Manali to Leh

The Manali–Leh Highway is quite famous in the itineraries of national and international tourists. It is a wonderful journey, full of challenges, but side by side giving you beautiful vistas of the hard as well as soul-aching face of Mother Nature in her raw, naked avatar.

We have taken almost all the possible means of reaching Leh so far.

We have flown in and out of Leh from Delhi.

Of course, air travel saves time. But this convenience comes at the cost of a tremendous number of experiences that travelling by road provides. On the road, you cross so many milestones as a wearied journeyman that the journey itself gives you a treasure trove of experiences.

It gives you many life lessons on the road.

Of course, the elderly and those who cannot take up this arduous journey are always welcome to fly into Leh. And, as I have said elsewhere, every means of transport and every type of carrier has its own unique specialties.

Air travellers can enjoy the vast majesty and extensive sprawl of the Himalayas from above. They can watch the transition from the plains to the Siwalik foothills, then the Middle Himalayas, the lofty peaks of the Greater Himalayas, and finally move into the Trans-Himalayan landscape—the ancient, rugged, stone-faced mountains leading towards the barren mountains and cold desert on the roof of the world.

That has its own charm.

But to us, the real charm lies in the road journey from Manali to Leh—about 400 to 450 kilometres of amazing, throbbing, pulsating journey.

And we have used almost every means available on the road.

We have taken roadways buses.

We have travelled in taxis.

We have even travelled in trucks.

Every means of transport provides you with a different perspective from which to look at things and enjoy nature. The kind of vehicle you are using while travelling towards Leh builds a different platform, and from every different platform, the surrounding landscape presents itself to you in a unique way.

From Manali into the Mountains

Earlier, as one moved from Manali, the first lofty mountain pass was Rohtang La.

Rohtang has long been a darling of tourists, but it has also been a nightmare for regular drivers.

These days, the journey avoids the difficult ascent over Rohtang because we have the Atal Tunnel.

As you travel through approximately ten kilometres of this ultra-modern tunnel, built with modern techniques of tunnelling through mountainous terrain and equipped with numerous safety measures, you realize how much India has progressed.

We might talk about shortages.

We might talk about unemployment.

We might talk about so many other challenges that we face on a daily basis.

But we cannot deny the fact that a lot of infrastructural development has taken place during the last two decades, and the Atal Tunnel stands as testimony to that.

The swiftness and ease with which you travel through this tunnel, cutting through the womb of a massive stony mountain, suddenly delivers you into Lahaul—the beautiful Lahaul of Himachal Pradesh.

There you still enjoy the greenery of Himachal.

But as you slowly move onward towards Baralacha La, a crucial doorway into the higher ranges, you begin transitioning from the green vegetation of Himachal Pradesh towards the barrenness of Ladakh.

It is a very subtle change.

The pines and other conifers slowly become stunted.

The lush greenery gradually hands over its territory to sparse tufts of grass upon barren mountain faces.

This transition can be observed so closely when you travel by road.

Gata Loops

Then come the increasingly rugged stretches of the highway.

At places such as Darcha, Sarchu and Pang, small eating points provide welcome halts to tired travellers. Some are run by Buddhist families, full of smiles and grace.

The food is simple, but it is served with a welcoming spirit.

You can feel the loving-kindness.

And then comes one of the most dramatic stretches of the road—the Gata Loops.

These are a series of twenty-one hairpin bends climbing steeply across an absolutely barren mountain face.

It is a terribly winding climb on a narrow road, with hardly any scope for a mistake.

Here you have massive trucks.

Tourist vehicles.

Bikers.

Cyclists.

Sometimes they appear almost locked together, trying to find inches of space.

It is quite wonderful to watch seasoned drivers who regularly negotiate these roads managing enormous trucks laden with heavy cargo.

The margin for error sometimes appears to be only a few inches.

When you look at the traffic from a distance, the vehicles appear almost glued to the straight rock face.

And, of course, the Gata Loops have their famous ghost story.

According to a local road legend, a truck helper was once stranded here during the off-season after the route had effectively closed. He is said to have died of thirst.

Stories subsequently arose among drivers about somebody appearing beside the road, asking passing vehicles for water.

And so, according to the tradition, truck drivers and other travellers began leaving water bottles and even cigarette packets at one of the sharp loops as offerings to the restless spirit associated with the Gata Loops.

Whether one believes such stories or not, these legends themselves become part of the personality of these lonely roads.

The Happiness of Reaching a Summit

From the Gata Loops and Nakee La, the road moves onward through Lachung La and farther into the old, rugged terrain leading towards Ladakh.

You encounter barren majesty on those high winding roads as you move towards Tanglang La.

Whenever tourists reach the summit of one of these great mountain passes, something interesting happens.

They stop.

They run towards the landmark displaying the name and altitude of the pass.

And everybody wants a photograph.

There is a wonderful feeling in having reached the summit.

It does not matter whether you reached it walking, cycling, riding a motorcycle, sitting in a car or travelling in a bus.

Reaching the summit becomes symbolic.

Perhaps somewhere within us it represents our aspiration to reach a high point in life.

People look genuinely happy simply standing beside that board announcing the name and height of the mountain pass.

They have reached a height.

Perhaps it says something about the human aspiration to go higher and higher.

Into Ladakh

After the great passes, you eventually descend into the broad open landscapes of Ladakh.

Now pure Ladakhi beauty begins waiting for you.

There are the magnificent open plains, stretches where the road seems to run endlessly through a beautiful high-altitude desert. If you are attentive enough, you may see wild asses moving across the landscape.

In between are nomadic settlements, with yaks, goats and sheep.

Now it begins to feel unmistakably like Ladakh.

And everywhere you encounter the enormous work done by the Border Roads Organisation.

Sometimes even the names given to pieces of infrastructure can make you laugh.

You may come across an iron-girder bridge on a difficult stretch with a name such as Whiskey Bridge.

And somewhere else, another called Rum Bridge.

It gives a little jest to an otherwise stern landscape.

Military and road personnel face some of the harshest conditions imaginable, and perhaps through tiny gestures such as these they lighten their own spirits and make passing travellers smile.

Why I Prefer the Bus

We have used most of the means available for reaching Leh, but the Manali–Leh road trip stands out among them.

Here you experience a throbbing vibrancy, a pulsating excitement, redolent with risk at different stages of the journey.

And among all the means that a visitor can take on this road, I would personally rate the public transport buses operated by Himachal Roadways as number one.

They open up an entirely different dimension of experience.

You are travelling with a group of people.

Foreigners.

Domestic tourists.

People of different classes and age groups.

Lamas.

Locals.

Migrant labourers travelling to Ladakh in search of work.

Suddenly the bus becomes a completely different world.

The Himachal Roadways staff and drivers we have encountered have generally been friendly, helpful and caring. I particularly remember Mr. Sharma, whom we met more than once around Keylong.

These people know the mountains.

During the journey, conversations begin.

The staff sometimes point out interesting things along the road.

And then the passengers themselves begin turning into stories.

