Brotherly bonhomie in Ladakh

 Two brothers can make a very useful, helpful and convenient travelling pair. There are limits drawn which avoid things from taking an ugly shape. In addition, the assurance that they will be going to the same house again provides an openness and vast space for both the good and bad to unfold naturally. There are no protocols to follow, no rules of friendship to abide by to keep things going. You are at your natural self. You don’t have an image to keep that fits in the mold of friendship. No wonder, travelling becomes very enjoyable in such a scenario. To cash all the above benefits, me and my brother usually go out on trips a few times every year. He is younger to me and the Indian tradition of seniority and respect falling in the kitty of the elder brother makes it advantageous for me. This time we are bound for Ladakh.

We can say that earth is completely owned by the humans by now. The rest, everything from the animals, birds, reptiles, insects, trees, plants, stones and even plain dust seem to be the mere means to the question of how far the humans can stretch, elongate and further their desires. We have been plainly greedy; not ingenious in the least.

We are too crowded in mind, body and soul. When it becomes unbearable, and if we can afford it in terms of time and money, we set out to the hills to feel less loaded and burdened among open hill forests. Earth is covered with human-made concrete megaliths in the plains. However, the stamp of mankind shows a gradual dilution from the congested lanes of old Delhi to the hill forests. The hill forests in turn give the baton to alpine meadows and grasses. The alpine grasses then change to barren waste and cold desert adorned with snow-covered peaks.

Ladakh is a beautiful empty vessel where one can dive into the vast wilderness stretched from horizon to horizon. The bus from Delhi to Leh is making a big buzz on the social media. It starts from Delhi at noontime, reaches Keylong in the wee hours and after a few hours halt proceeds to Leh, plying on the toughest and highest motorable passes to reach Leh by nine at night if everything stays normal in terms of weather and roads.

There are enough challenging and exciting jolts on the road journey from Keylong to Leh, so we avoid this first phase of the journey by the HRTC bus from Delhi and board a luxury Volvo bus to reach Keylong. From there onwards one doesn’t have an option apart from the HRTC Delhi-Leh bus.

The plains are burning in the June heat as we board the Volvo bus to Manali. There is T20 cricket final between India and South Africa played in the Caribbean islands. A group of youngsters is watching live streaming of the match on some OTT platform. There are expert comments, gesticulations, guffaws of agony, ecstasy, hoos and haas. We Indians have lots of cricketing sense at least. All this overshadows Sidhu’s hyperbolic, rhetorical commentary in the stadium. The youngsters are engaged in such a dissecting analysis of each ball, each run, each moment that it feels like one is watching the match live. It was a very exciting match. The entire bus full of tension. When India won the match, one chap shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Bharat Mata ki jai!’ We had to rally behind his chorus in our varying capacities to shout.

We reach Manali in early morning and immediately walk to catch a bus to Keylong. Once you come out of the Atal tunnel (9 km long) cutting across the guts of a mammoth wall of mountain, thus avoiding the difficult Rohtang pass, you arrive in a new geological structure of mountains. The trees slowly vanish as you move along the torrential stream of Chenab river. Alpine meadows and wild flowers try to cover the hard, bare craggy base of the mountains. Rosa webbiana (Himalayan wild rose) is a beautiful sight by the road. It’s a lovely wild flower that blooms in the grassy meadows on craggy slopes. Yellow oriental hawk weed adorns the alpine grass trying to cover the stony nudity. From Keylong to Leh, mother nature slowly opens to stony nudity, innocence, purity and emptiness.

We reach Keylong at noon after the nightlong journey and decide to stay at the quaint peaceful town for a day and then catch the early morning bus that arrives from Delhi.

Little scenic Keylong is situated in the valley of Bhaga river that roars past to meet Chenab river down the stream. Beautiful snowy peaks overlook the small town. Two of these are quite popular: Lady of Keylong peak (6016 m) and the Saptarishi peaks. There are many myths and legends linked to these peaks.

Lady of Keylong peak was earlier called ‘Churail’ by the locals. The Europeans gave it a nicer name and now it’s a popular trekking point in the area. It is the bare face of a cliff that looks like a hill woman holding a scythe and a baby tied to her back against the background of pristine white ice sheet of the glacier around it. I’m glad that now she is called the Lady of Keylong, not Churail. She inspires many trekkers to take the challenge to go and look at her from close quarters.

The Saptarishi peaks at Keylong are a series of seven beautiful peaks on the top of a high ridge. The name Saptarishi connotes seven sages (Marichi, Atri, Angira, Pulaha, Kratu, Pulastya and Vasishtha) in Hindu cosmology.

The small budget hotel, Khandorling Guest House, gives a heartening view of pastures on the lower slopes and glaciers in the upper reaches. I can see a little monastery on the opposite hill. Fluffs of snow-white clouds hang languidly in the pristine blue sky. The wind plays with the prayer flags. The Buddhists believe that as the flags move in the wind, they spread the message of love and peace for the entire world. Bhaga river is audible with its rigorous sound in the valley below. From the terrace I can have the entire view of the lazily sprawled out bus station. I inhale big breaths of unruffled peace.

There are a few eateries. Lama dhaba is run by an old gracious Tibetan Buddhist lady. I mention HH Dalai Lama and tell her that I have been lucky to meet him and hold his hand and put it to my forehead. Immediately her eyes get filled with tears of reverence. I tell her that His hand feels boneless on touch, almost like a newborn’s soft contact, the touch of divinity. She listens to it like she is listening to hymns in a monastery. He is their God King. Her father came to India with Him and later settled in Nepal. Making the ends meet is very tough, she says. The monthly rent for the shop is 8,000 rupees per month.

Her neighboring outlets are named Kathmandu dhaba and Sherpa dhaba. Mostly women run these tiny food establishments. These little hotels and restaurants offer tea, coffee, omelets, maggi, noodles, cold drinks, cigarettes, namkeen, chips, rotis, rajma chawal. The family stays in a part of the same block. The eating points are mostly run by the Nepalese and the Tibetans. The hotels are owned by the locals. Most of them go to Manali during the snowbound months of winter and return in summer. The menfolk work as casual laborers, but mostly the women pull the domestic economic cart.

As I have mentioned, there is just one bus from Keylong to Leh, the Delhi-Leh Himachal roadways bus that has an early morning halt here before moving onto the final destination in the land of mountain passes. Most of it is full with tourists from Delhi itself. At Keylong the bus depot changes and a smaller bus takes over for the further journey on treacherous roads cutting across high Himalayas. At Keylong about two dozen tourists have to fight for three-four odd seats available at this point. If the seats aren’t available, many still decide to board the bus and travel standing in the aisle. We talk to the driver who has driven the bus from Leh. He is a decent chap and proves a nice Himachali host to we plainsmen. We compliment him on his good nature. Then we share our problem with him. He gives his word that he will try his level best to get us seats the next day. Pay some sincere compliments to someone and he or she will always reciprocate. We have a chance to get seats in the early morning bus next day. Till then Keylong has enough peace to cordially shower upon us.

We go to the old Buddhist woman’s small eatery for dinner and not feeling hungry ask for maggi. She makes a face. ‘Maggi for dinner! That’s not healthy,’ she says. If you talk nicely and give respect to people, you create a human touch. She is concerned about the quality of our food. So Mrs. Lama convinces us to eat a proper dinner and lovingly makes rotis and sabzi like a mother. If food is served with joy, it feels very fulfilling. The appetite returns and we eat to our full without even realizing it.

After the nice dinner as we lie down to sleep, Bhaga river’s gurgling murmurs sing a lullaby to get us into the folds of a restful sleep. Early next morning, the driver we talked to yesterday remembers us and gets us seats among the rush of many claimants for the few odd seats. The bus moves with an excited load of the plainsmen looking forward to enjoy the road trip across the highest motorable mountain passes, glacial lakes, deep valleys and scores of snowy dazzlement. There are mesmerizing landscapes of Jispa and Sarchu leading to Nakka La.

The most adventurous and tough stretch is called Gata loops at 16,800 feet. There are creepy, spooky stories about the treacherous series of these hairpin bends going one after the other. Gata loops stretch for about 10 km, involving 21 hairpin bends leading to Nakka La. A myth says that the dangerously loopy stretch is haunted by a spirit. They say a man in shawl appears suddenly asking for cigarettes or water thus scaring the drivers. So the people pay a respectful tribute to the spirit to pass safely to the other side by offering bottles of mineral water and cigarette packets. You have this big pile of offerings to the spirit on the nineteenth bend. There is a small stone structure built here and it contains a human skull in it.

