Sahyadrica

Foreword by C. R. Bijoy Dust evokes so many feelings. It settles on things – including memories – or everything turns to it. I may not be the only one to romanticise dust as it settles. This book that I reflect upon one last time in a long time, starts with me looking back as dust is settling upon it. It began with dusting off the leather-bound cover of a book written 150 years ago. Opening Forsyth’s posthumous publication – he died at the age of 31 due to an illness – was a doorway to a different world as much as it was a travel back in time. While I critique his and his contemporaries’ outlook not merely from a modern lens of ethics and wisdom but through the lens on the people of past and present, I was in awe of his extensive travel of central India, something I couldn’t match by a long shot. Personally, I wanted to match him, to present central India’s history from a modern lens. It took me much longer than him, and as I gather words in presenting a personal account of the writing...

Thrung Thrung Karma Our world is full of bird-whisperers. They wander alone, sometimes they are followed by the likes of me – often with a camera – to listen and watch and be amazed by their art. I follow Phurpa who walks a few yards ahead of me, his hands behind his back signalling me to stop or follow, talking to birds. His presence conjures birds from nothing. It is not a cheap trick, for hidden in his skill is a learning we need to take heed of: in this world of whisperings, habitats disappear in front of our eyes; birdsong lost to machines crushing stones and digging sand and felling wood; everything is being concretized or paved over – bird nests and bird bones. Following him into the mountain valley, I stumbled upon a bird among birds in a place among places in a year of years. *** Act I. The Sedge A river takes birth in a glacial lake somewhere beneath Chiumo and Nyegi Kangtsang, two of the tallest peaks of the Eastern Himalaya. It flows between ragged wind-swept snow-dus...