LIFE BEYOND PRIME TIME NEWS

    Taking a break from the bedlam and super heated sauna that is Delhi these days, I have just returned from ten tranquil days spent in my cottage in a little village four kms. from Mashobra, beyond Shimla. It was a heart rending sight to have observed the massacre of thousands of trees and the dismembering of the hills on the Kalka- Solan stretch, where the on-going four laning work marks another victory of the internal combustion engine over plain common sense. And there's worse to come- by this time next year the NHA would have started its assault on the Solan- Shimla stretch ! But thankfully the forests that lovingly enclose my village have not yet fallen prey to the various Mafias and demented ideas that have taken over Himachal these days.
   Nature still rules here, and we co-exist comfortably, notwithstanding the "developers" and "builders" of Delhi who have started making inroads even here. Sometime back a hot shot lawyer from Punjab ( who occupies a high office in that govt.) did try to install an illegal borewell in his new house which looks like the USS Enterprise of Star Trek fame. This would have tapped into the only water source that is the life line of seven villages, and depleted it. The villagers naturally protested, and the govt. predictably sent a police force from Mashobra thana to help the lawyer ! But the simple folks of Moolkoti did not give up: they blocked the drill machine and even threatened to burn it. The lawyer finally went back with his machine, his brief between his legs. Moolkoti has just learned an important lesson in real- politic: don't depend on the govt. to protect the public interest- this has to be a DIY job.
    Puranikoti-my village- gets no newspapers, and I did not activate my Tata Sky connection. I do not have a smart phone so social media has passed me by a long time ago. I rarely go into town because I can never find space to park my car, and in any case most of my contemporaries are at various stages of Alzheimers and do not recognize me ( nor I them, and for the same reason). My erstwhile juniors do not visit me because I don't write their ACRs anymore. So-as planned- I was all by my lonesome self. I could have been in the depths of the Amazon forests, as cut off from the outside world as Mr. Jaitley is from reality. It was sheer bliss! It was epiphanic. The reason ? I got no news of the outside world for ten full days !
   The daily news- and not just Arnab Goswami- is the biggest tyrant of the modern world, and its foot soldiers are the newspapers, television, social media, e-mails, forwards and the two million apps in the Google play store. "News" today has to be, by definition, something which is bad: destruction, corruption, violence, disease, sexual perversion, political venality, famine, war. Do you ever see anything else on TV or read about in the tabloids ? Journalism has become a scavenging beast which can survive only on carrion- give it something which is healthy and wholesome and it will starve to death. It promotes only a venomous mix of distrust, hatred, anger, discontent and adversarial emotions.
    And so we are bombarded from morning till night, from womb to grave, by the worst aspects of human   exertions and thought- godmen who rape, politicians who plunder, dictators who massacre, trains that derail, man-hole covers that disappear, builders who decamp with buyers' hard earned moneys- I could go on and on with this Swindlers' list, but I'll only end up in tears of rage and frustration, and perhaps put you too, dear reader, in a similar frame of mind. Our daily fix of toxic "news" will never tell us about the farmer in Kerala who, fed up of waiting for the govt. to do something, finally dug a two acre pond with his own hands; or about the amazing experiment in the USA with parabiosis that has succeeded in slowing aging and mitigating Alzheimers; or about how the introduction of a pack of wolves into a national park in the USA has rejuvenated the ecology and geography of the whole landscape. News channels have given us all the gory details in the Ram Rahim saga, but did they spend even 60 seconds on the two brave women who struggled for 15 years to bring him to justice, or on the intrepid CBI officer who doggedly pursued his investigation inspite of being told to go slow ? But the purveyors of dismal news are not to be blamed alone, for we too have developed a taste for carrion, and find anything else stale and bland.
   This was my epiphany. The bliss came from the fact that, deprived of this toxic diet for ten whole days, the world again became a beautiful place, sans distrust, anger and abuse. The mornings were bright and fresh since I had no means of knowing their SPM or C02 content. The labourer in the fields did not strike me as a potential rapist or bag snatcher. The shop keeper in Mashobra bazaar did not look like a GST evader. The queue outside the only ATM in Mashobra failed to evoke unpleasant memories of demonetisation. The cow next door did not remind me of gau rakshaks. Even Mr. Modi's poster did not stir dreadful apprehensions of his next surgical strike!
   The absence of "news" had, in a way, restored the balance of life: there will always be some rain along with the sunshine, but that is not reason to despair, to post an outraged tweet, to rush to a shrink or doctor or lawyer. Life is beautiful here in the tiny village of Puranikoti, playing out to the unhurried rhythms of hundreds of years past. It remains untouched by the venom of news anchors, the untramelled ambitions of Presidents and Prime Ministers. the materialism of a digitised world. It will survive this Plastocene Age too, if left alone. It will always be a refuge from the madding crowd. Hence the bliss.
   I'm concluding this piece as my Shatabdi is pulling into New Delhi station( forty five minutes late, as usual). My next seat neighbour, who has spent the last four hours buried in his smart phone, informs me that Mr. Jaitley has just imposed a penalty on all bank accounts with a balance less than two thousand rupees. I am back in the world of the " Breaking News!" 

