SPECTACULAR HIGH ALTITUDE PASSES OF HIMACHAL- PIN PARBAT.

 

             SPECTACULAR HIGH ALTITUDE PASSES OF HIMACHAL [ I ]

                                            PIN  PARBAT

 

The massive Pir Panjal range of the Greater Himalaya  separates the districts of Kullu and Lahaul-Spiti in Himachal Pradesh. There are a number of rugged passes along this range which the hardy tribals have used since time immemorial- Kugti, Chobia, Kalicho and Rohtang served the residents of Lahaul, while Hamta and Pin Parbat were used by the people of Spiti. Inevitably, with the expansion of the road  network and improved connectivity, these passes now witness the passage of only the resilient “gaddis” or the adventurous trekker.

                          

                      [ Pin Parbat Pass. Photo by Sanjeeva Pandey ]     

At 5319 meters  Pin Parbat straddles the watershed of Kullu and Spiti: the north is drained by the mysterious Pin river, and the south by the Parbati. Pin Parbat also separates two distinct eco zones: the Kullu side is blessed with lush green temperate vegetation while the northern Spiti side is a cold desert devoid of any vegetation, a frozen canvas of sculpted rocks and lonely peaks bathed in the most colourful hues imaginable. The pass can be approached from both sides but the route from the Parbati valley on the Kullu side is the more preferred option.

                   [ The infant Parbati exiting Mantalai lake. Photo by author ]

The  launch point for the ascent to the pass is the glacial Mantalai lake (14000 feet), the source of the Parbati river and a three days’ trek from the road head at Pulga in the Parbati valley. There is no human habitation after Khir Ganga, a day's trek from Pulga, and the only peoples you can expect to meet thereafter are the itinerant, nomadic and transhumant Gujjars or Gaddis with all their worldly assets literally on the hoof, guarded by that matchless breed of dogs – the eponymous gaddi or Himalayan Sheep Dog.  It is possible to reach the pass from Mantalai in one day’s hard trekking and climbing, but this is not adviseable because it involves a climb of 4000 feet and then a descent of another 3000 feet to the camp-site on the other side, all over rocks, ice and crevasses. Any delay and one can get stranded in dangerous no man’s land in the darkness. It is best, therefore, to camp at the foot of the pass after leaving Mantalai and push up to the pass the next day.

                  [ On the saddle of Pin Parbat pass. Author is fourth from the right.]                                 

The track from the lake heads  east along a narrow, detritus filled valley overhung with glaciers on both sides which feed the lake itself. It ends about three kilometres later at an awe-inspiring feature: a sheer wall of loose rock and moraine, rising straight up 1000 feet at an impossible angle of 70 degrees. It’s difficult to get a firm footing on this slippery slope and one has to inch up one step at a time, keeping a lookout for falling boulders.  It takes two hours to reach the top: at 15000 feet the view is stupendous- a 270 degree sweep from the west to the north, an unending array of glaciers, peaks and shimmering streams, all feeding the forbidding lake which we had just left behind.

                [ The massive snout of a glacier on the way to the Pass. Photo by author ]

The track continues eastwards from the saddle, along a narrow, scree covered valley floor, through which flows another small stream originating from the glacier atop Pin Parbat itself. We followed this rivulet for a couple of kilometres and then pitched camp for the night- Base camp I.

The next day dawned bright and crisp as only the mountains can offer. We broke camp at 7.00AM, and after a kilometre came to a huge rockfall about 50 meters high which would extend all the way to the pass. The going is tough, but soon relieved by the snout of a massive glacier on the right, at least 150 feet high. It was an awe-inspiring feature as we moved along its foot: it had ice caves and overhangs from which little ribbons of snow melt emerged in hundreds of cascades, all merging into the little stream we were following. Soon we were above the glacier and could now see its huge expanse from the top. It stretched away as far as the eye could see to the south, and it was fractured with hundreds of crevasses. I sometimes wonder if this immense glacier is still there, or if it too has succumbed to the effects of global warming.

                        [ The colours of Pin valley. Pin river is in the middle ground.