Rama and Krishna

On one journey, there were two cousin brothers travelling to Ladakh for the first time.

I have forgotten their actual names, but their names somehow reminded me of Rama and Krishna.

So in my memory they became Rama and Krishna.

One of them, who appeared to be the senior and leader of the pair, was extraordinarily well researched about Ladakh.

He pulled out sheets of paper upon which he had carefully written the itinerary, important points and other details.

Everything had been noted down.

He was guiding the quieter cousin with tremendous enthusiasm.

Both appeared to be in their forties.

One, I think, was a manager in the private banking sector, while the other was in private business.

Rama was chirpy and ebullient.

Krishna was quieter—the follower.

And they were great foodies.

We discovered that at Manali.

We had arrived there on another bus, while they had travelled for hours in ordinary public transport.

At around two in the morning, we found them happily gorging themselves on large portions of bread and omelette.

That itself demonstrated their great spirit.

Although I wondered how wise such enthusiastic eating would prove when, without proper rest, we began climbing towards the high mountain passes.

And, as I had half expected, altitude eventually began affecting them.

Their faces lost colour.

The two men who had initially been clicking photographs of almost everything along the road were no longer looking outside with the same enthusiasm.

On that journey, Diamox was used by some of the passengers for altitude-related symptoms, including these two, and they later told me that they felt better.

The mountains had begun teaching their own lesson.

The Sikh Ex-Soldier

There was also a burly Sikh ex-soldier travelling with his family.

His son was travelling towards Ladakh for an Agniveer recruitment-related examination.

The young man spent almost the entire journey looking at his phone.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I hardly saw him look outside.

Here was this magnificent Himalayan landscape unfolding outside the window, and here was this young man glued to his screen.

His father was quite different.

He was very happy because he happened to be sharing his allotted seat with a foreign woman.

His wife, a large woman, was seated farther back in the bus with their daughter.

And from there, I could see her throwing daggers at her husband with her eyes.

But those daggers seemed to have no effect upon him.

He had pleasant company, lovely proximity and an upbeat experience—a fellow traveller from another part of the world sitting beside him.

That must have been exciting for him too.

Sometimes he even attempted to strike up a conversation in his broken English.

That is how people open themselves with excitement to new experiences in life.

That too is the beauty of travelling on roads.

As the bus climbed higher, however, some passengers began struggling with altitude. The ex-soldier himself appeared to be concentrating simply on remaining composed while dealing with headache and discomfort.

His wife too was having difficulty.

Rama and Krishna had lost their earlier enthusiasm.

The high mountains were having their effect.

On that particular journey, I happened to have Diamox with me and shared it with some of them when they were struggling. They later thanked me.

These are the little interactions that happen when you share a bus for such a long journey.

You cease being entirely separate passengers.

When the Journey Goes Wrong

Road travel gives you beautiful experiences.

It also gives you experiences that are beautiful only after enough time has passed for you to laugh about them.

On another occasion, we travelled overnight from Delhi to Manali on a private bus.

We had planned the journey very carefully.

The bus was expected to reach Manali at around five in the morning.

I had found a booking online for what was shown as a twenty-four-seater traveller from Manali to Leh. Seats appeared to be available.

Everything seemed perfect.

I booked two tickets.

The boarding point was shown as the operator's office or lounge in Manali, and the vehicle was supposed to leave at around six in the morning and proceed towards Leh.

We paid around seven or eight thousand rupees for the two seats.

We were delighted.

We thought we would simply transfer from one vehicle to the next without losing any time.

But the road had planned something else.

A Wet Morning in Manali

When we reached Manali at around five in the morning, the sky was overcast.

It was drizzling.

We hired an auto and reached the bus lounge, expecting our traveller to be waiting there, ready to carry us towards Ladakh.

Much to our surprise, everything was closed.

There was no vehicle.

There was no passenger.

There was no staff member.

Even the office itself was shut.

So we waited.

And waited.

It continued raining.

Eventually, at around eight, somebody arrived and opened the office.

We explained our booking.

Then the mismatch became clear.

We were told that although the online booking had appeared to show a traveller, passengers booked for this journey were sometimes adjusted into shared taxis operating between Manali and Leh.

Because we had booked very late, there had apparently been no proper coordination.

And so we had simply been left stranded.

The staff member apologized and tried to find a shared taxi that might still be leaving late that morning.

Nothing suitable materialized.

I requested a refund.

And we realized that we would have to spend the day in Manali and find transportation to Ladakh the next morning.

When your mind is already looking towards Ladakh, somehow you do not feel like staying in Manali.

Manali is beautiful in its own way.

For families arriving from the scorching plains, its coolness provides wonderful relief.

But when your mind is seeking the solitude and emptiness of Ladakh, crowded Manali can feel like a disappointment.

And that particular morning was gloomy, overcast, drizzling and wet.

A Day of Small Losses

We took a taxi towards the Mall Road area.

We were exhausted after the overnight journey and disappointed by the failed connection.

So we simply booked the first hotel that came our way.

That was another mistake.

The moment we entered the room properly, we noticed that the bedding, bedsheets and coverings were covered with spots and stains.

Normally, cleanliness of the bed is one of the first things I check whenever I enter a hotel.

That day, because of exhaustion and disappointment, I had been careless.

We had already paid.

I looked at my brother.

“It will be difficult even to sleep here.”

The condition of the bedding was enough to make us imagine all kinds of messy things that previous tourists might have done there.

So we checked out.

They did not refund our money.

It was turning into a day of losses and disappointments.

We found a cleaner hotel and finally rested.

Then, as they say, sometimes going somewhere and eating something good can uplift your spirits.

That became the saving grace of the day.

We found a South Indian restaurant.

The food was good.

Slowly the mood improved.

Then we met a few friendly and helpful people at the tourist reservation centre.

The way they talked to us again lifted our spirits.

By evening, crowded and chaotic Mall Road was transforming into its bright nighttime personality.

Thankfully, it was no longer raining.

We walked around.

And somehow, even as tourists stranded somewhere we had not intended to stay, we realized:

Yes, we learned something here too.

Into the Unknown

Early the next morning, we finally started for Leh in a shared cab.

It was a small car.

There were four of us—my brother and I, and two friends from Rajasthan who worked in the automobile sector.

They were going to Ladakh for the first time.

Whenever I remember them, they bring a smile to my face.

There was such curiosity.

And such innocence.

They knew almost nothing about Ladakh.

To them, Leh and Ladakh were almost the same thing.

And perhaps that is understandable these days.

You see beautiful and exciting snippets on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp groups and other social-media platforms.

Lofty mountains.

Snow.

Deserts.

Motorcycles.

Blue lakes.

The glamour of these images attracts your attention and suddenly you feel driven to visit the place.

But these two had almost no idea where to go once they reached there.

They seemed to imagine that once they arrived in Leh, all the beautiful things they had seen in social-media reels would somehow present themselves in the immediate vicinity.

Slowly we explained:

“Leh is only your launching point. Ladakh is the larger territory. You have to explore it.”