OSCAR WILDE AND INDIA'S GODMEN

 [ This piece was published, with a few minor changes, in the New Indian Express on 20.09.2017 ]

                          

Frankly, I’ve been surprised no end by the ruthless ferocity with which the Indian state has been carpet bombing the centres of the Dera Saccha Sauda in the aftermath of its leader’s conviction and its followers’ violence. Surprised, because this is the same state apparatus that took fifteen years to investigate the rape charges against him, that lined up outside the Dera gates for a holy “darshan”, that begged him for its votes, that squandered public resources to pamper him. Surely there must be a deeper explanation for this epiphanic volte face ?

There is, and we need look no further than Oscar Wilde to identify it. Wilde was a pitiless observer and trenchant critic of societal hypocrisy and one of his aphorisms supplies the answer: We dislike people for having faults we do not have, but we hate them for having the same faults which we have. Never was a truer word said.

We do not like to see a reflection of our own vices and weaknesses, and the Dera Saccha Sauda has done precisely that: held up a mirror to our rotten society and polity, exposed to full public glare the superstition, cronyism, exploitation and crass mendacity which define our social and political structures. And of course this makes us very angry, as Wilde had said it would.

Consider this : there is little difference between the empires of our God-men and of our politicians. Both aspire to just one objective- naked power. Both exploit the latent insecurities of people. Both use caste and religion to cement their support base and divide those of their rivals. Both lack any pretensions to democracy and are run by individual dynasts, family or coterie. Both acquire humongous quantities of money from sources that are opaque, dubious and undisclosed. Both are exempted from paying taxes. Both have cadres which have full licence to indulge in violence and hooliganism when the occasion or supreme leader so demands. Both are patriarchal and misogynist. Both are above the law.

God-men and politicians are like peas in a pod, conjoined twins in a parabiotic relationship, traditionally living off each other and prospering together. This is true of not just the BJP only: ALL political parties have, deplorably, been bed partners of various Babas at ALL times. The Congress had its Chandraswamy, the Samajwadi party had the infamous Ramvriksha Yadav who in June 2016 created mayhem in Jawahar Park in Mathura, resulting in the death of 29 people, including two  policemen. This misplaced reverence is a societal aberration; it is fashionable to think that these Babas are revered only by the less privileged classes, but this is not true. The upper crust have their own designer Babas who too can get away with anything- witness how the Art Of Living and its poster Baba Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was allowed to rampage through the Yamuna flood plains last year: the only time when Mr. Modi and Mr. Kejriwal have ever agreed on anything ! Baba Ram Rahim himself has been paid obeisance by just about every politician in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana. The BJP is only the latest suitor. That is why neither Mr. Khattar nor Mr. Rajnath Singh did anything substantive to prevent the ugly situation developing in Panchkula, till the shit hit the fan there-literally, if we are to believe the residents of this quiet suburbia. So what went wrong ?