The story of the spirit of Gata loops is based on an event happening a few decades back. Those were the days when there was no Atal Tunnel to provide year-around passage for traffic to this side of Rohtang La pass. The narrow, rugged road had to take Rohtang La pass, which was snowbound for many months in a year. A truck driver and his helper started from Manali almost on the date when the road was being closed for the winter months. So probably they were the only vehicle on the road from Manali to Leh. The snow was already making it difficult at many stretches. Their truck gave in at Gata loops. There was no help and no mobile phones to contact anyone during those days. In order to seek help, the driver walked back, leaving the helper with the truck. He reached a human habitation about 40-50 km down the road. But before he could start back on the journey with men and material for help, there were more landslides and snowfall preventing them from moving ahead. The poor helper died after two or three days. So the people say his spirit sometimes appears by the side of a vehicle asking for beedis or water.  

The bus ride is adventurous at many levels: leading to lovely rich barrenness with its sandy hills, splendid golden plains, yaks, sheep, goats and some rare nomadic tent that one may come across. The fabulous, aloof, unadorned, beautiful face of mother nature. Travelling on the rugged road you feel like a child running into the open arms of freely playing childhood. As the bus struggled on the top of mountains, slowly chugging ahead, some passengers faced breathing problems born of mountain sickness. But thankfully all the plainsmen reached to the other side with reasonable safety.

As the bus moves to Leh, at full speed through the plains leading to the capital, one feels freedom and openness in the sandy plains spread on both sides of the road. It feels like there are no boundaries. One feels like flying. It seems like an earthly version of cosmic freedom. These are Moore plains, a plateau spread out in brown majesty along the last phase of the Manali-Leh highway. In Tibetan it means a plain where the wild ass doesn’t find water. It covers an amazing 40 km stretch between Pang and Leh. Nomadic population has shrunk dramatically. But still you can spot some nomadic settlement with their tents, sheep, goats and yaks in enclosures. The yaks are becoming fewer and fewer. Almost all individual nomadic families have a pick-up truck parked by their tent-side. I could spot just one yak during the journey. Ladakh without the yaks doesn’t sound fitting. But the camps by the smooth road, even with their pick-up trucks, still carry enough touristy charisma for the visitors. To provide some more lease to my hopes of the survival of the wildlife, I was lucky to see some herds of wild ass and bhralls on the craggy slopes by the road.

The average elevation of the Moore plains is about 4800 m. Some portions along Lungpa river create stunning sand and rock formations. After the challenges of the previous mountain pass (Tanglang pass), the bikers love this stretch as they speed at a high speed towards Leh. If you are lucky you can see a little sand tornado travelling across the road or along the sides. It’s arid, rocky, scenic. The road is smooth here and it feels like your back is getting a massage after the jolts of unpaved, uneven roads over the mountain passes.

Leh feels congested and very hot. The effects of tourists and climate change obviously. A ribbon of ancient culture tightly squeezed by the commercial forces trying to encash the old; to mint new gold. Bare, craggy hills surrounding the small houses sprawled with a strange mixture of the old and the new, but still somehow feeling on the ancient side. The Indus river gives a small chance to plant life in the valley. Poplars and willows stand out like green brushstrokes on the brown, barren canvas. The ornate, artistic Buddhist architecture is like a soft whisper, a prayer, an artistic muse. The sound and sights of Buddhist rituals, mystique of murals, monastic gateways, intriguing carvings, rich forte of ritualistic practices in monasteries, souvenir shops, prayer wheels, prayer flags—all fluttering for life among barren stones.

Enter a monastery and you are enveloped in a world infused with an intermixing of spirituality and artistry. You feel like stones have as vibrant a heart as the lush green trees. Prayer flags fluttering in the evening breeze and the message of love and peace floating up, rising in the air and kiss the golden yellow on the tops of brown hills. Small white lime-washed houses having multi-paneled glass windows look at you with unhurried demeanor. Clouds hung lazily in the azure blue. Touristy hustle and bustle in the bazaars. Leh is the base camp for the wanderlust tourists seeking the higher meaning of life among the unparalleled landscapes of Ladakh. There is no destination, you move and make a fresh path; a lively destination, the journey itself.

Before you take more arduous journeys across the length and breadth of this amazing landmass, it’s advisable to stay at Leh and enjoy the local places for at least a couple of days. We do the same and visit the nearby places in Leh.

The shanti stupa is a white-domed, two-level stupa on a hilltop. Built by a Japanese, Bhikshu Gyomyo Nakamura, in 1991, it holds the Buddha’s relics, serving as the foundations of the spiritual heritage of Buddhism, at its base which were enshrined by HH Dalai Lama. The place is adorned with panoramic surroundings. Ladakhi Buddhists offered voluntary labor and the Japanese Buddhists provided money and technical knowhow to build this monument of peace. Like most of the Buddhist monuments, it’s built to promote world peace and harmony. Beautiful golden Buddha image stands as a spiritual patron. Around the dome you have relief pictures of auspicious symbols, dharmachakra (turning the wheel of dharma), Buddha’s birth and death events, Buddha defeating the devils and many meditating Buddha mudras.

Leh palace is a lovely legacy set in mud, stone and poplar and willow wood. The palace overlooks Leh from the top of the Namgyal hill. It was built by Sengge Namgyal around 1600 AD. It has nine floors. The upper floors housed the royal family and the lower floors served for the soldiers apart from providing space for stables and stores. There are beautiful Tibetan thanka paintings and colorful murals made of crushed gems and stones. The murals depict sacred Buddhist themes, symbols and mythical deities. One has to have patience to get a real sense of the marvelously intricate details of these paintings. The palace is a splendid piece of heritage constructed on the lines of Potala Palace. It was deserted after Dogra commander Zorawar Singh captured Ladakh. The royal family was shifted to Shyok palace. It’s a nice specimen of the medieval Tibetan architecture involving massive mud-stone walls, wooden balconies, mural paintings, poplar rafters and wooden flooring.

Gurdwara Shri Pathar Sahib is situated about 25 km from Leh. When Guru Nanak Dev ji Maharaj were returning after visiting Tibet around 1515, they rested here for some time and meditated. Indian soldiers do langar seva and eat food with the tourists. The visitors have to cover their head under a yellow scarf bearing the akal takht symbol. All become one here. It’s a message of unity. Tourists from across India and soldiers from different states, regions, castes and classes all sit together on the ground and eat like innocent children. It seems it’s managed by the army itself because they take care of all the affairs here. Eating prasad here is a very fulfilling experience.

The other place that we visited is Sangam, the confluence of Indus and Zanskar rivers. The Zanskar river carries lots of coquettish energy like shakti and the Indus river allows her to have her flirtatious ways and show-off by almost stopping its own flow like Shiva, the stable self. The Indus allowing Zanskar to go rippling across its more stable waters. In fact the Indus waters seem to take a back step to enable the feminine force of Zanskar to surge ahead. Meanwhile massive stony mountains look down at the majestic scene with amusement. Standing at the confluence one can clearly see the green water of the Indus to the left and the brown waters of the Zanskar to the right.

There are buses plying to remote parts of Ladakh from Leh. But one has to be careful about their timing because most of these aren’t daily services and operate just two or three days a week. Nowhere else I found the time table painted on a wall at a bus station more useful than here. One can save a lot of money by taking these buses. Bikes are for the young blood. Personal SUVs are for the super-rich. Rented taxis are for the rich. And for the middle class budget travelers the public transport is the safest bet. Moreover, travelling with local Ladakhi people is an added incentive for free if you take a bus. Public transport is a very practical and economic way of exposing one to the local culture. You get a deeper feel of the ground realities.

We take a bus to the Nubra valley. It’s a private bus run by an interesting chap named Dorjee. He operates it under a license issued by the government authority. The bus runs twice weekly between Leh and Nubra valley, reaching till a place about 20 km further from Hunder. The jangling, smoke-exhaling vehicle leaves at eight in the morning and reaches the destination in the evening. The return journey is on the next day. A short, strong, agile, athletic man, Dorjee is a multi-tasker serving as the owner, driver, helper, conductor, fuel man, porter, everything.