                           Photo by author]

                  

After another kilometre or so, the top of the rockfall is achieved, and the Pin Parbat pass itself  now rises on the ridge-line, completely encased in a thick mantle of ice. This ice crust is about 10 feet thick at the edge. We clambered over it; the prospect before us was absolutely mesmerising: wave upon wave of ice dunes, hillocks and shallow valleys of snow and ice on the massive glacier, gently ascending to the pass itself. There is no track and the surface is fractured with innumerable crevasses. The snowfall of the previous night had covered these fissures with a light mantle of snow, obscuring them from the careless trekker and presenting an additional danger.  Carefully roped up, we trudged  through the vast ice field and after about an hour crested the top of the glacier. This is indeed glacier land- all around us were these massive rivers of ice and we counted at least 12 of them. We were now standing on the exact watershed line between Kullu and Spiti, looking down into the little known Pin Valley, taking its name from one of the streams originating from the pass- the Pin river. Base camp II was a further 1000 exhausting meters below.  From Base camp II, which is on the banks of the infant Pin it is another two days’ trek to the little village of Mudh. This is  the Pin Valley National Park, the domain of the snow leopard, Spiti wolf, ibex and ghoral.

THE SLAPSTICK QUANDARY

 The last fortnight has not been a good one for Himachal's politicians. The Chief Minister, Mr. Sukhu, lived up to the promise he had shown as a child and lost all four Lok Sabha seats to the BJP. The late Chief Minister Raja Virbhadra's son, Vikramaditya Singh, will never be able to show his face in royal circles again, having lost miserably to a far-from-common commoner in the Mandi seat. Mr. Anurag Thakur of the BJP has been divested of his central Ministership. There is some speculation that the always smiling Mr. JP Nadda may have had something to do with it: he first moth- balled the father, and now the son. That now leaves only the Holy Ghost, the banarsi pan(jandrum), he of the Immaculate Conception, to deal with. As someone sang, to everything there is a time...And finally, the Himachal-ki-beti Kangana Ranaut was slapped in the kisser by a lady constable of the CISF (Central Industrial Slapping Force). (This, of course, solves the mystery of the recent deployment of the CISF for Parliament's security- perhaps the stigmata on Ms Ranaut's flaming cheek is a dress rehearsal of what Opposition MPs can expect from the CISF chappies in Parliament. Of course, Ms Ranaut herself is now safe- a lawyer friend tells me that slapping her again would amount to res judicata or double jeopardy, and would therefore not be allowed by My Lords if they ever return from their vacations. 

Coming back to the slapping, however; I feel a disclaimer is in order here: I abhor violence and do not condone it, except when it is inflicted on people I don't like. I do not dislike Ms Ranaut- how can the male of any species except perhaps the streptococcus?- but I do disapprove of many of her utterances and the ideas she stands for. She is a loudmouth and a motormouth whose natural instinct is to insult and abuse, like she did all those women at the farmers' protest. The CISF constable, Kulwinder Kaur, is the daughter of one of these women, and belongs to a proud community which does not believe in turning the other cheek- as Ms Ranaut's own flaming cheeks bear testimony to. To put it bluntly: Ms. Ranaut was asking for it and got what was due to her. If you want to lie down with dogs, expect to be bitten by a few ticks and fleas.

But she has her defenders: how can a person in uniform slap a woman?, they shout from their majoritarian ramparts. Really? What have persons in uniform not done to their country-men under the orders of this regime to which the lady from Mandi owes her allegiance? Have they not dragged women wrestlers (champions all) on the roads of Delhi and roughed them up while in uniform? Have they not burnt at midnight (without the consent of her parents) the corpse of a young Dalit girl, raped and killed by upper cast men, while in uniform? Have they not barged into the hostels and libraries of Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Milia and mercilessly beaten students of both sexes without any reason, while in uniform? Have they not stood by and watched, for almost a year now, the atrocities being committed on the women of Manipur, while in uniform? Did not a railway policeman, while in uniform,  walk through a train coach, shooting members of a particular community with impunity? Please, all ye bhakts of various shades of saffron, spare us this drivel about uniforms. In the India of today a uniform is not a symbol of lawful forbearance, as it should be, it is a license for excess, accompanied by the Supreme Leaders's guarantee of complete immunity from the law. So what type of clothes Kulwinder Kaur was wearing when she planted the Congress symbol on Ms Ranaut's cheek is quite beside the point.

Welcome to public life, Ms Ranaut, and to the world of slippers, slaps and ink- ask Mr. Kejriwal, who has been slapped more times in public than by his mother as a child. Welcome also to the reality that sooner or later your past will catch up with you. One cannot make a career of foul mouthing individuals, abusing communities, vilifying particular religions, indulging in violence of the ideological and verbal kind, and not expect a pushback. This slapstick episode in which Kangana Ranaut plays the lead role has many subtle nuances, and all those who condemn Kulvinder Kaur without acknowledging these nuances are just being hypocritical and politically correct. Adopting a politically correct stance is the laziest response to a controversial situation. And, as Harry Truman so correctly remarked, political correctness is nothing but the deluded belief that it is possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end. Good luck, folks, in finding the right end!