That came as a surprise.

You have to take time.

You have to devote money.

You have to devote spirit.

In fact, you have to devote mind, body and spirit if you really want to explore Ladakh.

But there was something beautiful in their lack of preparation too.

There is one kind of travel in which you research everything, prepare itineraries and know almost exactly what you are going to encounter.

And then there is another kind.

You simply open yourself to curiosity and walk into the unknown.

That too can give you a completely different experience.

I hope those two friends enjoyed their four or five days there.

Ikra

Another person I remember belongs to a different journey, this time while travelling from Leh back towards Manali on a roadways bus.

The bus started very early in the morning, at around four.

We had reserved our seats a day in advance.

On the three-seater side were my brother, me, and beside the window, a young woman.

She slept.

And slept.

And slept.

She must have been extremely tired.

Rarely have I seen anybody sleep with such intensity on such a bumpy, winding mountain journey.

But at the first proper breakfast halt, she suddenly came into her element.

The little establishment was run by a Buddhist family with the help of a few migrant workers from the plains.

Inside were large platforms covered with mattresses and round pillows. You could almost lie down like a king while enjoying the simple food served there.

My brother and I sat down for tea.

The girl approached us.

She must have been somewhere in her mid-to-late twenties.

I was eating biscuits and offered her some.

She accepted them with such natural friendliness that conversation immediately began.

Her name was Ikra.

She was a Muslim girl from Kerala.

And she had gone absolutely crazy about Ladakh.

I could feel how sorry she was to be leaving.

During the tourist season she had found part-time work connected with a motorcycle group, helping manage their activities. The work gave her some money and, more importantly for her, an opportunity to ride and roam around Ladakh.

She was still preparing for examinations and trying to build her future.

She had spent quite some time in Ladakh that summer, and leaving it was visibly hurting her.

She told me that she was short of money.

She was still a student.

She needed to find a permanent job.

I encouraged her:

“First work very hard. Build a good career. Earn some money. Then you can roam around Ladakh.”

With a little tint of sadness, she smiled and said something like:

“Yes. This is what seniors always advise the younger ones.”

Then we laughed.

Something Beneath the Surface

We talked a lot during that journey.

She wanted to visit Spiti Valley as well.

She shared parts of her personal life.

I sensed something sad underneath her cheerful exterior, something she was perhaps trying to escape from.

And Ladakh—with its openness, its vastness and what I feel to be its healing touch—seemed to be giving her some solace.

It was a very nice interaction.

Then another young traveller gradually entered our little group.

He was from Karnataka.

I have forgotten his name, but he was a very nice Muslim boy, perhaps in his early thirties.

Initially he was shy.

He would listen to portions of our conversations during the stopovers.

So I encouraged him:

“Come, join us.”

Slowly he opened up.

And now we had become a little group:

My brother.

Me.

Ikra from Kerala.

And the young man from Karnataka.

We talked.

We shared food.

We exchanged stories.

I continued talking to Ikra about Ladakh, about travelling and about building a career—about first finding some stability and then enjoying travel with greater freedom, rather than roaming endlessly without building a secure foundation and facing difficulties later.

She was open to listening to the ideas of somebody senior to her.

And somewhere along the road, something else was happening.

A Little Chemistry on the Road

By the time we reached Keylong, I could see a definite chemistry developing between Ikra and the Karnataka boy.

In fact, I encouraged it a little.

Because that's how beautiful stories begin.

At Keylong, we again had tea at a small tea shop run by a woman.

The journey continued.

The conversations continued.

And by the time we finally reached Manali, I could see that a definite friendship had formed between the two.

Night was falling as the bus entered Manali bus stand.

And then I saw the two of them walking away together, perhaps looking for some lodging.

I had a smile on my face.

As a poet, writer and researcher, I could not help seeing something poetic in that little scene.

Because the girl, as far as I could understand, was troubled.

She was missing Ladakh.

She was worried about her career.

She was a young woman looking for her destiny, trying to establish a foothold in life.

And here was this young man.

If I remember correctly, he worked as a fisheries supervisor. He seemed to have a secure job and appeared relatively stable in his perspectives and views on life.

Perhaps each possessed something that the other needed.

Maybe they would become good friends.

Maybe something more.

Maybe nothing beyond the journey.

These things are secondary.

The main thing is how comfortable one feels in the company of somebody who is walking beside him or her.

And that was quite a nice experience to observe.

A poetic one.

With a little sweetness of love in it.

The Stories the Road Gives Us

These are the beautiful stories that you come across on the road.

You watch relationships forming.

You watch people opening themselves.

You see somebody arriving with meticulously prepared sheets of paper containing every detail of Ladakh.

You see somebody else arriving without even knowing the difference between Leh and Ladakh.

You see a young man staring at his mobile phone while some of the greatest mountains on Earth pass outside his window.

You see his father happily attempting broken English with a foreign fellow passenger while his wife throws imaginary daggers from the back of the bus.

You see initially excited tourists become quiet when the altitude reminds them of the power of the mountains.

You get stranded in a rainy Manali morning because a booking does not work out.

You lose money on a hotel room you cannot bring yourself to sleep in.

Then a plate of good South Indian food lifts your spirits.

The next morning, you start again.

On another journey, you offer a biscuit to a sleepy girl from Kerala.

A conversation begins.

Another young man joins it.

Food is shared.

Stories are exchanged.

Hundreds of kilometres pass underneath the wheels.

And by the time the bus reaches Manali, two people who began the journey as complete strangers are walking away together.

Perhaps they never met again.

Perhaps they remained friends.

Perhaps their story continued in some way that I will never know.

I do hope that they found a comfortable space in each other's presence.

Because ultimately, whether somebody becomes a friend or a partner is secondary.

What matters is whether, for however long the road allows it, you find somebody whose presence makes walking your portion of the journey a little easier.

That is what road travel gives you.

The mountains are magnificent.

The passes are intimidating.

The plains are vast.

The roads are sometimes dangerous.

The landscapes can leave you speechless.

But somewhere between Manali and Leh, I have increasingly realized that the road is not made merely of mountains, bridges, tunnels and milestones.

It is also made of people.

And every once in a while, among those strangers travelling beside you, the road gives you a little story.

Sometimes even one with the sweetness of love in it.

 A few moments from Manali to Leh journey.

 

Govardhanh garima

 

Govardhan pilgrimage is a treat for the soul during winters. In summers, when the ground burns due to heat, walking on naked feet isn’t everybody’s game. Most of the pilgrims walk at night to avoid scorching heat.

But the real spiritual charm opens during bright sunny days in winters. Beggars, mendicants, friars, alms-seeking children, little girls decked up as tiny Radha matajis, vendors, hawkers, cows, monkeys, tea, samosas, langars, music—an exotic chaos, pushing everyone towards a mysterious orderliness, an invisible and subtly palpable rhythm.