An amazing man as we watch him closely during the journey. He is very helpful. He even stops his bus by a little hamlet on the way to inform the passengers who are inside their houses, feeling assured that he won’t miss them. I’m sure that he would even wake up some still sleeping person who has asked him to remind that the bus has arrived.

Many local people boarded the bus in Leh for short journeys within the city and easily got down without caring to pay. He doesn’t mind such minor issues. He is particularly popular among the lady workers busy in the road-keeping operations on the path. They wave cheerfully at him as they see his rattling, old bus laden with people inside and the roof piled high with luggage and other wares, a bed and sofa set this time that have been firmly tied by his own expert hands.

The road to Nubra valley passes through Khardungla pass about 40 km from Leh. It’s the highest motorable road in the world. The construction workers from Bihar, baked by the high altitude sun, are busy almost all along the way. A woman is working with her child tied to her back. They look eagerly at the upcoming bus. They have set up temporary tents along the road, so there is hardly any facility here. To give you a clue to how things are managed in this tough, remote terrain, one worker is cutting another’s hair.

It’s a busy, noisy, dusty serpentine line across the barren mountains, beaten by a merciless sun and stung by rough winds: the earthmovers and cutters shrieking with effort to gnaw at the stony innards of the lofty mountains; the workers plodding, hacking into the stony sides to leave an imprint of the indomitable spirit of the mankind to reach all points on the earth. But the mountains look too powerful in their barrenness to be daunted by the mankind and their machinery.   

Khardungla is the gateway to Nubra and Shyok valleys. After Khardungla pass the road descends to a scenic view. The barren rocks get a slight tinge of green alpine grasses. Nubra river originates from Siachin glacier. (The government plans to start Siachin base camp tourist adventure.) It gurgles like an oasis in the mountainous cold desert. Stunted poplars, willows, bushes and shrubs surround Khardungla village, which is a big hamlet from Ladakhi standards.

As the bus stops for refreshment breaks near little hamlets having a shop or two, I see that even the birds are relaxed like the local people. As I sip tea looking lost in the relaxing wilderness, a black and white Ladakh magpie sits on the branch of a low willow tree by the road, just near the eating point swarmed with the passengers. Unbothered about human intervention, it just sat there for almost ten minutes. It’s a lovely sight to see a wild bird sitting so near to you.  

Nubra river joins Shyok river, which later on merges with the Indus. As we move on after the break, it becomes even more challenging passage along the mighty and majestic Shyok river. It first follows southeasterly direction through Pangong range; then takes a northwestern turn, almost going parallel to the previous path in reverse direction. In Tibetan its name means ‘gravel spreader’ which is amply testified by vast stretches of sandy gravel on its broad, intimidating floodplains glistening white like snow under scorching midday sun on the right of the road. It’s also mentioned as the river of death due to the havoc caused by it on the silk route trading caravans in ancient times.

We get down at Hunder in the evening. It’s famous for the majestic sand dunes running in a broad valley flanked by lofty walls of completely barren dark-brown rocky heights. Here the tourists enjoy rides on double-humped camels walking in a row in the Shyok valley, imitating the famous silk route caravans of the ancient times.

At Hunder we stayed at an ex-soldier’s guest house. He had scaled Mount Everest during his army days and now carried the same indomitable spirit in setting up a lovely guest house. The first floor is beautifully done and ready for check-ins. The upper story is still under construction. The mess with classy wooden furniture is as impressive as the officers’ mess at an army cantonment. His family assists the cook in making food. The food is delicious. The bedding is clean. It’s a nice room. It’s like a little oasis among the sand dunes.

The evening breeze is freshened by the swaying branches of poplars, willows, bushes and shrubs. The camels, after a tiring day of ferrying the tourists across the sand dunes, rush to the bushes after their duty is over as the night falls. A lovely clean-watered stream flows through the sparse high-altitude scrub forest nearby.

I have done my research on Ladakh flowers, plants, shrubs and trees. So I’m able to read the traces of life written on stones in the shape of little wild flowers. From May to September, up to an elevation of 3800 m in valleys like Nubra beautiful little flowers welcome you. Purple colored acomite is pretty common. Little yellow blooms of a alpine herb named phulumentok are the indomitable signs of life among craggy rocks. Then there are flowering shrubs like khardung (yellow), Himalaya may apple (white or pink), chagna (bright mauve) and a few more.

As I walk along the dwarf scrub growths along the little stream passing near the sand dunes of Hunder, I can spot common juniper (shukpa), a shrub with crowned needle-like leaves. How can I forget that fragrant smell that I inhaled in a monastery back at Leh? Shukpa has fragrant leaves and bark, which are used by the Buddhists as incense. There are clumps of sea buckthorn as well. It’s a dwarf thorny shrub with a woody stem. It’s a storehouse of vitamins and medicinal properties. I have ordered online a few packets of Ladakh sea buckthorn tea a few times. It’s a strangely elating feeling to stand next to this remote tree in a distant part of India.

On the moist slopes you have tiktas, a grass like shrub. On dry rocks and stony slopes there are kabra shrubs. All these shrubs are highly medicinal in nature. In the traditional Tibetan system of medicine, these rare hardy plants, flowers and shrubs are used in profusion with great effect. Something that grows in such adverse climatic conditions must be having a very high potential and vitality for life. No wonder they make highly effective medicines.

I met a German woman near Turtuk. She is on a quest to be away from the hassles of professional life back home. There are so many foreigners who have lost their path in the maze of Himalayan spirituality. I feel she is an easy catch to be lost in the exotic Eastern chaos. So I load her with lots of unsolicited advice. I tell her to keep the goal limited, in sight: just aiming to recharge her sagging batteries, go back home and start a new job with new vigor. She was uncomfortable to this truth to begin with. But later she digested the essence of my point.

The Himalaya is a great seducer. It pulls with irresistible charm. It’s a great charging port of high frequency energy, no doubt about it. But it’s suitable to be there as travelers now and then. Charge your battery, explore yourself and make the most of your potential at a place where you need to be for your own self and your loved ones. I know I have to run away from my old self. But I also know that I have to stop as well. And Ladakh is an endless path. You can tire yourself out, but it won’t come to an end. You think you have covered hundreds of miles, but that’s nothing on the scale of this limitless playground.  

We return to Leh when Dorjee the great comes back for his second weekly trip to Hunder. In the intervening time it was an amazing experience there.

We then plan to go to the Pangong lake. The bus on that route is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. The day in between offers a great opportunity to enjoy HH Dalai Lama birthday celebrations at Choglamsar about 8 km from Leh city center. It’s a Tibetan Buddhist settlement and no wonder it gives a faint smell of how Lhasa must be. There are artisans here who are keeping alive the age-old tradition of handcrafted souvenirs and painted wooden furniture. The place is a heartbeat of Ladakhi and Tibetan traditions.

The great man’s birthday celebrations offer a top end, full day festivity for the Buddhists. Family and friends form groups and set up tents in a sprawling ground. You can see people enjoying food and tea on the low tables adorned with Tibetan wood painting involving ornate carvings and spiritual iconography. Everyone is dressed in traditional dresses. They play lovely Tibetan and Ladakhi songs and perform mesmerizing group dancing. The dancers move elegantly in concentric circles. It’s a slow movement with poise and grace, gently tapping feet and peacefully waving of limbs. Almost slow poetic movements. Throughout the day they have been enjoying food and tea in their tents with their near and dear ones. An entire day full of being dressed in the best traditional costumes, eating, chatting, dancing and praying. A lovely funfair full of colorful symbolism of spirituality.

Then in the evening there is a lottery ticket result announcement. A woman wins and she can’t believe she has won the top prize. She is very shy when she goes to receive the prize. The people shout, laugh and applaud. At a nearby monastery, the boy lamas have toy guns and bows and arrows to play in celebration of the grand occasion. HH Dalai Lama turns 89 this day. Long live the great man because He is almost a lifeline for Tibetan Buddhism.

The Jammu and Kashmir transport bus starts for Pangong lake at four in the morning. Another exciting journey starts. The road ascends to Chang La. It’s a lovely weather with slight precipitation on the lower reaches. There are sparse coverings of blue lettuce and peppergrass bushes on the side slopes. White dragonhead enjoy their high altitude seat on the stony slopes. Then the high mountain pass welcomes us with its fluffy spray: snowfall.

