Column

As the plains fall behind and the mountains surround us, there is a definite change in the air.

I am on my way by road from Delhi to Leh, and have just crossed Chandigarh and am wending my way up towards

Bilaspur, Sundernagar and Mandi. The day will end with our reaching Manali, but the magic of the mountains is already spinning its web.

The mood is uplifted, it feels as if the normal constraints that bind most of us down are being loosened and shed, as the air gets crisper, the environs greener, and the sky bluer.
Then the first sign of discord creeps up to stir my mind. What I wonder is the matter with some of the hills that we are seeing around us, as we climb higher into the mountains.

Many of them are barren of trees, the top soil hangs loosely like an oversize shirt on a starving man, and more than once, the road is blocked by rubble and stones, and loose mud that the mountainsides have shed.

The mountains of Himachal are still green in stretches, but more and more the sight of a barren hill sends out warning signals.The road is sinking in patches, men work with determination to make it worthy of the many vehicles working their way up.

It is a thought that disturbs me considerably... that the road might not be usable for long, that the mountains that they have been carved out of, are on the verge of collapse.

I can see the reasons why this state of affairs has ensued. What I ask myself is a hoarding for a clothing firm in Chandigarh doing standing in the midst of the green, miles away, in the hills that lead away from that city, to Sundarnagar. One hoarding, and another will follow, and each hoarding will mean less space for trees.

Himachal is clean of plastic, it makes me happy to note that every town we pass is clean, tidy, orderly. I am beginning to tell myself that I am an alarmist.

At the wonderfully quiet village of Jispah, beyond the excruciating road past Rohtang Pass, where Maruti vans, and Indicas, as well and buses, and jeeps line the road making progress slow and painful, I meet this quiet couple. He is 52, and retired early and the two of them decided to settle in a small farm, close to where they belong: near Palampur, in Himachal.For two months every year they travel by road through the state.

“We are our own masters and we love this place. We want to see all of it while it still is how we remember it.” Their house, they tell us, stands just in front of a wood, and their garden is full of flowers, fruit trees, and fragrant pines. They grow their own tea in a tiny patch as the land is good for it; and from the strawberries, and the peaches and pears that their garden offers up to them season after season, in great abundance, they make their own preserves, wines, and have enough to share with neighbours.

They are happy and content in having nature as their friend and ally; their nearest neighbour, 20 miles away is another retired couple who have been there for 20 years and still calls up to tell them to check out the remarkable sunrise on a particular day.

“It’s a life we have adopted and it works wonderfully. But around us we see signs of what is called development. There are houses coming up that disengage from the traditions of having slating roofs, and muted colours, there are patches of trees being cleared to make bigger and bigger buildings. Can nothing be done about this before it is too late...” they ask, almost beseechingly, as if the fact that we are city dwellers gives us a magic wand.

Of course, neither I, nor my companions have an answer, but we promise to try and see what we can do. Should the hoardings draw a common slash across every part of the country, tarring everything with the germ of conspicuous consumption, making one want more and more even as we have less and less to offer in return? The thought mars my days as I expore Ladakh.

But there is a glimmer of hope. Here in Leh, where I write this from, the market that once was filthy and full of cows and vermin, is spic and span, the roads are free of refuse, no bits of plastic float about. All the way from Manali to Leh, the cities and villages are amazingly clean.

Perhaps we in the city will finally learn from these smaller neighbours far away, I think. That is, if we don’t end up changing them instead.

Email: ssaran@dnaindia.net