Thousands walking, talking, chanting Hare Rama Hare Krishna, greeting each other Radhe-Radhe, the locals busy with routine life on roads and in narrow bazaar streets as the pilgrims squeeze past congested traffic, many pilgrims measuring the entire pilgrimage path with the length of their bodies by stretching on the ground and putting a stone with outstretched hands and then again lying prostrating from the point where the stone was put, the sadhus, the crippled, the poverty-lynched people, the non-disturbing hustle and bustle…  

Me and my brother cash most of what the winter has to offer by going for the pilgrimage on Saturdays. We get up at three in the morning, start at four, travel in our little car to Sonipat, park it near the railway station, take an auto or e-rickshaw to the bus stand, board the bus to Mathura, get down at Govardhan chauraha, take a bus or auto to Govardhan 22 kilometers away, reach the pilgrimage town, have tea and luscious parathas prepared by our sister, start walking on naked feet, feel the rhythm of walk in esoteric craziness, complete about 24 kilometers of pilgrimage in 4.5 hours, put on our shoes, run to catch a bus to Govardhan chauraha, get some shared cab or board a bus to reach Ballabhgarh metro station, run to grab empty seats in some compartment in the subway, sit meditatively for 1.5 hours with our caps pulled down on our faces, get down at Kashmiri gate, change metro, deboard at Subzi Mandi metro station, run to the nearby railway station to catch some passenger train heading to Sonipat, deboard at our local station, pick-up our car from the parking lot, and reach home roughly between nine to ten at night, but sometimes when the trains get late we reach home around midnight.

No fatigue in the process. We feel we have gained something. We feel all this is worth it. Pilgrimages within pilgrimages, within further pilgrimages. The restlessness within hums in tune with the buzzing collective dissatisfaction, then sublimates to a strange calm as you pick up the rhythms of walking on naked feet.

On this weekend’s pilgrimage, our sister has given us two woolen shawls for donation to the needy. One of these we give to a child widow, a tiny, shrunk old woman, clad in soiled whites in the narrow bazaar street leading to Radha Kund. In full gratitude she stretches out her bony hand to touch my brother’s feet. He has to jump back. But it’s a blessing from her side. Her touch from the depths of her misery is like blessing on one’s head. Because if you have retained gratitude despite all the shit life has given you, then your touch (even if it’s on one’s toes) is nothing short of a blessing on the head.

The other shawl goes to a eunuch. She is wearing saffron petticoat and corset; doused in the colors of asceticism. Around six feet in height, handsome in body, pretty in face, devotional in tone. She seems to have mellowed down in the folds of devotion to Radha rani. Acceptance and surrender to the unconditional love of Radha-Krishna has given her a balanced state of being between the contrasting shades of the polarity, the pressurizing duality, the binary-bound burden of existence.

The handsome-pretty devotee is all smiles to get the shawl. She has the confidence of a man and blushes like a little girl while receiving the gift, blesses us by putting her soft-firm hand on our heads.

Here everyone is a Radhe—man, woman, young, old, everyone’s Radhe. The overpowering love of Radha has sublimated even Krishna’s male identity to color it with Her vast sea of unconditional love and devotion. Beyond sexes and genders, it’s entirely Radha-Radha, pasted on foreheads and cheeks, a little saffron stamp of Radha mataji.

An old leper, limbs rotten off, lying on the ground and pleading some coins in the loving name of Radha ma.

The rope-walking little girls moving with bamboo poles to the tunes of empathy-creating songs blaring at full volume.

A young baba with a tamed monkey whose face he has dyed extra red.

A man with little tumors all over his torso lying naked waste upwards to show his misery in this cold. He has scratched himself and flesh shows at few points.

A robust man with three limbs cut, just one hand left; which one? It’s the right one if I remember it correctly.

Blind singers singing devotional songs. A puppy sitting in the lap of one of them.

The pilgrimage route is dotted with thousands of miserable scenes where you can’t avoid feeling lucky and blessed in comparison to these unfortunates.   

 

The lokhandi rakshash (iron demon)

 

Railway companies launched first railway projects in British India with Christmas gaiety to add to their plunder of resources. The purling pioneers, the scheming teamsters, busy in introducing railways in India. It was a godless game, unsparing, unsentimental, involving hardcore business.

The practical and startling burst of logical energies by the colonizers. While the oriental masses sought and waited for the unnamed largesse of luck and fate (based on faith in gods and idols): the maddening reveries, the irritating expectancy, the lethargic love for the powers unseen.

Vagueness mumbling around among the native subjects, the Westerners meanwhile gobbled practicalities with gourmet’s delight. With pinpointed focus, the colonizers first whitewashed the colored silhouettes of the oriental panorama and then, as fiery accompaniment to heartless logic, painted it with steely monochromes of loss-gain. Dully surmised: an era of humiliations and privations for the natives.

Despite all this, the story of laying the first railway line is quite interesting. The princely states funded the projects as the then Calcutta and Bombay competed to get the honor of having the first railway line in India. Among the caterwauling and ecstatic scintillations, the ship carrying the engine and allied equipment for the Calcutta line lost its way in the choppy seas and reached Australia instead of the destination port.

As the patrons of the proposed Eastern railway bustled with itching vexation, defeat hard on their heels, the Western railways won the race and completed the project ahead of their rival. So symbolic of the West’s win over the East.

The Bombay-Pune line was opened with much fanfare. It let loose a tidal wave of excitement, fear and rumors in the Indian society. Gossips went boisterously adrift among the natives. People had all the time for impractical, fissiparous, episcopal talk. It (the train) is a lokhandi rakshash (iron demon), they said. So no high society or upper caste Indian should travel in the demon cart. If you sit in it your dignity will be in ruins, the pundits admonished. Pitiful sarcasm and plain fear floated around.   

Some native plain-speak patricians maintained that the iron demon ran too fast taking the ill-fated travelers to the destination in too short time. With confidential smirk, they maintained that it results in shortening the unlucky travelers’ lifespan. Some said the iron demon thrived on human and animal sacrifices on its demonic iron path. For every mile traveled it needs multiple sacrifices, they whispered with fear and apprehension. Well, the bloody sights of accidental hits on the tracks might have sired this belief.

The native could travel only in the third class carriages. These were open-sided compartments having just roofs overhead to save the passengers from direct onslaught of weather elements. The Britishers maintained that the Indians don’t need closed compartments because they don’t feel the heat like the fair-skinned rulers. These third class compartments were open to all Indians irrespective of caste or social rank. The higher caste Indians raised objections that they won’t travel with the untouchables because that pollutes their bodies. But to the Britishers all Indians belonged to one class, the lowly class of ignorant native masses. So they kept the rule that whoever pays the fare gets to travel in the train. 

Youth: The perennial foolishness

 

Youth is blunderous and foolish; of altercation and itching adolescence.

It was another physically uplifting and mentally relaxing Govardhan parikrama. On the way back in the afternoon we get into a shared car from Govardhan chauraha. It’s an Ertiga, a seven-seat vehicle.