Snowfall is a big wonder for the people from the plains. The vehicles halt and the tourists start dancing in the snowfall. And once you start descending from the high mountain pass, beautiful valleys open up with their alpine grasses and wild flowers.

The Ladakhi ecosystem is very relaxed. A tiny chit of black puppy is relaxing in the middle of the road near Durbuk in Tangtse valley. A huge military truck has to halt and honk horn so that the lazy guy clears the road. It doesn’t. A smiling havaldar with big handlebar moustache gets down, picks up the prince and puts him at a safe distance. Only then the army truck starts on its journey.

The Leh-Pangong road has all the charms to satisfy all of your wanderlust desires. Occasional wild roses smile at you from among the rocks. Tiny yellow dandelions and sea buckthorn (Leh barley) give you an idea that even stones have a heart and they show it through these seasonal blooms. A few stunted willows, poplars, violet-colored Himalayan crane’s bill and pink fireweed watch you with curiosity from the side of streams. Purple and white colored spotted heart orchid beautifies the open meadows, moist places and open slopes. There is tiny Himalayan winterfat, a sparse pale grassy shrub by the little streambeds near Durbuk. The stony wastelands also show a softer side as they welcome you with cow’s lungwort (desi tobacco). Stunted juniper (shukpa) is the state tree. Its fragrant leaves and bark provide beautiful moments of perfumed bonhomie at social gatherings and religious ceremonies.

The land of passes has a few offerings in terms of tress: poplars, willows, apricots, walnuts. High altitude meadows with summer blooms of edelweiss and wild roses. The rest is simply imposing barren stone walls, snow-capped peaks, glaciers shining under the sun. And the mankind’s eternal quest to reach higher and higher; making roads, repair works, a never-ending job in this tough environment. One can’t help marveling at the small, robust Ladakhi women working at the construction sites.

And there we stand on the banks of the multi-colored marvel, a little puddle in the navel of the mighty Himalayas: Pangong lake. It’s a work of fluid art by the eternally musing artist. The lake is an open canvas. The surrounding hills are the frame. The brush is made of the sun, the clouds and the sky. The shifting angle of the sun is the hand moving the brush. The swabs of white, grey and dark clouds and the pristine blue lurking through them create a wonderful art of lovely colors on the canvas of the lake waters. Colors mix, flow, merge along the waves. Sit on the bank and you see the colors moving—blue, green, moss green, indigo, grey, purple. A beautiful watery canvas where multiple colors play with the sun, wind, clouds, sky.

We check in at a homestay by the road overlooking the wavy, colorful, heaving bosom of the lake. Just a little row of homestays and the rest comprising mother earth’s sunlit yard high in the mountains. It’s run by three women: grandmother, daughter-in-law and granddaughter. It’s very reasonably priced, just 1500 rupees/night including food. They have a nice little mess hall with carpeted floor, low tables, cushions, chests and little prayer wheels by the seats. You can feel the strong effect of the monastic culture even in the mess room here. Sacred symbols and auspicious motifs have almost as dense existence at homes as they do at monasteries. While we eat, the old woman rolls the prayer wheel and says prayers. ‘This is for you guys. She is praying for you so that the food you take is good for you,’ her granddaughter tells us while serving the food. That’s Buddhism for you, the religion of compassion.

They handle the tourists of all types and inclinations with lots of grace and elegance. After a two-night stay, at the time of leaving I thank them for the nice hospitality. The pretty, young Ladakhi girl softly and shyly says, ‘Please come again!’ And I say, ‘Yes, we will.’ One ought to keep one’s promises.  

It is an otherworldly experience by the lake. Just to be with the lake is a meditative experience. I simply open myself to the icy cold wind and the noisily swashing lake waters. The lake almost a big blue, heaving, rippling temple having a goddess of universal well-being somewhere in its depths. And the moment you accept this fact in totality, a thing or phenomenon will touch you with its essence of divinity. The untamed harmony and solitude percolate deep into my cells. It is a feeling belonging to a new dimension. After a long spell of meditation on the lake shore, with half closed eyes I see my torso as a flaming ball of indigo. A great experience.

I enjoyed lovely walks along the shore. Studied the rare sprouts of vegetation among the alkaline stony barrenness on the stretch between the road and the lake shore for a few kilometers towards the line of actual control (LAC). I could spot a kind of knotweed and cream-colored sprouts, a kind of purslane. If you are an open-hearted wanderlust person, just be there to witness the show, mother nature will surely won’t disappoint you. I spot a Himalayan hare among the stones. There is a little colony of brown agile birds that nests in holes dug under small stones. The ground nest is actually a passage under a stone with both ends open. I can see one odd big Himalayan raven and a pair of in-love gulls that leisurely flow over the water. It’s very windy most of the time and the waves strike the banks like a mini sea. It’s an amazing tapestry of water stretched among high mountains.

The waves crash, the colors change, the wind buffets. The long line of sand and gravel along the shore offers a broad avenue to walk in solitude and find your real footing away from the hustle and bustle of life in the congested plains. During these walks I sit down and meditate now and then. The moment I close my eyes, I can feel that it’s a very high energy place. The level of self-peek is totally different.

The lake has its colorful canvas and music that varies through the day. Sometimes I go knee deep in the water, taking a symbolic bath by sprinkling some ice cold drops over my head, bow and pray and taste the salty water as prasad.

Some of the tourists who have travelled in the bus with us are staying at the same homestay, the others at the neighboring lodges. One is a very tall Spanish-looking guy from Pune. But good for him that he was balanced by a lack of macho spirit. That makes one more realistic in life. A macho body with macho spirit creates chances of crash landing in pits. There is this girl, a researcher from the JNU, who is travelling solo but has the restlessness and readiness to change her solo status to a partnered travel. The girl is ordinary looking but very high in flirting spirits. She waits for the guys to approach. But they have the alluring Pangong to attend to, so nobody dances around her. The moments here are very precious.

At night most of the tourists are having drinks outside the homestay looking into the wind coming from the lake. She is tipsy and almost falls in the laps of the men around. My brother doesn’t drink. A sober guy. I’m a light drinker on very-very special occasions. He proposes a walk in the night on the road circuiting by the side of the lake. All the guys, fifteen to twenty in number, get ready for a walk. The lake is silent. The milky way perfectly clear. The stars so clear and near that you feel like raising your hand and pluck them. But the short, fat, bespectacled man doesn’t get up. He is busy with his beer bottle. Slightly cross-eyed, I had observed during the day. ‘You guys are from Haryana. Now you are saying that it’s just a stroll on the road. Further on you will say let’s jump into the lake and try to cross over to the other side. I won’t go,’ he declares.

The rest of us start. It’s pitch dark. There is no running electricity here, just some diesel-set generated power available for a few hours. The nights are pitch dark. Beautiful. We have walked just a couple of hundred meters and it feels like we are in the remotest uninhabited part of the world. No sound, no sight. Just the sky and the stars. My brother then tells them that there is no risk here; no reptiles slithering around. Just this snow leopard sometimes makes it exciting. He is very mischievous at such moments. The word ‘snow leopard’ drops like a bomb. As we move on and must have walked for another hundred meters or so, we find the group severely depleted in number. Now it’s just me, my brother and the two Bangladeshi tourists. The rest have dropped off the walk stealthily, beating any snow leopard in the art, and gone back to the safety of their rooms.

Iftikar is from Bangladesh. He is travelling with his friend. He is in mid fifties. The man is enjoying the trip like a bird set free from the cage. His wife suffered from a rare ailment for almost a quarter century. As her partner he was right there bearing his share of pain and suffering with loving kindness. He gave her the best possible treatment. Then she died. After overcoming the critical phase of mourning the loss, now he is flying freely in Ladakh. I can feel he is a very nice human being who deserves this open joy after a tough personal phase. Joyful, all smiles, making friends, creating group bonhomie, clicking pictures, insisting on sitting on the front seat in the bus—that’s Iftikar. On the way up, he had danced with childish joy in the snowfall on the Baralacha pass. Now, in the sympathizing pools of darkness by the lake, it’s a gentle talk with the stranger who feels so familiar with his grief and pursuit of happiness after the storm has passed.