The failure of Baba Ram Rahim to follow the prescribed code of conduct. In secretive and closed organisations ( like Deras and political parties) contentious and problematic issues are resolved in-house and not exposed to public gaze. There is a well established protocol for handling awkward, and perhaps illegal, predicaments. Cases are not registered, investigations are prolonged, loyal officers are deployed in critical posts, witnesses are won over or intimidated, court orders are challenged ad-infinitum, judges are recused, judgements are reserved, enquiry reports are buried deeper than the Mariana Trench. If all else fails and conviction becomes inevitable then there is the parole ( a-la Sanjay Dutt and Mr. Chautala) or the VIP ward in jail( a-la Sasikala and Sahara Shri), and the show goes on notwithstanding the occasional hiccup.

The mistake that Saccha Sauda made was in not observing this SOP and thereby endangering the entire carefully contrived web of deceit and its many powerful denizens. By taking to the streets the Baba broke the holy code of Omerta. He would have done better by following the Asa Ram model- although in jail now for four years he is yet to be convicted, he appears to be having a fine time behind bars, the case against him has got nowhere, witnesses are vanishing into the ether with great regularity, and there is a more than even chance that by the time he comes up for trial there will be little worthwhile evidence left against him. Most important, however, is the fact that his empire remains intact and his co-parceners do not feel threatened.

Baba Ram Rahim departed from this time-tested script and is now paying the price. The sheer ferocity of the state’s vengeance- raids, arrests, seizures, lock-downs, confiscations- is in direct proportion to its collusion with the Dera earlier. The effort now is to obliterate from public memory all reminders of their earlier partnership- Mr. Modi’s deep obeisance to the “mitti” or soil of the Dera before the last elections in Haryana, Mr. Khattar’s smirking photo with the now arch-villain, the long queues of politicians and Babus waiting for darshan and favours, the tax exemptions for his glitzy silver screen monstrosities, the Z category security at state expense, the 50 lakh rupees cheques by Ministers paid as premium for electoral insurance. These reminders of a now embarrassing past must be made to disappear, along with the Baba himself. There is a diabolical genius at work here: earlier the ruling party got votes by supporting the Dera; now it hopes to get votes by dismantelling it and burying Ram Rahim along with all evidence of their parabiotic partnership. Shakespeare was wrong, after all- it is not just the good that is often interred with a man’s bones, the bad is too.

But Oscar Wilde was right.

REST HOUSE CHRONICLES--III

    Rest Houses can occasionally offer bizarre experiences, often educative but always interesting. Sometime in 1996-97 I was consigned to the dog house for some misdemeanour and, quite appropriately, posted to the boon docks of the Animal Husbandry Department. I decided to visit the department's institutions in Dodra-Kwar, an area dependent on subsistence agriculture and sheep rearing. Dodra-Kwar is a remote tehsil, tucked away in the north-east corner of Shimla district, bordering Uttarakhand. History records that it was given to the Rampur Bushair state as dowry by a principality in present day Uttarakhand. Ever since then, the joke goes, Himachal has been trying to return it but Uttarakhand is having none of it ! It too, like Bara Bhangal, was landlocked till very recently, but  is now connected- a road was constructed in 2009  over the 12000 feet high Chanshil Pass to connect it to the road head at Chirgaon/Larot. In 1997, however, there was no road to Dodra-Kwar and so I, along with a Veterinary Doctor and a couple of pharmacists, trekked from Larot, over the Pass (probably the most beautiful one in the state), through the dense forest on the other side known as Kala Van, and by evening arrived at the first village, Kwar.

    Dodra-Kwar lies in the valley of the Rupen river (a tributary of the Yamuna) and is so named after its two villages, Dodra and Kwar (there is also a third village further up towards the Rupen Pass named Jakha, taken over by the Radha Soamis !) Kwar lies in the shadow of Chanshil and appears to have acquired the grim ambience of the bordering Kala Van: it has none of the cheerfulness and geniality of the typical mountain settlement, and is a forbidding place. The FRH (Forest Rest House) is some distance from the village and was quite decrepit at the time. Lacking any choice, however, we settled in for the night, beginning with the customary drink on its lawns while the chowkidar (a local) cooked dinner inside.