For such car pools, they squeeze three passengers on the front seat by the driver’s side, four on the middle seat and three at the back. At 200 rupees per passenger it fetches 2000 rupees for ten passengers who are packed so tight that there is hardly any space to even shift one’s bum by just a millimeter.

I’m squeezed on the front on a little pad put on the hand-gear panel, one passenger each on both my sides and the driver to the right of all of us. To allow any meddling with the hand-gear I have to give the best of my effort, fixing all my energies on the toes that are continuously trying to get a better position to make the tensed body slightly relieved and keep it short of the breaking point in terms of mind and body both.

The wiry young driver fits in the little niche available to the extreme right on the car’s front seat. How does he manage to drive from so little a space is a miracle in the art of driving.

The middle seat has three passengers, an old woman, a young girl and a young man. The young man bristles with irritation and unease when the driver tries to force down the customary fourth passenger.

The young man is cozily fitted with the girl. He doesn’t want any intruder. The driver tries to put the old woman between them and then force another male passenger by his side on the left.

The young man panics seeing the chance of losing the cozy feminine proximity. He throws the typical male chivalry. ‘I’ll pay for two seats. Don’t let anyone in now!’ he flaunts his bravado.

I don’t care about money, he wants to show, confidence oozing from his bearing. The girl must be surely impressed.

The backseat has three passengers including my brother.

The boy strikes a conversation with the girl. ‘I think I know you,’ he says. ‘Are you from that locality, near this place, around that square, the grey painted house?’ he strikes gold in acquaintance. Yes, she is from the house he mentions.

I don’t think it’s a chance meeting. He seems to have planned this journey; must have been following her itinerary through some means, maybe some informer in her circle of friends. Most probably, he has been following her and now trying to pass this meeting as a chance occurrence.

He seems a very smart guy; knows how to build up a conversation with a girl. I’m from this and that, near your house, we stayed in a rented apartment, I saw you on the roof, you are maybe Sudhir’s classmate, he was my classmate in another school near that place. He seems to have done his research.

We are listening. She is doing B. Tech. He has joined his father’s business.

The conversation is progressing well. The driver and the boy between me and the driver get itchier with each sentence flowing from the girl’s mouth after the initial temerity melts and she starts talking comfortably. My young neighbors cringe visibly as the conversation at our back involves smiles and laughter.

Aah, the evocative idioms of youth! Unabashedly comparative, relative ethos of adolescence! I can feel the hormonal storms of jealousy boiling in the bodies near me.

Youth is so foolish. It takes everything so-so seriously. And personally.

The two boys in front feel as if their masculinity is tarnished when the girl is taken away (they feel sure of it) by another boy even though they don’t know any of the person involved in the talk emanating from the middle seat.

The driver and his neighbor share a collective identity as the ones who have lost a girl to a feral cat who has no right on her. A rival tomcat is courting a girl! How is this possible given their own handsome self in the near vicinity!

Oofs, the cross-pollination of affection!

The two boys in the front seat get fidgety with the passage of minutes. Youth is so-so execrable. The driving turns more and more brash. The driver is now driving like it’s a serpent at full speed on the busy highway.

I know that he is trying to assert his masculine endowment through heroic, dangerous driving. Or maybe he is trying to scare the couple by taking utmost dangerous turns.

The other boy is egging him on. They didn’t know each other before this journey started. But now they are close friends in their binary as the losers who bear the ignominy of a girl being whisked away from their clutches by a third thug.

The other boy is speaking as if he is drunk, like a heartbroken majnu who doesn’t care about life anymore; a loser in love who is ready to face even a violent death provided the rival is also crushed to pulp on the highway.

Every time the boy and the girl strike a new topic of conversation, dangerous driving touches a new high.

Not able to bear it anymore, the offended driver takes out a pouch of cheap stimulants available in the market like food ration, chews at its corner, spits out the plastic piece with disgust and squeezes the semi-fluid concoction into his mouth.

It gives an instant high, they say. With this new bout of intoxication he does his best to add one more number to the teeming list of road accidents in India.

The fat old woman shouts that she has to see her grandson’s marriage. She engages in a hit and run verbal duel with the driver.

Meanwhile I keep praying silently—I have to invest the entire pilgrimage’s punya to reach home unscathed and not get mauled like a worm on the highway.

It was a big relief to get out of the car after a couple of hours of missing dangerous crash on the busy highway by a hairbreadth dozens of times.

Well, we nearly turned into a casualty of hormonal storms clashing foolishly among the young people.

 

A self-inspired soldier of orderliness

 

This little sketch is inspired by a nice human being possessing a lovely positive approach to life. Ajay is a man in his fifties. He is an uncommonly sobered man. Smart, active, graceful with gentlemanly elegance, he is the principal of a government senior secondary school in Haryana.

One can clearly see that his school is an extension of his home and hearth: a constructive, creative zone of personal and professional elements that mix and blend harmoniously to form an outstanding institution.

No wonder the school under his charge stands out for its cleanliness, neat and clean garden, well-maintained building, clean bathrooms and well-meaning and concerned staff.

The head teacher’s kindly, ponderous eyes scanning the bestial blows of entropy and disorder spooling the typical mischief that has sadly become the hallmark of governmental schools in the country. 

Given the above facts, the school looks seas apart from pathetically neglected government schools surrounding this nice and cozy educational nest. The casual flightiness, so ubiquitous in state run schools, is missing in the school under his care.

He loves plants and trees. The kindly school chief’s spare energies are duly invested in regular plantation drives on the school premises as well as the surrounding areas. Many students purposefully footing along the chief teacher.

The soft crooner of melodies standing like a guiding star in the messy coop of boisterously squalid germs of ignorance and apathy in government schools.   

The gentleman principal has a great attitude towards life. When he finds something unnecessarily scattered around—some broken furniture, things disarranged and out of order, some randomness jutting out of the clean scheme of things—he is instinctively drawn to bring symmetry and order to it.

A little bulwark against the cranky, frisky, sneaky, rag-tag parliamentary disorder.

He has a very gentle and soft philosophy that drives this dignified urge to put things in order:

‘See, every disorder, any type of physical or mental disharmony, organizational disorder, clutter and chaos of things in a room or in a garden is seeking your attention. It wants to be remedied and put in decent order. It’s seeking symmetry and a well-shaped meaning. That’s a drive towards beauty and truth. But it can’t do it on its own. It seeks your attention; gropes for empathy in your heart to bring its ‘will to order’ into effect. So you have to be aware of this possibility of setting things in proper order. You have to be conscious that you are here to help the cause of positive change by rearranging the scattered things and elements around you.’    

The idlers

 

The people in villages have lots of time for idle bantering, gossips, and spinning exaggerated tales of mythical proportions. They have tremendous lungpower for pumping funny as well as tormenting folklores. Men over hookahs and cards are more talkative than even women. The latter have lots of household chores to dispose off.