We come back to our place after one and a half hours later. All the tourists have gone into their rooms. Only Jishnu is morosely sitting outside on a chair. He had met the Spanish-looking Pune guy on the bus and to save money they had taken a shared room. The Pune guy hasn’t returned. Jishnu is very tight on budget and is scared that his room partner will stay with the girl and won’t pay half the money he owes for the room charges.

He is a small Keralite; a charmingly dark boy with a flawless white-teethed smile. Well the girl has probably succeeded in changing the solo status of her journey. Girls have an advantage in this manner. In a way, the Pune guy has dumped Jishnu. We have words of consolation with him. He feels that we are friendly guys and breaks his shyness to talk in his broken English and still more devastated Hindi. He stays at his friend’s place at Kasol and does some graphic designing for him in return. Presently, he seems to be running around Ladakh like a clueless tiny mouse; understandable because he is around only 25 years in age. On our return to Leh, to help him on his shoe-strung budget, we offer him to stay in our room on a mattress at the rate of 250 rupees/night because this is what he usually pays in a dormitory for a bunk. It makes him very happy.

Back in Leh, Jishnu introduces us to a small eatery in one corner of the bus station compound at the end of a small row of shops. An old Ladakhi lady operates the little tin-shed tea shop. She treats him like her own child. Her tea is fabulous—a big glass, full. The graceful woman looks very happy to serve us Tibetan bread, omelet, noodles or maggi. Her daughter works as a bank clerk in Amritsar. The husband drives a bus on contract for the army. Very soon we also join the league of her sons like Jishnu.

She is our aunty now and we become her regular customers. Aunty is graced with a natural, loving smile. She serves us tea like a mother. There is an affectionate touch; not a strictly professional approach to the task. The charges for her servings are cheaper than anywhere else we have seen in Leh.

Jishnu is a quite boy, hardly speaks Hindi. She doesn’t understand English. But both of them have developed a mother-son bond with the language of silence. Her glass of tea contains almost double of what others serve in tiny paper cups. Smile and kindness are showered for free. She has visited Delhi and stayed with her daughter in Amritsar for some time. As a tourist, just like any other native of the land, most of whom are saturated with silence and emptiness, she loves crowds and the hustle-bustle of shoulder-rubbing humanity. She also likes lush green trees in the lesser Himalayas and in the plains below. I think they are saturated with the barren emptiness here, which attracts us so forcefully because we are burdened with the crowded strife and chaos at our places in the plains. So it’s natural that the crowds of plains seem very interesting to them; and we enjoy the Ladakhi peace and silence.

We enjoy the summertime charms of Leh by visiting more places nearby like Thiksey monastery and Shey palace. We have enough time to feel relaxed, loiter around and experience the deeper layers of Ladakhi culture. So there is no time constraint forcing us to rent a car and go rushing like people usually do while on a short trip. We take a small city bus to Choglamsar and from there the locals tell us that we can get shared vans or jeeps to the monastery and the palace.

We have been waiting for an hour but there is no shared van or jeep today. Finally, a kind gentleman gives us a free lift in his junked van with a luxurious welcome. There are no autos in Leh. Had there been autos, it would have been more congested. But the taxis charge too much for budget travelers. A taxi to and fro from the palace and the monastery charges more than a day’s boarding and food costs in Leh.

The gentleman, who has given us a ride, is rich in heart and sits like a king in his junked Maruti van. One sliding door is jammed. One seat at the back is removed and in its place you have jacks, tools and a spare tyre lying on the dusty carpetless floor. We clamber in. The seat is dusty as if sandbags have been ferried on it. A local woman also sneaks in.

The driver is evidently a very kind man. He has to attend a very urgent task at a construction site about one kilometer from Shey palace, so feeling a bit sorry he drops us at this point. When we offer him fare, he says a very firm no and smilingly gives us instructions about the path to the palace from the place where he has dropped us.

Shey palace stands on a hill overlooking the road. It bears toned down ancient Ladakhi luxury embellished with Tibetan architecture. The roofs are made of poplar and willow wood. Starting from one corner of the palace, a craggy ridge reaches to the pointed peak of the neighboring hill. From the sunlit terraces of the palace, one can see the ruins of stonework done in gravel and mud on this peak. The ruined tower somehow still holding its head high. It’s an interesting rock-climbing experience to clamber up over the stony ridge to reach the top of the hill bearing the decaying, time-ruined stonework. Long strings of prayer flags are drawn along the way. Most probably it was a religious site used by the royals during their heydays. The cautious climb becomes a pilgrimage. Once you reach the top and enter the roofless tower chamber, you get a feeling of achieving a milestone in your journey.

Coming out of the palace, we take a shortcut along the tiny agricultural fields and poplar and willow groves along the Indus river to reach Thiksey monastery situated on the top of another hill. The place is about 20 km from Leh. It’s a tiny replica of Potala palace. There is a separate block, an attached nunnery, for the female renunciates in the 12-storey complex adorned with Buddhist art, little stupas, impressive statues, thankas and mural paintings. The colorful murals painted with meditative muse; gently painted, weaving majestic tales of symbolism recounting the Buddhist aspect of truth. Done in natural pigments, these much-detailed works open a teasing world of elaborate Buddhist rituals, beliefs and practices. A world of yellow, red, green, blue and gold. A vast ceremonial offering to the ultimate by the human spirit.

The highlight is the 15-meter high statue of Maitreya made of clay and copper. It’s gold-painted to give it a shiny perfection. In little shrines and alcoves one can see a mesmerizing complexity of murals depicting Tibetan calendars, the wheel of life, thousand armed Avalokitesvara, female deities and many other religious symbols. There is a separate temple for an important female deity, Tara. The temple also contains dozens of tiny, alcove-sized shrines for various smaller female deities.

There is an ascending order of floors, the top floors for the high pontiff and the abbots. You feel like rising to a higher dimension as you take the impressive flight of steps from the terraced fronts taking you to the upper floors having marvelous rooms and shrines painted in white, red and ochre. It is clearly visible that it was built as a fort monastery. Standing on the terraced ramparts one can have a beautiful view of the Indus valley below with its semi-sparse green brushstroke among the barren brown of hills.

Ladakh has a unique charm. It’s made for purposeless wandering in the open-ended stony charms of mother existence. There is unparalleled solitude and peace. The barren stones more peaceful than lush green forests. Forests are the manifestations of the creative potential in the stony womb. So maybe being in the barren stony embrace of nature makes you feel closer to the source, the emptiness. The source of creation. The stones present a huge truth in their naked, imposing avatar. It’s a lovely experience to share this barren serenity and solitude. The people are so warm and gentle, a unique product of this exceptional landscape.

 I’m peeling layers after layers of my worldly self in this welcoming wilderness. Ladakh is a travel, a journey, an endless destination for exploring. It’s a living entity. As I discover more about it, I discover myself as a sweet byproduct.  

Since Leh is our base camp for forays into Ladakhi hinterland, we have built a little circle of acquaintances around the place where we stay. The hotel is located a couple of minutes walk from the bus station. That gives us the choice to loiter around the bus station, enquiring about the buses plying on various routes, whenever we have time. We also go there after our dinner for a digestive stroll. The bus from Delhi arrives around nine at night. And it’s a nice sight to see the excited passengers disembarking to feast on these lovely landscapes. We have also made friendly acquaintances with five or six HRTC drivers and conductors who run the buses on this tough route on a rotational basis.

The Muslim guard keeps a vigil inside the compound at night. He has a thin Buddhist friend. Once he pulls the long, low iron-gate on its tiny bearing wheels, it’s his kingdom inside the bus station. The guard is lame and keeps a long stick to support his polio-afflicted leg. His Buddhist friend is a wiry man in soiled yellow robes. He is a convert from a poor, low-caste Hindu family. Life is easy for both of them after ten at night once the hustle and bustle stops. They get drunk to a nice degree. During the busy tourist season they make some extra money as well. Tourists ask them to reserve their tickets on the Delhi-Leh and other routes to the tourist destinations in Ladakh. The frequency of buses is very less and there is always a fight for tickets. Since they stay at the station compound itself, they can get a few seats reserved and charge a commission on the tickets. A little enterprise which can be pardoned given the fact that it gives them some scope to get a little high at the end of the day.