    After some time I noticed that the two pharmacists had also planted themselves in the kitchen and were watching every movement of the cook like a hawk! I suggested to the doctor that maybe he could ask them to come and join us for a drink too. He made no effort to call them, so after sometime I repeated my suggestion. The doctor flatly refused and, on my looking offended, finally explained to me the reason for his reluctance- and what an extraordinary explanation! According to him there existed a legend that the natives of the valley had historically distrusted outsiders and considered them fair game for plunder, sometimes even murder. Their SOP had been to administer a poison with the food at night and dispose of the body in the Kala Van. The pharmacists were in the kitchen to ensure that did not happen to us!

    I  certainly cannot vouch for the authenticity of this fable: all the local people I asked denied it vehemently, while the outsiders(mostly government employees) maintained a discreet silence. But it persists, and all I can speculate is that it may perhaps have been true in the distant past (most remote areas have these sinister myths) but improving connectivity and expanded intercourse have immutably changed such attitudes and practices, if they ever existed. I certainly found the residents of the other village,Dodra, very welcoming and hospitable- they even invited us to take part in a local chess tournament! I was eliminated in the first round, but my friend Sashi from Bilaspur made it to the finals.

    Never underestimate the chowkidar of a rest house! Having served hundreds of guests, and being privy to their conversations and worse, he is a deep repository of institutional knowledge and instinctive wisdom, as I found out in an amusing way. In June of 1980 I was hustled off as Deputy Commissioner, Bilaspur: soon it was the start of the annual planting season and in August I was invited by the Conservator of Forests to preside over the Van Mahatsov function at Ghumarwin, thirty kms from the district headquarters. I left for Ghumarwin the night before and landed up at the PWD rest house there. It was (and is) located adjacent to what was then a huge barren field, above a khad, or ravine. (Nowadays, of course, the field is covered with buildings and staff quarters of varied descriptions). I was received by the Tehsildar who soon left after ensuring that the dinner arrangements were in order. After a solitary dinner, enjoying my nightly cancer stick on the lawns, I asked the chowkidar where the Van Mahatsov planting  was to be held the next day. He looked a bit puzzled, and then pointed to the empty barren field next door:  "Here, sir. This is where the planting has been done every year for the last ten years!"

  The patch was as bald as Anupam Kher's polished nationalistic pate.

  And there you have in a nut shell the answer to the question: why is Himachal's genuine green cover declining in spite of  Van Mahotsavs, Compensatory Afforestation , CAT Plans and what not ? Nineteen years later the wheel came full circle: I was posted to the Forest Deptt., and every time the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests trotted out the impressive figures of survival of plants, I harked back in time to that humble chowkidar and tried hard to suppress a smile. For a bureaucrat the real learning process begins when he shuts his files, opens his eyes and steps out into the wide world- preferably into a Rest House !

   If tomorrow Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim Jong Un were to stop exchanging words and graduate instead to exchanging nuclear missiles, and I was given the choice of just one place where I could live out the rest of my life in a devastated world, I know the place I would choose- Dhela Thatch ( pictured below):

                           

                          [ The Forest Hut in Dhela Thatch in the Great Himalayan National Park ]

    Dhela is a gently sloping meadow, perched just below the ridge line that divides the Sainj and Tirthan valleys in the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) in Kullu. Surrounded by thick stands of oak and deodar, with dense thickets of dwarf rhododendron and hill bamboo on one side, it is an ideal camping site: there is even a little brook which provides water. The Forest department has built a stout log hut at its upper edge for use in the winters ( at 12000 feet Dhela can get a lot of snow)- for the rest of the year one can happily pitch tents anywhere on the dale. The height, mix of vegetation and undergrowth and the open spaces make it an ideal habitat for the highly endangered Western Tragopan (Jujju Rana) and sightings are quite common. The crags below it are home to the " ghoral" (mountain goat) which can be easily spotted sunning themselves in the morning sun. The view of the GHNP landscape from here is stupendous, framed by the majestic 16000 high Khandedhar range to the north, the even higher Pin Parbat massif to the north-west, the Tirthan ridge to the south-east, and beyond that the bleak ranges on which is located the holy peak of Srikhand Mahadev. There is a small "jogni" or religious cairn at the top, bedecked with colourful prayer flags which is ideal for meditation. This is Omar Khayyam territory for me:

" Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,

  A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse- and Thou

  Beside me singing in the Wilderness-

  And Wilderness is paradise enow!"