The idle minds are workshops of stories where facts and fiction mix to spin fabulous as well as harrowing tales. Mountains are manufactured from molehills. A little fact can be stretched both ways (good and bad), just by the sheer incidental flow of circumstances. If you are lucky—and happen to be a protagonist related to the said fact or fiction—it will be stretched to such mammoth glorification that you are at the risk of dying of heart attack because of the sheer shock of overjoyed self. If unlucky, the very same fact or fable gets stretched the other way around to the darker negative side. You will then surely become a monster instead of hero. Then you are in danger of dying due to heartbreak born of shame and embarrassment.

The people in chaupals have big needles to puncture each other’s ego. Someone was heard saying about someone, ‘He is not even a complete ‘I’ yet he uses ‘we’ to connote his presence.’ The context suddenly changed and another man emphasized his point with the parable, ‘A blind man can never be sure about the completion of his marriage—even when all the formal rituals are completed—unless and until he has his bride in his arms.’ To this someone more mischievous further increased the degree of possession to confirm the marital status. Then god knows how someone else ends up telling this joke:

Jat: ‘Listen you O old woman. Bring a chapatti. There is a dog at our door.’ Wifie: ‘There is no chapatti left.’ Jat: ‘Then bring my stick. Why allow him to go empty handed?’

Then again the wind changed and the conversational flow moved a decade back when a family that was known to be belligerent and aggressive was wiped out slowly over a period of time, the last man being murdered a decade ago.

Sukhi Ram, a long-limbed old man, was the surviving patriarch of a one-time big family having many lawbreakers who killed and got killed in abundance. The glory of their heydays gone, the sun setting, their clout diminished and shrunk to insignificance, the old man moved as a pale shadow of their former criminal glory.

One narrator in the gathering in the chaupal is telling this about Sukhi Ram:

Shekhar the barber would take full bantering liberty while giving a shave to the old man. The old man listened mutely, hardly reacting, almost surrendered to their wrinkled, rotten fate. Then, when the shaving was over, he spoke, calmly, with calculated pause: ‘Son, it’s a matter of time. Time changes everything. There was a time when I would thrash the likes of you with my jutis. And if the juti slipped off my hand during the strikes, the bearer of the juti strikes would pick it up and offer it to me with full respect so that I could continue with the beating. Wasn’t it honor to be beaten by me?’ Well, that was plain fear. But then times changed, as Sukhi Ram said.  

When the great Taj turned into a barn

 

The legendary Jat king of the eighteenth century, Maharaja Surajmal once captured the great Taj Mahal in Agra. The Mughal kingdom was in disarray and the Jat ruler of Bharatpur in Rajasthan made challenging, humiliating forays into Mughal territories.

Jats are hereditary peasants. The great king of farming clans hadn’t much clue as to what to do with the wonder in marblework. But his farming knowledge helped him in this regard. He did something that assuaged his winner’s pride as well as kept the monument’s timeless beauty intact.

Even at the cusp of aesthetic inarticulateness, he didn’t strip the marble beauty of its honor; didn’t rape it like the clichéd ways of the medieval Islamic empire builders who ravaged beauty in stones with incalculable indigence of the soul.

With charismatic, ready, rustic wit, and naturalness of a mirthful clan having long affinities with jokes and puns, he turned the grand monument into a barn, put fodder in its grand ornate chambers and tied horses in regal arched passages.

But that was temporary; a temporary transmutation; a short eclipse like a cloud briefly covering the face of full moon on a clear night. He lost control of his glittering white barn after some time. So the wonder of mythical proportions was left almost untouched even after falling in the hands of a rival king. It just needed cleaning to get into order again as a beacon of love and beauty.

But to give the Jat ruler credit, he didn’t damage the wonder of the world like many medieval Islamic zealots, carrying archetypal punitive zeal against the kafirs, who attacked and destroyed many beautiful monuments, temples and libraries just for the sheer blind-faith born fun and revelry of intolerance and violence on those who followed a different faith. Carrying dexterous menace, they prided themselves as destroyers of statues, which they condemned as unholy, pretentious and perfunctory. And hence mutilated thousands of loveliest artworks in Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples.   

   

The end of democracy

 

With its razor-sharp, pinpointed, surgically executed, unsparing approach in policy formulation and its implementation and execution, China is setting newer and newer benchmarks in economic and technological growth and development.

In a world where end justifies the means, the Chinese system of authoritarianism, which allows an unwavering adherence to state policy and its implementation, will be taken more and more seriously in the democratic world.

The conspiratorial whispers will first turn to muted appreciation. Then all criticism will peter out. Once condemned loudly, the Chinese system will automatically build up an appealing validity in the minds of the democratic societies.

And since victory has many followers, the leaders even in the leading democracies will take up the Chine type of authoritarian approach in ruling their countries.

In fact, if you see the current leadership in democracies world over, you will see a clear-cut proclivity towards authoritarianism to give specific direction to their respective countries; the directions which are suitable to extra-strong political heads.

To the critics, you simply need to point out the Chinese approach towards unsparing development, elaborate their methodology, and your little-little transgressions in the democratic fort will stand accepted.

Democracies are against a big challenge indeed.  

The primal absurdity

 

Trying to squeeze out freedom like someone trying to force out the last bit of paste from a spent toothpaste tube. The paste made of wonder, danger, deceit, mischief, treachery, hope, love and hate.

To clean the unclean, spotted fangs of slavish prisoner’s conscience. The ritual of cleaning efforted with a fascinating evocation.

The pursuit of a mirage—a clean God; a pure Goddess. And the intention of pilgrimage itself enough to give oneself a clean chit.

A pilgrimage, taking intriguing path between love and cruelty.

With showcased sweetness and hidden pungency, the mankind tries to bridge the path between banquets and battlefields. A dagger in one hand and dove in the other.

All this in pursuit of a faint interlude of happiness; a brief blessing against the persistent curse; some secret sorrow sucking frustration and pain into one’s being.

Some spans of undivided attention, pointed focus and forceful direction in the vast sea of variegated shades of frenzied follies.

The malignant mirage, in clandestine complicity with chaos, cajoling with elaborate courtesy. Calling with its gaudy flavor and colorful theatrics.

The happy runner in the sands dying as a resentful, exhausted, embittered wreck in the desert. Flesh frozen with fear in the breathlessly sweltering heat. Maggots would then cast clumsy coils of decay and rot.

The scandalized sunbeams softly yielding to darkness through the evening.

But the sky would still peer with mystic subtlety.

A crudely satisfying day for the destiny.   

The revolutionaries of free soul

 

I think gypsies have been the real revolutionaries. They are the gutsy, untethered, itinerant, wind-led horses. A layered palette of defiance, dignity and romantic wildness, they have it in them to repel any comforting, collective cauterizing stamp of religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, locality or specific residence.

At great cost—which collective comfort zones provide—they have resisted the normal safe escape route of accepting a casting mould to become a civilized social product. The barefooted, borderless, inassimilable, irrepressible life enjoyed beyond fences. 

Tasting freedom almost like daily bread; their paths defying the urge to harden into roads; belonging nowhere; feeling at home everywhere; carrying joy in their exiled self; ever revolting against fixed addresses. The exilically roaming free-borns have been paying big price for their uncontained culture. Yet the settlers’ derision just sharpens their dignity.   