There is a Rajasthani family, headed by a big-turbaned mustached old man, selling aphrodisiacs. The old man arrives with his family during the summers. At night, we usually find them sprawled on the open floor of the empty high-roofed, open-sided waiting shed. His young daughter-in-law has an infant. She has more privacy. She and her husband need privacy even more, given the product they deal in and must be experimenting on themselves as well. So they have a tiny sleeping tent for the young couple.

The old man has smartly memorized the bus timings to various destinations. If you happen to be lost in semi-darkness looking for the ways and means of increasing your chances of getting a bus tomorrow, he will hark your attention and tell you the timings and the smarter ways of getting an advance ticket. These are very valuable inputs. Of course he would always expect you to reciprocate by buying his vitality-enhancing herbal medicines to make yourself a superhero in the bed.

In these two weeks, we are able to get friendly with a nice group of bus drivers and conductors. These are old-style sturdy buses, lumbering like tanks on high mountain passes. How do they manage to scream and rattle ahead on the world’s highest motorable passes? It’s wonderful. The drivers are meditative, alert, smoking lots of cigarettes on the way. They know that they have dozens of lives under their care. The slightest mistake and all are gone.

The driver and his conductor have a day off after their arrival from Keylong. Here they drink, eat and take full rest, mustering up strength for the arduous return journey. Early in the morning, they sit in the bus and take advance bookings for the upcoming journey. Sometimes they are mischievous and tell a white tourist that the bus is full, even while there are vacant seats in the bus. They say it’s for a reason. In the case of foreigners, it’s their duty to get down at a few check-posts and escort the foreigners, holding their passport in their hands, to be verified by the security personnel. They find it an unnecessary hassle which takes much time.   

The poet

 Poetry is a medium for the expression of truth, love, peace, joy, one’s deep pain, hope and dreams. It’s never meant for conveying falsehoods. Falsehoods can be sustained to an extent through prose by going into logical arguments. It comes from the smaller self, the insecure animal trying to survive. But poetry comes from the bigger self; from the soul and its representative, heart. It bypasses the mind. If one conveys falsehoods through poetry that’ll be mere prose written in rhyme.

As the insecure minds unleash wars world over, a poet will keep praying and hope that a soft bud of peace starts to open as the war hysteria touches its peak and would inevitably slide down onwards. Then will bloom a small fragrant flower somewhere among the charms of highland mists.                

The stigmatized superman

 

We keep pseudo-patriotism on our tongues. The shouters; the culinary nationalists tasting the exciting dish of hate, leering with misplaced, mouthwatering pride.

As the super-species ruling the planet, we have created a hierarchy of pain, rights and entitlements. The pain and rights of the non-human manifestations of life are secondary, almost inconsequential, and are taken as the means to fulfill our needs.

No wonder the balance is gone. It’s unsustainable. The birds, plants and animals are rightless. Their loss is meaningless. It opens the way for their destruction. But the fire won’t stop there. It will then start eating we humans. The non-human part of nature is in fact the shield against this fire.

The fungus of distrust

 

A thin film of distrust deposited like limescale on the taphead; yellowness on the teeth; moss on a shadowed musty stone; stains on a toilet seat; permanent smudge of holy paste on an idol’s forehead.

It was coming up slowly, stealthily, the thin film. Then you see it someday—cropped up like fungus on dead wood. You and your partner see it but won’t speak about it. But it’s quite distinct, palpable now. The thin film gets under dust and then with more coatings of dirt turns to a solid concrete wall—the partners working like masons busy in laying their share of bricks, erecting walls. The hard boundaries come into being. Separation. The division of that unity. Fracture.

The wall could have been avoided had both of them done a little bit of daily scrubbing, de-scaling, polishing, rubbing and de-staining to keep it decently clean if not spotlessly clean altogether.

Ma Ganga Doli Yatra

 

When I’m near Gaga Ma I somehow go footloose. Walking on Her banks or on the landscapes shaped by Her torrential flow becomes my meditation, my ritual, my tapasya. I just find myself keep walking. The pent-up energies, emotions, karmic entanglements all start flowing as if pushed by Her blessing shove. I just walk. Gently. In a fine flow with myself. No destination. No goal. She does what is supposed to be done; what is needed for Her child’s growth.

This is late April and I’m staying at Dharali. I’m here to walk with Ma Ganga Doli Yatra from Mukwa to Gangotri—the colorful procession starting from Her winter abode to culminate at Her summer home. It’s a soulful procession, full of colors, redolent with local hill people’s unquestionable faith in Ma Ganga. No words can describe the feeling. The participants in the procession caught in a devotional frenzy. I walk with them and simply keep looking at Her beautiful, kind, pious face visible through the small opening in the little silver shrine being carried by the bearers. I’m just filling myself with as much darshan as possible. Plundering the divine prasad actually. Greedily. Copiously.

It’s a lovely little trek lasting about 22 km. When the procession reaches Gangotri, the entire little pilgrimage town lines up to welcome their mother. The place is as good as nonexistent without Her. No wonder, it’s abandoned during the winter months when the mother is away at Mukwa.

There is a suspension bridge over Ganga Ma linking Dharali on this side to Mukwa on the opposite hill. During nights I keep walking from this end of the bridge to the other. The hill people usually stay indoors after the dark, so I have the bridge all to myself for meditative walks. It’s a spiritually heady cocktail of elements: the mountain wind rushing through the valley, Ma Ganga’s roar, my seeking self and the pristine open starry sky above. All the elements forming a tiny intersection defining my path.

I keep asking people whether they know some real saint to recommend for a meeting. Almost all of them say—with helplessness—that presently it’s all about money, power, authority, perks and privileges; religion is more or less a big business and a political tool now; the babas are powerful and do liaisoning work facilitating big interests of powerful people. But when was it not so? The ritualistic part has always engaged with worldly matters more or less on the base frequency.

I’m more into spirituality. Moreover, this is kaliyuga—the age of darkness. And expecting satyuga purity in kaliyuga sages would be asking too much. To me it’s pretty simple. Earlier in pure climate you had massive trees lasting centuries; now we have lesser trees struggling to survive in the changed climate. The same is the case with the sages in the changed, degraded social climate. They are also the stunted version of the lofty mythical sages of the ancient times. But at least they are carrying the lineage and deserve respect for that. So I’m not too judgmental and usually try to have satsang with kaliyuga saints.

Mahesh, the gentle and kind hotelier, is a thorough gentleman; always ready to do something for the babas and matajis of the entire area from his place to Gangotri. I ask him about any serious baba. He also says with sadness that it’s all business now. ‘But you can try meeting this avadhuta. But it depends on his mood. Usually he asks the visitors to leave within a couple of minutes or straightaway refuses to meet,’ he tells me.

This babaji stays at the other end of the bridge towards Mukwa. As you emerge on the other end of the bridge, the main steep climb goes to Mukwa up the hill. The baba has a tiny hut of planks and tin fixed against a rockface on the left side a few meters above Ma Ganga’s stream. To reach his ramshackle little gate, one has to walk under the bridge along the bank and cross over to the other side of the bridge’s base.

As I reach the tiny indicator of the start of a human’s domain in free wilderness, I see a stocky figure sitting under a tree on a platform in front of the hut. I gently hark his attention from the gate. He waves his hand asking me to come in. I walk gingerly. I’m extra cautious, full of additional politeness in order not to disturb him. As I come near, with a swift action he throws a small durri piece on a beaten down wooden chair near him. I touch his feet and sit at the chair’s edge with folded hands.

‘I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you swami ji. I just wanted to see you. I simply come as an empty vessel. Ready to accept whatever you bless me with,’ I cautiously approach with respect and acceptance of his graceful presence. He laughs with childlike innocence.

I keep my promise of being an empty vessel and just listen. The baba talks. I’m lucky that he is feeling happy to talk today. He is a Begali baba initiated into Ramakrishna mission. But he found the ashrams too binding and has been on his own for the last six decades, most of which he has spent in this area near Ma Ganga including the last 37 years here at this place. Earlier he stayed in a cave about one kilometer up the stream for some years and before that at Gangotri.