DELHI, HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME

 My first posting as Deputy Commissioner was in 1980, to a district called Una. Una sits uncomfortably on the border with Punjab, and was apportioned to Himachal under the Punjab Reorganisation Act in the 70's. Ever since then Himachal has been trying to return it to Punjab, without any success ! The reason?- the good citizens of Una just have to be the most argumentative, cantankerous and litigious bunch in the Himalayas. In fact, I was told of a legend there that when Guru Nanak Dev visited Una during the course of his travels, he spent a night there trying to preach to the people. It was apparently in vain because they wouldn't listen to him, kept arguing with him on every issue and generally gave his teachings short shrift. Next morning, before leaving, he conferred his benediction on them by praying to God that they should not be disturbed in their present place of habitation, that they should prosper there, and be spared the wanderings that was the lot of people in those times.

The Guru moved on to Anandpur Sahib where he was treated with utmost respect, his every word venerated and his teachings enshrined in the hearts of the good people of Ropar. He blessed the villagers next morning by saying that they should travel all over India and not remain settled only at one place. His followers, in some surprise, asked him why the difference in blessings for Una and Anandpur Sahib -asking the latter to endure the hardship of dispersing all over the country while wishing for the comfort of the former by asking them to remain settled at one place? It is said that the Guru replied (no doubt with a twinkle in his eye!) that the people of Anandpur Sahib were the true disciples for his message of love and fraternity and should therefore spread this message throughout the country; conversely, the people of Una represented every value which he, the Guru, abhorred and preached against, and it was better if such people remained confined and isolated at one place and not spread their negativity !

I am reminded of this enlightening anecdote post the election results in Delhi where the BJP won 7 out of 7 Parliamentary seats. Because Delhi is no different from Una and its citizens deserve a similar "blessing". While the ordinary citizens of India were fighting to regain their democratic heritage from a despotic regime, these pampered elite of Golf Links, Punjabi Bagh, the RWAs of Dwarka and the coddled bureaucrats of Motinagar have been content to live in their bubble of privileges, windfall real estate earnings and vacations in Bali. They have once again displayed their total disconnect from the real Bharat, even as they plunder its resources to extract a disproportionate share of the nation's energy, water and other resources, and destroy its green cover, rivers and environment. The callousness they had last displayed when booting out millions of migrants during the Covid lockdown has once again been reflected in their total apathy and lack of concern at the endless suffering inflicted by this BJP regime on the average citizen for the last ten years. By giving all seven seats to the same party they have endorsed another five years of authoritarianism. It is rural India, not the effete, self-serving urbanite of Delhi (and Bangalore), which has put a brake on this.

According to the available figures of Delhi, about 50 lakh voters preferred the BJP, as against 38 lakhs for the INDIA alliance. These same people had come out in their tens of thousands and flooded the India Gate and Boat Club grounds in 2012 to protest corruption and lack of safety for women in the UPA govt. But now they are unconcerned about the same, and even more disturbing, issues. It would appear they have been lobotomised in this last decade by the toxic and heady mix of hate, Islamophobia and crass materialism to the point where they attach no value to all that was once the essence of our great country: tolerance, pluralism, citizens' basic rights, concern for Gandhi's Daridranarayan, the freedom to debate, the jewel of a democracy with all its flaws.

And they certainly cannot plead ignorance, for the worst atrocities and constitutional violations have occurred right under their noses, in Delhi itself: the engineered riots of 2022, the brutal beating up of JNU and Jamia Islamia students by police, Shahin Bagh and the dictum of "Goli maaro saalon ko", the barbaric treatment of protesting female wrestlers, the vandalisation of Delhi's history, architectural heritage and natural environment by grotesquely bizarre projects like the Central Vista and Bharat Mandapam extravaganzas, the usurpation of common public places under the guise of security.