 I have been here four times and have kept my rucksack packed, waiting for the ICBMs to start flying in the Pacific.

    Which brings me to my final point. Is the Himachal Forest Deptt. aware of the priceless wealth of history. tradition, anecdotes, individual accounts, legends that reside in its hundreds of rest houses, many of them belonging to the British era ? It should be, and therefore it should immediately begin archiving them, before they are lost for ever with the passage of time. The Deptt. should commission an exhaustive documentation of each of the heritage rest houses and bring out a coffee table kind of book that will preserve their memories long after the physical structures themselves are long gone, as they inevitably will in time. The project can be funded from the budget of the Eco- Tourism Society. I had initiated the process in 2009-10 but could not see it through owing to my superannuation. A number of readers have written to me suggesting this and a friend informs me that the neighbouring state of Uttarakhand has already brought out such a compendium. We should not lose any more time in emulating them.

BANKRUPTCY CODE IS AN IMPEDIMENT FOR HOME BUYERS

            [ This article was published in the New Indian Express on 5.9.2017 under the title: BUILDING APARTMENTS IN THE AIR ]

     The declaration of JayPee Infratech as insolvent under the new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act 2016 is just the tip of a massive real estate ice berg which has the potential to sink hundreds of thousands of families. Other developers will follow the same exit route soon, not only in Delhi NCR but all over the country, given the impunity with which they have been siphoning off the money of home buyers. The Unitech Directors are already in jail and a bankruptcy petition has also been filed against Amrapali by two banks.

     Matters have been allowed to reach this low point by successive venal governments in UP and Haryana which have been happily approving projects without any oversight or questions. The scale of the emerging problem can be gauged from the fact that in Greater Noida alone there are 203 projects, of which 82 are “critical”, i.e have taken money from buyers but are in no position to deliver the flats. Jaypee has swallowed up Rs.17000 crores from 30000 applicants, Amrapali from about another 10000 victims. Builders in Noida also owe thousands of crores to banks and Rs. 7200 crores to the Noida authority as land dues! Gurgaon is another bubble waiting to burst, and other metros will soon follow suit.

     All these developers, like Jaypee, will in all likelihood be declared insolvent/bankrupt by the NCLT( National Company Law Tribunal) under the new Bankruptcy Code. The Act, however, is so framed that the home buyers are not likely to get any relief or recover any substantial part of their moneys. Firstly, the builders have had enough time to transfer their funds elsewhere and will leave behind empty shells from which little can be recovered by way of auction. Secondly, they have built fire-walls around their other assets which in all probability cannot be touched. Thirdly, the home buyers are not even mentioned in the list of seven entities entitled for payment of dues following liquidation of a company under the Act! They are neither investors, nor financial creditors, nor operational creditors, nor workmen! The simple truth is that this Act is intended to primarily help the Banks, and is therefore hopelessly inadequate  in resolving the peculiar problems of consumers or casualties of the real estate sector- the home buyers.

     The time has therefore come for the government to seriously consider the following issues/questions:

[1]  Home buyers have been given a raw deal under the Code. They are the last category when it comes to a refund whereas they are the biggest investors in the company declared bankrupt. IDBI Bank ( which will get the first priority) has to recover only Rs. 526 crore from Jaypee whereas the buyers have put in 17000 crores. And yet they are not considered as secured investors!

[2]  A bank ( or any other creditor) can approach the NCLT if its dues are not paid and trigger the Insolvency process, but a home-buyer cannot even if s/he has not been provided the home for which s/he has paid. This is patently unfair and must change.

[3] A home buyer cannot be a part of the Creditors’ Committee which will finalise the plan for redistribution of the realised assets of the insolvent company, since s/he is neither a financial nor an operational creditor. This is illogical and unjust considering that s/he has the maximum stakes in the company and has the most to lose.