He speaks with a cute Bangla accent. Quite hale and hearty for his 77 years. The baba is happy to share his life story and even tells me about his family. It’s a nice satsang for an hour and fifteen minutes. He is quite vocal about a sadhak keeping the vow of celibacy. I have my opinion on this but I know he knows more than me and I must listen to him.

‘O narayan ji, why are you unnecessarily entangled in this worldly maya? Leave it. Quit,’ he says it very naturally like he feels that’s what I should do now. ‘Sit for sadhna. You can sit in my former cave some distance from here. I’ll ask the villagers to help you initially. In any case, what does a sanyasi need? The basic needs are met by mother nature. So you need not worry about that,’ the baba is quite optimistic about me taking full sanyas and abandon all worldly connections.

‘Can’t one achieve peace even while staying in the world with its issues?’ I ask. He says a firm ‘no’ and doesn’t explain it further than this. I have arguments in my talkative mind but I don’t say anything.

Even Kaka Maharaj, who stays outside my village, asked me to abandon everything and sit for sadhna somewhere by the canal in the area where he has been staying for the last many decades. In fact, my brother laughs that I have been offered two penthouses by two babajis. But I know I’m not for complete severance of worldly ties. I’m for a balanced life in all matters. More than that, I believe in reading and writing and that I will do till my last breath. I’m not worried even if that creates situations not conducive to absolute peace. No problem.

‘If you don’t quit, the God will force you to leave all this worldliness, which stops one from enjoying the grace of absolute peace,’ the baba says emphatically. I just clear my throat apologetically.

As I take leave and stoop down to touch his feet, the baba puts his loving, kind hand on my head and gently pats my back saying, ‘Peace be with you! Peace be with you!’ He gives me two apples, a bit stale, dejuiced, somewhat shriveled. Actually all his apples are like that. He isn’t bothered about freshness of fruits. But the fruits are fresh with divine grace.

During our interaction the baba gets a firm idea, and rightly so, that I’m a bookworm. He opens a bundle of soiled cloth and from a stack of very old books randomly picks a part of an old, dog-eared book. ‘Read it! But reading scriptures is like using a thorn to take out the thorn in one’s flesh. After taking out the thorn both thorns have to be discarded,’ he says. The baba knows the utility and futility of knowledge. He is after all a graduate himself.

There I walk back after hitting the jackpot—satsang with a saint, two apples and an old book about the lamp of knowledge. The rumpled, crumpled book has been thoroughly thumbed; possibly during his former knowledge-seeking days. The thorn of knowledge which he used to pull out the thorn of ignorance. The pages bear extensive markings, underlines, sidenotes and scrawls in Bangla to give me an idea how extensively babaji has gone through this book. He seems to have gone into depths over each world and phrase on the banks of Ganga Ma over the decades.

This is a prized catch—in worldly lingo. I might not be able to read it as extensively as the baba but its mere presence among my books is enough to dispel the dark corners of ignorance in my study. It’s enlightening just by its presence. How it can’t be? After all, it has stayed in the hands of such a longtime sadhak who has definitely attained a joyful state. I feel that joyfulness in my head now. A feeling of ease. Palpable. Not many ideas swimming in the brainy pool. Just an emptiness. I feel the grace of his peaceful touch as I walk back.

Yea, missed to tell it. The baba listens with the cute excitement of a child listening to fairy tales. I was telling him the story of a Zen monk and he looked and listened in rapt attention, a childlike smile on his face all along the narration.

Life in a little courtyard

 

The champa shrub—though I prefer to call it a tiny tree—is squeezed between a wall and a domineering parijat. But even in the limited space the tiny tree with green stems and mossy-green long and sturdy leaves gave its best and sprung many lateral shoots. But the monkeys would love to break the green stems. Maybe they love the distinct juicy thudding sound when the stem or branch snaps. It’s quite distinct from the breaking sound of any other tree’s branch, which is high-pitched and tangy in feel.

So the plant grew slim and shot through the narrow opening between the parijat and the wall. It has a little canopy now, and in harmony with surprisingly plenty May rains, it’s redolent with seven bunches of lovely white flowers having a scented yellow core. They have a very gently, yet quite effective, wafting smell. Shaken by the wind the flowers keep falling through the day. Each time I pick a flower it seems like a gift. When I’m feeling lethargic I put a few of them on my palm and inhale the smell from close quarters. It changes the mood drastically, making me clear headed instantly.

The parijat has shed all its leaves. It looks forlorn with dry seedpods at the end of dead fringes of dried branches and boughs. A death before getting reborn. The hardworking champa has shown enough resilience in blossoming so many smiles despite the challenges it has faced. It deserves a reward. A reward for staying there as an optimist despite monkey mischief and limited space.

I clear a few dry twigs and branches on the parijat to give a little bit of extra open sky to the lovely sprinkler of smiles. Well, if you keep trying to bloom and grow despite the roadblocks, you reach a point where someone or something will be there to help you. But for that to happen you have to keep going and reach that point.

The little birdie lad

 

It’s a tailorbird boy. I remember it tagging around its parents among the garden plants, its parents shouting the moment you stepped into the zone where it was hiding. That was during the winters and it was really smart of them to keep their chick out of the dining table of the brown female feral cat that sunned itself on the premises. Now in this early May heat I think the adolescent tailorbird chick is on its own. I don’t think it goes out of the garden walls. It has enough among the plants and trees in the yard to meet its dietary requirements.

The boy tailorbird has chosen an interesting place to sleep during the night. There is an iron hook in the once barn wall—now housing my dented old car instead of mother’s buffalos and cows—about five feet from the ground. From it hangs a dusted polybag having dried flowers meant to be used as seeds next spring and a couple of thin rubber tubes hanging in loops. And in one loop there it perches for the night.

The birdie boy retires early for the day, when it’s still bright enough to see it sitting at its place. It doesn’t mind our moving around the perch on our normal routine tasks. But it has almost crashed into my nose a couple of times when I inadvertently went too close to its house.

At night it almost mixes with the surroundings by raising its fluffy fur and drawing itself into a little ball. Since it’s an adolescent boy, it’ll be a dashing handsome man by the time the monsoons arrive a couple of months down the line. I hope by that time it will be grown enough to have a partner.

The cute corridor of creativity

 

I go and pick-up my niece from the university hostel over the weekends. The last spring was a special one on the campus. The head gardener was a man who loved his job—the result was a beautiful flowery world; rows and rows of healthy, well-cared flowers. The flowers danced, smiled, grew old and died under the merciless April sun that followed the short north Indian spring.

I picked up many varieties of dry flowers to store and use them as seeds during the next season. My little garden is overloaded with plants and trees. The only space available was in the pots of rose plants, about a dozen of them. This January I mixed the seeds with soil and dung manure and layered them in the pots having single rose plants. There they came out heralding a lovely spring.

Hundreds of chamomiles, a daisy like small flower with little white petals around a yellow core, waved at me in February and March. Chamomile is a lovely flower, which is used as flavoring agent in food and beverages. There were so many of them in the crowded little space in the pots. The space was limited but they gave their best. They couldn’t grow to full length but even the tiniest ones among them smiled and offered a flower to some lone bee or butterfly. The chamomiles had beaten all other varieties to bloom as a colony.

The present university gardener doesn’t seem too sincere about his job as can be guessed from the absence of flowers save for some marigolds. I think the chamomile angels attracted the fancy of a poet and carried the survival of their colony in his little yard. I saw some honeybees among the chamomiles. At least some tiny honeycomb somewhere not too far!

The chamomiles dazzled for almost two months and died under hot April sun, their withering looks asking me to preserve their seeds for the next season. I did as asked.

I pull out the dry stalks carefully avoiding injuring the stunted growth of gaillardia grandiflora (blanket flower) which had been trying to seek a way out of the dense crop of chamomiles. There we have the runner up. A few green leafy sprouts of blanket flowers now growing hurriedly to make the most of whatever the season has to offer. Their soft leafy sprouts had been struggling to come out and kiss the air above and dazzle their smiles.

Within a week of the clearing around them one of them smiled its ornamental orange red smile. So they occupy the second position. It’s a hybrid plant in the sunflower family. I have put the pots under the shade to allow dozens of them to smile even in this heat. These are brave flowers.

I hope some lone flower of some other variety will also blossom up to claim the third position. Sometimes just being there earns you a standing among the top three. So come on you some lone ranger, plow your way up!

