Sahyadrica

A view of the outer Himalaya - the Shivalik, upwards from the city of Ramnagar in Nainital. As fate would have it, I would wound around the same road across groves of jamun in the marshes and stands of sal in the lower hills, by the same shop I fondly remember meeting a lovely she-dog with light-brown eyes who immediately liked me in return, and up the mountain roads like I did seven years ago, mesmerised by the endlessness of the forests of the Himalayan foothills, across wide riverbanks of the Kosi – the same river that many have, in another age, journeyed afoot, from the trading Shauka families covering many miles across the Transhimalaya to the terai plains, to Harrer and Aufschnaiter, two mountaineers who escaped from the Dehradun Internment Camp when the World War II started, following the Kosi at first, all the way to Lhasa. It was sheer coincidence that I read Harrer’s account Seven Years in Tibet as I crossed Kosi every day. I was in the Shivalik Range of the North-western O...

This place is inviolate , said the little girl who was our guide of her forest village Supegaon. It was noon in the middle of summer. We were forbid from eating any karvanda  once we crossed into the boundary created by tall trees along the edge of browning fields. The girl informed us that we have entered the God’s abode – locally called devrai – and everything was silent save for the leaves that crumbled under our feet. The ambiance of this place was cooler than the fields that surrounded it, and we were silent not out of choice but by an involuntary hush that settled upon us. I’ve still not come to explain the effect devrai ’s have on people. Perhaps it is psychological, perhaps just natural. But the fact rooted in the keepers of the devrai is that the silence is because of the Gods that dwell here: the protectors of the village, and the belief is shared almost uniformly throughout India. Ecologists today call it sacred groves, the most ancient community-based conservation ...

It is pitch dark outside as I sit and write this. The tree-line has dissolved into the empty space above, with only a few stars gleaming down upon the darkened earth. I am sitting by an incandescent light I switched on at the click of a button, and I plugged in my computer, turned on some music, and began to think. There in this darkness that has set in at six o’clock in the evening is a village devoid of all that I possess right now. This village probably lies within a hundred kilometers around me, is devoid of electricity, is devoid of any form of artificial light save for the kerosene lamps hung from corrugated ceilings. This village is older than you and I, and dates back to the bygone era of our forefathers. Its houses have been surrounded by woods for eons, and the darkness that falls on this village tonight is no different from the one that engulfed it last year on this day. Sharad Purnima is celebrated on a full moon, also called Harvest Moon, and marks the beginning...

For long have I been in awe of the sea: her depth, her immensity bewilders me just as Himalaya’s sheer cliffs and cold out-worldly reaches. But just as climbers belong to the mountains, the sailors belong to the seas – and I am none of these. Through the eyes of a bewildered child all I have with me is a source, from where I draw my capability to admire, and from where I am able to absorb the knowledge hidden beneath the layers of rocks and waves of waters. Yet as much as anyone would like to step into the paws of a tiger, I’m sure not everyone would like to step into the shoes – or flippers – of a fish. But to be a fish in this world of seafood delicacies is not just about swimming freely. To be a fish, is to live in the shadow of a boat throughout the life. A busy jetty on a cloudy evening The sea calmly lashed along the shoreline of a bay nestled amidst two rocky shores. A fort of old rests as a wave-breaker in the middle of the curves. The bay serves as a jetty for haul...