[4] The built-up assets of the bankrupt company ( at whatever stage of completion) belong to the applicants who have paid for them. How then could they have been mortgaged by the said company to the Banks as security for loans ? This is  a fraud on the home buyers: no second ( or “pari passu”)charge can be created on an asset without the written concurrence of the party to whom it is already pledged- in this case the home buyer. The builder company has the right to create the charge only if it constructs the flats with its own funds first, and then subsequently sells them. But that is not the business model followed by either Jaypee , Unitech , Amrapali or any other builder. They follow the “ pay as you build” model and take advance payments in instalments at every stage of the construction; the flats therefore belong to the applicant-buyer and cannot be mortgaged without his consent. The primary  lawful lien on these assets, therefore, is that of the home buyer and not of the Banks. The Code should recognise this.

[ 5] Another injustice heaped on the home buyers is that once the NCLT starts the bankruptcy process the former cannot approach any other court or Consumer Forum  for redressal of their grievances. This is not equitable since the builder company can drag the matter through our notoriously sluggish legal system for years together, while the individual home buyer, usually subsisting on a salary or a pension, can only wait, watch and pray.

[6]  Another interesting question that arises is: how can the banks give two loans against the same flat/property- one to the buyer, and one to the builder? Is this prudent banking practice ? By doing so the banks are over exposing themselves, for if the builder fails to deliver then both loans go bad ! The only one who makes a killing is the builder, which is what appears to be happening in the instant cases- the promoters of both, Jaypee and Amrapali, will happily exit after limiting their losses, and the banks and buyers will be left holding the proverbial can.

[7]  The Bankruptcy Code contains no specific provision for either a forensic audit or initiation of criminal action against the promoters of the company by the RP ( Resolution Professional) if he finds that funds have been siphoned off or fraud committed. This provides them an undesirable immunity.

     The Code as it stands today is apparently intended to help the Banks recover their NPAs. It does not recognize the different character of the real estate sector and its notorious track record. It needs to be amended suitably to instil faith in the public. The Union Finance Minister has given some tepid assurances that the interest of the JayPee home buyers will be protected. It means little in the absence of specific enabling provisions in the Code. He needs to convert the standard rhetoric into appropriate legislation in Parliament.

  

REST HOUSE CHRONICLES --II

    Like all buildings that have  hoary pasts , Rest Houses too have all kinds of stories attached to them and this gives them a mystique and distinct identity, perhaps a tourism value too if properly marketed. Take for instance the FRH (Forest Rest House) at Purthi in remote Pangi district. It was constructed in pre-Independence days by a British Range Officer called Todd. Situated above the Chandrabhaga river in a thick wooded grove, it is part of the Range office complex. Made completely of wood, which was the only material available in those days and in abundance, it is a pleasant sight, with flat, green lawns laid out all around it, interspersed with pathways. The Forest Department has renovated and furnished it on the inside in a glitzy, Baba Ram Rahim kind of fashion but fortunately the exterior has not been altered. It used to be the Range Officer's residence and is therefore known as Todd's Bungalow. Later, it was converted into an FRH.

   Todd appears to have been quite a beaver at building things, because he also built the Forest complex at Killar (the district headquarters of Pangi). To relax from his strenuous activities he was fond of taking walks with his dog on a narrow trail above the river. On one such amble the dog (who was on a leash) was apparently startled by something in the undergrowth and darted back, wrapping the leash around his owner's legs and unbalancing him. Both Todd and the dog fell into the Chandrabhaga and drowned. But Todd Sahib never left his beloved bungalow, it appears. People who have spent nights in the FRH swear that he visits his house at night- he is reported to come down the chimney and fireplace of one of the bedrooms. There have been too many reports of such "sightings" to dismiss them out of hand. The whole apparition is rarely seen; what people usually sight are two sturdy legs in the fireplace, which is enough to give them such a fright that they don't hang around to see the rest of the torso. The spectre has never harmed anyone, or created any ruckus, or thrown things around like a poltergeist: apparently it is content to walk around the building that was once its own.

