, all by ourselves, the way we have been forced to sit together and govern since 1947? I am not an expert on history. But it appears to me that our past trained us little for it; we are treading new ground. This traditional lack of inclusiveness is a huge handicap when administering 1.2 billion souls hailing from diverse backdrops. As yet, our instincts track old ways. The natural tendency of any exploded population averse to imagining differently and used only to old school feudalism will be to evolve smaller fiefdoms of the familiar old. It delivers power and money, which contemporary society by its conduct, showcases as essential. It also deepens known problems through reductionist models of the old – for example, splitting into more states. Better administration probably requires more states in India. Yet such models mean nothing if they are not accompanied by changed mindset for administrator. Will an administrator with changed mindset be winner or loser to the imagination of rat race by 1.2 billion? Is leadership perennial indulgence of community or does it include selling harder truths – like noticing that elephant to begin with?

Within two decades, India will be the world’s most populous country.

In early 2013, my cousin and I were trekking in the Himalaya, when at a village en route we met a young American woman, part of a group of foreign college students on a month long-hike in India’s wilderness. She said she was enjoying the experience but then added rather puzzled, “ you know, this is supposed to be wilderness. We are forty kilometres away from the nearest road. Yet there isn’t a day that went by when I didn’t meet people!’’  Population and its ways envelop us. Our challenges are not with this land, which provided for us for years and still yields what it does. Our problems are with what has replaced geography – ourselves; the equations between us, what all we do. Increasingly how well we manage this social space is what decides success. We are in the age of society as soil; the age of the social farmer, for the real soil is part of a fading planet overrun by people. It is also what leaves us exhausted and frustrated. On the one hand, people adept at self promotion and social networking rise to the fore. On the other hand, plenty of genuine human talent is wasted for want of networking skills. And all the time in the background, every family fueled by its protective parents and grandparents insist that their wards are the next Einstein, Bill Gates or greatest medical doctor alive.  There’s nothing we can do except suffer this noisy gridlock. It would be a tremendous loss if dysfunctional by population, we are forced to trade democracy for something more directive. To avoid it, we must comprehend what happened to us by noticing the most fundamental flaw in which everyone is invested – high population. We must notice our social organization also and inquire if it suits environment drastically altered by high population. This need is gathering urgency.

We must comprehend what happened to us by noticing the most fundamental flaw in which everyone is invested – high population. We must notice our social organization also and inquire if it suits environment drastically altered by high population. This need is gathering urgency.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)

 

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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/)