It’s a high-degree freedom—though coming at the price of social stigmas, denigration, ostracization and exploitation. But their vibrant off-beat colors are the epitome of an exotically un-established wandering tradition. As children of the wind, they embrace the horizon, not a particular shelter and roam on a broad platform surrounding the lean and scraggy linearity of the settlers’ way of life.

They have stoutly resisted the barbaric incursion of civilization into their tribe. They are like an unknown nihilist saying ‘yes’ to an exclusive yet elusive pattern of life.

Civilization—the staunch basher with its boring chameleon colors—has been feigning false victory by condemning their freedom as uncivilized foraying.

Against the exquisitely fine-proportioned façade of the world of the settlers, the gypsies roam with their wild lore. The settlers have a fenceless fury; the gypsies have untamed peace.

They are splendidly visualized elusive fragrance of mother nature. With their own lousy immediacy, they pass the settlements wrapped in their civilizational woes. They just pass with an exemplary emphasis of free will.

The desolate, all bleak settled world full of tense climax and taut excitement. Gypsyism, the unconditionally blooming rosebud tenderly curling around the settled world clogged with overflowing distortions.

The homeless tribes move with sweetly savoring perseverance by the side alleys avoiding the world gloomily radiating turbulence in all directions. Their undulating resonance has not allowed them to be caught in time’s creaky cobwebs as they break its scheduling net with weighty as well as soft silence.

These are spontaneous shuffling strokes, comically cute, hilariously exuberant, amorously amusing and bedazzingly idiosyncratic. A formless pulse smartly negotiating the stormy, mercurial forces. Pictorial and panoramic. A dynamic dimension having delicate brilliance. An exotic adventure. Radiantly rejoicing, dismissing the rewards of formal dignity. A kinetic metaphor for the eternal muse of the first cause, the primal fabricator of this worldliness.

The civilized world meanwhile watches in dissonance and desperation, all jumpy and cranky, shouting moralistic monologues. The gypsies just move with burgeoning exuberance and delicious drowsiness.

The sage

 

He was not friendly with alphabets and numbers. But the free-flowing shapes and colors of life seemed very friendly and familiar to him.

He was in love with the book of life, an avid scholar of it. Enormously elaborate was his understanding of life. Like a curious child he pursued and played with the invisible, trackless toys of mother existence.

No fallacious intercession by the razor-sharp logic and reasoning honed by books.

The spellbinding balance in his approach!

Friendly with the brisk gaiety of free-flowing laws of nature.

Magnificent profusion of wisdom naturally downloading into his system.

And he absorbing all of it like a teen in the healthy throes of lustrous adolescence.

Soft, pliable self untouched by the fiery glint and fierce possessiveness of borrowed knowledge. A solidly sculpted self. A new-risen tapestry in the infinite fabric of cosmos. A softly sparkling interlude rhythmically gleaming in the dark ignorance of customized knowledge. A richly mellowed self. A soft bloom looking at everything with an enigmatic clarity.

Although unlettered he looked a natural scholar, a very wise man who knew and understood things human and natural which most of the educated people would miss.

He proved in his little capacity—that one can learn the fundamentals of life and living in the open rolling vineyards of nature. And that there are always less known colors of life which are beyond the reach of even the wildest guesswork churned out by an educated mind.

A romantic balladeer he bucked the trend that only books and degrees show you truth, make you wise, prepare you for the survival fight on earth.

Primed to be sinners

 

Ingenious ways of killing, not to give death but make life so difficult with pain and torture that even death seems salvation, a favor if someone takes mercy and ends the torture, life itself.

Death approaching so slowly, with painstaking bits, as to make it maid of honor. The tortured body dying with urge to embrace it.

Life dysfunctional, the only function left—to cease to exist.

That’s the benchmark of human cruelty. Not of killing; but of making life so painful as to make death a reward, a favor; of turning it reverse—making one anti-life, the survival instinct feeling like a demon, the worst enemy one can have.

All this is clearly written in the open book full of petrified details of fossilized past. The book of bloodied history—visible-invisible wounds and cuts at individual, collective and institutional levels—chronicling mankind’s gravity-defying will to inflict pain at all costs in any situation.

The ugly ducklings ruling from the dark underbelly. The palace and seat of governance above glittering with polished protocols and illusionary facades.

The flimsy make-believe textures, tastes, complexity of flavors, tangy sauces, herb-spiced flavors, the roof-top parties, the apparent truth and beauty ruling the world. While in reality, ugliness and falsehood running the machine.

The dark gods of hypocrisy ruling like the utmost sovereign, ordering royal princes and father king to be murdered, usurping the crown, celebrating their memories, ordering a magnificent mausoleum for the murdered kin for offering prayers for the peace of their souls.

The foundation is cruelty; love is merely a duping façade.  

The burning kiln of lost love

 

In keeping with the great syncretic traditions of India, Ranjha (a Muslim) after being bashed and thrashed by Heer’s wards and taunted by merciless society became an ascetic—a Gorakhnath sanyasi.

The burning kiln of lost love, the golden billows of pain, firing him into high orbits of spirituality. His heart exiled from itself; his grief opted for shelter under the healing cover of saffron robes.

The tragic love-tale is much sung, but his ascetic journey is put hindermost in folklore. The very same worldly wheedling enunciating love in terms of what he gave, what he received. But truth is never straight like this give-take equation suggests. You will see it if you look a bit slantwise. And avoid the oft usual credulous cauterizing.

As a Hindu ascetic, maybe, he wasn’t lolling sullenly as the thrifty tongue might tempt you to believe. Maybe he crossed over the dark cave—exceedingly impenetrable to the strenuously accustomed masses peering from behind the grilled posts—and tasted the real honey of love as a much broader lover. Maybe he turned a flame that no longer required a wick; a heart that got widened and vast beyond a particular lovely face; a house that got emptied to let the sky pour in with all its glory; his tears distilled and sublimated into mystical chastity and divine clarity; a lover transformed into a peaceful witness; a spating river that broke the banks of bondage to become a sea; the ash of dead love cooling down to become prayers.

The arc from wounded to boundless love: walking away from his former tormented identity; the sweet desire of a lover for his beloved shed like it was burden on the soul; his loneliness distilled into stillness and listening; his wounds healing after learning tranquility; his possessive cravings transforming into easeful presence; his love no longer asking rewards or compensation for his suffering; sitting in silence and no longer asking for fruits of madly selfless love for a woman; his love collapsing inwards to bloom like a lotus in a muddy pond.

But he is portrayed merely as a crestfallen, ashen-hearted loser, moving hollowly and despondently, jeered and leered by the motley squawks of sadistic tormentors.

I think, with his odd escape—a gaping hole in his heart; his heart nailed to the image of his beloved, his desire bound to the pearl of his heart—he reached where not many so-called successful lovers would ever reach.

The old woman

 

Saturday, the day of Govardhan pilgrimage. We have ordered tea, to enjoy parathas prepared by our sister, around nine in the morning before starting to walk for the yatra.