    Todd continues to live on through his bungalow, and adds another legend to the rich folk-lore of these mountains. I've spent a couple of hours in the rest house but could never spend a night there, regrettably, because of tight schedules. But I can appreciate why Todd keeps such a tight vigil on his beloved bungalow, given that the original wooden flooring has already been replaced by mustard coloured vinyl, and at any moment the government might decide to replace the quaint, old fireplaces with four- rod heaters !

                         

                              [  FRH PURTHI or TODD'S BUNGALOW- Photo courtesy Vinay Tandon, IFS ] 

                            [  THE FIREPLACE IN TODD'S BUNGALOW- Photo courtesy Vinod Tewari, IFS ]

    Forest Rest Houses are a god send for the committed forest officer, most of whose work lies in isolated and inaccessible areas, far from any habitation. After a day spent  tramping up and down valleys and mountains, marking trees and counting stumps, it is a relief to be able to betake oneself of an evening to a place that has a roof, beds, bathrooms and a kitchen, no matter how elementary- even a 7-Star hotel cannot provide a fraction of the bliss that an FRH can at the end of a grueling day, as I've discovered for myself many a time! A typical example is the FRH at Bara Bhangal.

    Bara Bhangal is the only remaining land-locked valley in the state (though a mule road is now coming in from the Chamba side). To access it from Billing (the present road head and world famous para-gliding site) one has to undertake an arduous, sometimes dangerous , four day trek over the 17500 feet Thamsar pass and its permanent ice fields. If ever a village needed an FRH it was Bara Bhangal, but it didn't get one till the early years of the first decade of this century. The delay is easily explained- no officer above a Deputy Ranger (or equivalent rank in other departments) ever goes there!                            Actually, the government has a monumental dilemma here, caught between a rock and a hard place, or (to be more accurate) between a mountain and a river. In an area of 1200 sq. kms there are only a dozen or so government employees! No one ever goes to check whether they are working, or are even present. The employees are quite fearless, confident in the (correct) belief that they are already stuck in the most difficult posting in the state and hence have nothing to fear: the powers that be can do nothing worse to them! The village has a primary and a middle school with five teachers. As expected, they usually come to take their salaries and then disappear! I made a surprise visit there, my second,  in 2005 or thereabouts and found that all seven had decamped to Baijnath after taking their six months' advance salary for the winters! They were all suspended, of course, and even their subsistence allowance was made conditional on their collecting it in Bara Bhangal. However, coming back to rest houses: sometime around 2002-2003 the local Forest Guard, displaying the initiative of a Head of Department, decided to take matters in his own hand, secured some funds and approvals with great difficulty, and built the FRH himself !

             

     

         

                                         [ THE FRH AT BARA BHANGAL--photo by the author ]

As you can see for yourself it's a very basic structure, but it's better than the Hyatt for someone who has been walking and climbing for 70 kilometers, spending four nights in the open with some smelly sheep to keep him warm (if he's lucky!), fallen into innumerable ditches and crannies, frozen his posterior every time nature issued a summons, and living off dal-roti and siddu. It's actually quite large from the inside- two rooms, a dining area, an out house for ablutions (with running water from a nearby stream conveyed by open PVC pipes!) and a kitchen. There was no electricity then (there is now, from a small micro-hydel project in a nearby nullah) and the villagers burnt the roots of pine trees called "jagni" for lighting. The hut is situated bang in the middle of the thickest stand of deodar you'll see anywhere, on a protruding plateau above the Ravi river. And just remember- the whole thing was conceived, designed and constructed by a Forest Guard, with no help from anyone! Generations of trekkers will forever be indebted to this enterprising and far-sighted official, God bless him !

    My group spent an enchanting two days in this FRH, recouping our energy and washing off the accumulated dirt, before moving on to the even more dangerous trek to Nayagram in Chamba. My greatest satisfaction ?- that we were the FIRST visitors to this FRH: our names are there on the very first page of the rest house register, the Abu Ben Adams of Bara Bhangal! Go check it out !