Astrology: The shaky, semi-art and smart craft

 

Nostradamus… Baba Venga… What to say about their predictions? In my humble opinion, which is inspired by what great Osho said on the subject, it’s about recognizing the cyclic pattern of major types of events and the chief types of characters involved in them. It would obviously fit with later events and the people involved in bringing them into effect.

See, there is a cyclical pattern in wars, like small wars occurring after so many years and bigger wars happening after roughly a particular number of smaller cycles of time. And all the violent leaders have a particular type of personality, which can be easily guessed because all of them are cut from the same fabric.

So these so-called future forecasters, they don’t have godly insights to see things in advance. They have practical knowledge of the cyclical pattern of major types of events and the mind and personality types of the leaders who get engaged in these events. So obviously what they forecast in advance will have some matching with the events that follow and the leaders involved in them. It’s a very practical art or rather skill.

The same goes for all astrologers and the science of astrology.

The pregnant cat

 

A bookish stilt in my attitudional accent. It’s a precarious poetic perch. Spirits dampened with driftless destiny. Exasperating decadence strewn around. The world lost in the lore of gladiatorial guts and bloody gore. Thankfully my yard and small garden possess a stageful dignity; a small world having its deference-deserving dust.

The brown and yellow striped cat is commodiously pregnant. The would-be mother is relaxing with a rotund belly. A cat has exemplary excellence in the art of relaxation, almost perfect ease. And from this arises an esteemed sense of alertness. A sepulchral silence out of which are born swift darts at the prey. Extremely relaxed, extremely alert. Latching onto the productive strains of providence whenever the slightest chance opens.

The flycatcher voicing frilly thoughts; convulsive nerves of the tailorbird; churlishly blinkering babblers. They see the cat relaxing. It has lost its agility but it needs to eat till the day of delivery. For its kittens. Lackadaisical attitude won’t do. Aha the eminent rhythms of motherhood! And there it jumps up suddenly and runs across the courtyard towards the garden, galloping with a stately mix of firmness and gentleness. It has undertaken eight or ten such runs to catch some lazy bird or squirrel. It wants some meaty delicacy which we can’t offer. Chapattis and milk it doesn’t prefer, a feral cat it’s after all. So it wants to hunt for its kittens in its belly.

When you see a pregnant female, across all species, it breeds natural respect for her. You might not be actually aware of it, but when you give a look of respect, or hold out a helping hand, or get up from your seat to offer it to her, you are performing a deeply religious act. It’s almost like a holy ritual. Usually when I see a bird or cat after a prey, I impulsively intervene from the prey’s side. But not this time. Scaring her away from her hunting pursuit in such a heavily pregnant state feels like something unholy. I just leave it to fate and watch it as it unfolds.

Honeybees on a poet's head

 

Bookish guys are usually lazy. Poetic in a practical world; grandly aloof, musing over time’s mossy transience. So I find myself congratulating India for its digital platforms to provide online financial and administrative services. I’m elated the moment I come to know that I need not go to the district court premises to get my driving license (DL) renewed. It can be done online. It feels like a gift. Wow! So I apply in high spirits. I pay the fees and upload all the required documents. Now I just have to wait for a brand new DL. I keep checking for the latest status of my application. But the process doesn’t move ahead. It shows the same ‘document scrutiny’ stage for more than three weeks. So I go to the district mini-secretariat with all my application printouts in a file, just like one does in an offline application.

As I’m walking towards the e-Disha Kendra, located on the sprawling district secretariat campus, a man comes running. ‘Bumblebees are here! They are attacking people!’ he shouts a warning to me. I see big bumblebees reconnoitering the air for human enemies. I take a turn and start moving away by the side of the block towards the more crowded place of steno kiosks, notaries and lawyer chambers. The ratio of the enemies per bee would be high there. They have targeted a man. He is crying for help, flailing his arms to ward them off. They are biting him with more force in greater numbers. It’s like getting stuck in a quagmire. The more you flail your limbs, the more you get stung.

Someone has started a smoky fire to deter the natural drone attackers, known for their volatile temper and painful stings. Two soldier bees are stuck in my hair on top of head on the right side. They furiously buzz their wings. I know the rule. Never move your hands to ward them off. If you do so, you are instantly locked as the target and hundreds of bee fighters would attack you. So I walk like Dr. Manmohan Singh, keeping my arms stuck to my sides, not moving my torso in any direction or angle. The disciplined, non-threatening walk of an academician.

I can hear the man who has been attacked shouting, ‘Hai they are eating me, please save me!’ You can hardly do anything to help someone in this situation even with the best of your philanthropic emotions. The bees in my hair are angrily buzzing but I keep my arms jutted to my sides. Dozens are hovering around me. The moment I swipe my hand to get the bees off my head, they will pin me down as the next target. When I feel that I’m safe in a narrow corridor I start brushing with a soft hand, my fingertips barely touching the hair, to get the bees away. They unleash the entire stock in their weaponry on my head. Bumblebees sting very painfully. For an instant I go numb with pain. But I’m successful in getting rid of them. Thankfully I haven’t been spotted striking their soldier friends by the other bees.

I hastily cross a narrow strip of lawn between the blocks to move towards another section, the older blocks which aren’t spacious and airy like the one that I have just crossed. It’s an old, claustrophobic, musty, rusty maze. It makes me feel more secure as I move into its outer corridor.

An old man and an old woman, husband and wife visiting the courts for some official work, emerge from the new, spacious block. The bees have entered its main lobby. The old couple has broken the rule. They are panicked and vigorously waving their hands above their head and around their face to keep the bees off. Hundreds are hovering around them attacking and stinging at free will. To make it still worse for the man (in comparison to his wife, who is waving just hands), he is forcefully waving a cloth in the air around him. It invites bigger attacks. The woman shouts feeble cries for help. The man is simply focused on beating with the piece of cloth. They are tired. They walk a few steps and sit on the ground almost giving into the bees.

Everyone is at a loss about what to do. I shout and ask them to keep moving towards our side. The man seems to have surrendered. He can barely walk. The woman performs slightly better. She keeps pleading in a helpless tone, ‘Pour water! Pour water on us!’ But where is water? I feel utterly helpless. What to do? I can feel their pain but what to do. A young man comes rushing out from the new block. He is waving a black piece of cloth around him to avoid getting stung. He has a mosquito repellent spray bottle in hand. The bees attack him also. He is spraying clouds of mosquito repellent around the old man. But it’s almost ineffective.

Our family has a history of death due to bumblebee stings. My great grandfather was attacked by an entire swarm of bumblebees while returning from the fields after a hard day of tilling land. It was early 1890s and there was hardly any medical facility in the village at that time. He died because of excessive swelling which the village hakeem couldn’t manage. I feel on the upper right side of my head. There are two lumps. The crown of my head is numb.

The faces of the old couple are blood red due to multiple stings. By this time they seem to have given up to fate. You want to help but how? There must surely be better and more efficient ways of managing a bumblebee attack. At least I don’t have any clue. Neither has the district administration.

It’s a weighty fact that someone can be almost drawn to the portals of death right there in the middle of district administration centre, the axis of local police, judiciary and bureaucracy. Where you have the district collector, police superintendent, magistrates and judges. But the powerful authority is clueless as to how to help an old couple getting painfully stung by hundreds of bumblebees, crying for help while slowly moving from one block to the other. The response is just to watch, wait and allow the bees to stop stinging. Big cars, sirens, gun-toting guards, arrogance, systematic loot and plunder. All helpless in the face of a bee attack. The officers, judges and magistrates must be watching from safe, sealed windows.

The bees keep attacking the old man even while he has reached the crowded notary stalls. Finally the attacking squad dissipates. Someone takes the old couple to the hospital. I hope they have injections against bee bites. A thin plume of smoke is splaying the air as disaster management response.

I enter the block where my file needs to be submitted. There I stand with two lumps on my head holding an offline folder as a follow-up to the online application. I complain why wasn’t document verification done since I have uploaded all the required documents and the website says I need not visit the office physically. ‘Because you didn’t submit the file,’ the woman tells my curtly. ‘Then what’s the difference between offline application and online application?’ I’m about to ask. But I think the better of it. She might get offended and raise some unnecessary issue about the file, requiring more visits. So I keep mum and enjoy the offline process after having completed the digital version.