An old woman stands nearby asking for ten rupees to fund a cup of tea for her. The unfailingly ingratiating tone.

Usually the alms seekers prefer currency notes, but they have to put it in the form of a request for food and tea. Money is needed by all in the world. Tea and food is available in plenty at langars organized by the people of faith at the holy town.

The old woman is clad in soiled saffron robes. She isn’t a beggar mendicant, that’s clearly visible; just someone seeing tough days who has taken refuge in the religious stream flowing through the place; someone in an encasement of adversities, the wrong hand of destiny using knives, scalpels and needles in its kitty to force an un-required surgery.

We have a few words with her, kind words, so needed in this increasingly mechanical world. Followed by what slightly qualifies to be ironical bantering on our part. The word ‘family’ crops up followed by the word ‘children’. A flood of tears starts from her eyes. We request her to sit with us and have tea and paratha with us.

Pain is sitting like stone in many hearts. Just a word of sympathy and it melts. She sips tea, eats paratha, and shares her sad story. More tears. Copious. Outpouring of pain. But it helps a human being. The cutting icicles of pain flow out, giving a temporary respite.

She has three children—two sons and a daughter. Her husband died two decades ago. Her children have thrown her out. Dishoused. Her side of the story. However, if someone talks to them—I mean her children—they will surely give ample reasons justifying their tragic deed.

Beyond demonizing stereotypes at both ends, truth is always in the middle, or a little bit left or right to the centre. I accept the blame on her children’s behalf. However irritating the parents, or nagging in habits, or idiosyncratic in behavior, it’s the children’s duty to take care of them. No other option. There is absolutely no justification for throwing one’s parents out. 

The old-age homes won’t admit her. They maintain that she is too old for admittance, being 82 years old. It’s quite funny that one is deemed too old to be admitted to a vradh ashram. Maybe they admit reasonably fit elders who can do some productive work for them in lieu of humble boarding and lodging.

She stays in a tiny room taken on a monthly rent of 2000 rupees. Her entire month is spent in walking around seeking charity and alms to collect the room rent. Food is never a concern here. There is a beeline of the people of faith holding langars and offering fresh, hot food.

Stomach full with breakfast; heart emptied of a bit of stony pain. She smiles through tears. A beautiful motherly smile reminiscent of our mother as the sun casts bright yellow rays on this cold morning.

We take leave. I give her 500 rupees. She needs it but still says, ‘Beta you have already given me tea, food and 10 rupees…’

I gently press the note into her withered palm. Putting a gentle reassuring hand on her shoulder, I move on my path.

 

The dispossessed and disinherited

 

The ironsmith nomads, gade lohars, are finally seeking to settle down in a world that is fleeting faster than ever. In this jet-setting space age, their lurching, creaking carts are left too far behind in the race of excellence, progress, growth and development.

They sometimes stay for months at a time at a little square in our village. That adds cross-cultural colors to the society for a brief period of time.

Their women and girls are beautiful in raw, exotic ways. These days they allow the vagrants from the settled streets to flirt with them. Earlier they used to have a tart, befitting reply for the eve-teasers. But times have changed and the once-famed gypsy pride of their womenfolk has diluted to allow the so-called civilized settled men to take mischievous pot-shots at them.

The green glens of gypsyism are gone. The large swathes of free-roaming regime now cluttered in narrow unsurpassable paths. It’s a slight but subtle compromise to allow life to take a tolerable shape in a world where the distance between them and the rest of the world has increased with a dangerous speed. A little allowance to strum the chauvinistic heartstrings of the settled males. A harmless prick on their once rock solid pride and chastity.

Once, when they were staying in village, there was this lavish marriage of two gypsy girls in the camp. The bridegroom arrived in a bus with the marriage party from a Delhi suburb where they had fixed their old gypsy cart in a mud and brick structure by the pavement to finally dock the ship.

The marriage was an exciting affair. The nomadic girls danced well much to the delight of the boys and men in the village. The marriage feast was also great in taste and variety and the villagers enjoyed it heartily.

The villagers burped and smirked: ‘Ancient gold and silver which they keep hidden in the wooden frames of their sturdy carts!’

A lovely panoply of images of harmonious existence and blending of cultures.

The dera then moved ahead on it journey.

They arrived again after a couple of years. This time an old woman from the camp died during their stay at the village. But the villagers won’t allow the homeless dead to be cremated at the site of the settled people.

The gypsies sullenly moved on to cremate their dead at a place where nobody would raise any objection.   

 

The forceful gentility of divine feminine

 

Mahesh has been graced with lots of feminine nuance and courtesy in his walk and talk. Graceful, soft-spoken, poised, measured with a lithe intonation in his personality. It makes him stand out with a charming feminine fervor.

This identity stands out like a black sheep in a group of brown ones in a deeply patriarchal society like that of Jats. A soft target in a society dominated by brash, haranguing, blustering, derisive, unrefined, mocking machismo.

In fact many people make sarcastic, barbed, belittling remarks about his soft, disarming, calm-edged manners. In a conservative patriarchal society, grace is always mistaken for weakness. Masculinity is hungry for noise. Most of the people parade their loudness as a kind of strength. 

The effeminate man has been on the path of devotion and many women, feeling safe in his company, are friendly with him. They have formed a little group for devotional song performances.

Apart from his feminine-grace-laden sweet persona, he is quite ‘straight’ in the rest of matters and things. He is a householder and has grown-up well-settled children now.

 This episode is from the times when he was struggling to establish his delicate graceful foot in the crudely lurching cart of macho-spirited farmer community. The odds looked against someone having such soft manners and feminine intonation in the choppy sea of extra-assertive masculinity.  

Some boys would even doubt his manhood. One such boy, named Kapil, was quite unsparing, polemically flippant and significantly assertive in his remarks, almost denigrating him to the socially sidelined status of the off-beat gender.

Mahesh kept on absorbing this rude harangue with poise and grace. Then a smile before the strike and his silence sharpened into speech. The words weighed properly, not flung in anger. A very precisely placed sentence, answering mockery with sound measure. He spoke in his soft voice, with relaxed manners, slow-paced, calm: ‘If I show my thing to you, you will have fever for a week!’

Blandishment of soft power. Triumphant without raising his voice. Very effective like a little puff of perfume overpowering loads of sweat.

The iron hammer pounding air; thunder wasting its power on stone. The rival turned speechless. There was nothing to say anymore. The soft-looking and gentle-sounding boy had given an all-conquering strike with a tender yet firm finality.

The alchemical reversal with surgical wit: the goldsmith giving a soft tinkling strike to undo hundreds by the crude ironsmith. A whisper without a shout. Polish and nuance defeating force.

In effect, on the normal plain of human experience, this is what we call a blacksmith’s singular strike surpassing hundreds by a goldsmith. To nail it down in one clean strike. But here the blacksmith happens to be a man of very soft, feminine demeanor. But resolute and manlike simultaneously in a subtle way.