These same citizens have twice voted in the AAP in the last two Assembly elections by a massive 90% mandate, and had rejected the BJP. So where is the outrage that the same BJP, under a puppet, unelected Regent has not allowed the elected state government to function for the last ten years? Are they not angry that their mandate is being usurped and systematically subverted by an arrogant Ozymandias in  Lok Kalyan Marg? That their elected Chief Minister and other Ministers have been arrested and detained without any apparent evidence or trial for months? That Delhi, the capital of the largest democracy in the world, has been reduced to the status of a panchayat in which a Chief minister has fewer powers than a sarpanch? One would expect that, even if Delhi-ites are too self centered to bother about national issues, they would at least be worried about the deplorable goings-on in their own city. Can they not see that every welfare or development programme of the AAP govt. relating to education, health, transport, piped water for slum colonies, door step ration delivery, subsistence elctricity supply- has been sabotaged by the same unelected and unaccountable Regent simply to wreak political vengeance for his party's political losses? What kind of stupidity permits them to approve of this venal politics in their own city? Even a dog does not defecate in his own backyard.

Even as distant and one-horse towns like Ayodhya and Sabarkanta and Banswara have shown by their voting how precious the idea and the Constitution of India is to them, the vast majority of Delhi's residents have demonstrated that they may be literate but they are certainly not educated. By their callous indifference to the plight of India's minorities and the hundreds of millions rotting at the bottom of the media-built shining pyramid, they have revealed all that is wrong with India's elites; they have also demonstrated the validity of activist Harsh Mander's words in his 2015 book LOOKING AWAY : "A just and caring state can only be located ultimately in a just and caring society.....India will not change until we- the middle classes- also change." They should hang their heads in shame for having let down a great nation, its freedom fighters and the visionary statesmen who created this country out of 500 territorial fragments and wrested them from the debilitating embrace of colonialism. To its eternal shame, Delhi has set the clock back by many years, and proved right the prescient words of George Orwell: "A people that elect corrupt politicians, impostors, thieves and traitors are not victims....but accomplices." 

I have little doubt what the great Guru, were he around today, would have advised them to do.

LAST RIGHTS

 

LAST RIGHTS

    Notwithstanding the hundreds of babies who die every year in hospitals of the Delhi, Gorakhpur and Farrukhabad variety, rates of both infant and maternal mortality have been consistently declining. One of the main reasons for this happy development is the govt's push for Institutional Deliveries as against the age-old practice of home deliveries, presided over by midwives. The former, by ensuring better hygiene and medical care, has led to improved survival rates for both, mother and child. Strangely, however, the opposite appears to be happening for older people! More people are nowadays dying in hospitals than at home, at least in urban areas. "Institutional deaths" anecdotally outnumber "home deaths". (Try to recollect how many people you know who have died at home in the last few years- I can  think of only one). There are many reasons for this but we will not go into them as that is not the subject of this piece. But what it has done is left me with a insurmountable problem and much to worry about (apart from the fact that I have to file my Income Tax Return soon!)

    At a sprightly 73 I am uncomfortably conscious of the fact that I have crossed the average life expectancy age in India by a margin better than the NDA's majority, and may not live to see either Rahul Gandhi or Arvind Kejriwal become Prime Minister of India. As things stand today that may require the said average to go up to about 90 or perhaps require even a second rebirth. But you can't fight with averages, and since I am  about as average a Joe as any you'll come across in a week of Sundays, its time for me to start thinking about the grand exit and the family pension for the long suffering wife. And that's where the problem arises.

  You see, I don't want to be told Bon Voyage or Happy Landing (or whatever they say in Sanskrit these days) in a hospital, attached to more pipes and tubes than a vat in a distillery, with a ventilator pumping air into me as if I was an old, retreaded tyre with a dozen punctures. It is my fervent wish to board Yamdoot's busy shuttle service (the last mile connectivity) from my home, surrounded by the few family and friends whom I have not yet managed to annoy, gazing wistfully at the " Aam Aadmi" cap I had promised to wear when Mr. Kejriwal became Prime Minister. Since that doesn't appear likely anytime soon, I may as well not hold my breath, if you see what I mean. I have written all this in my living will for my sons to read and carry out. However, since they are products of Bishop Cotton School Shimla, I can't depend on their ability to decipher words with more than two syllables, hence this public statement.

    But I digress, as usual, from the main point, which is this: Who will issue my Death Certificate if I cop it at home? I am told that only a govt. doctor or a hospital can issue a DC. Now, I can hardly hope that a sarkari doctor will deign to come to my house in Puranikoti village when given the good news of my departure, considering that they rarely go to even their places of posting! Please press the Save button on this problem, dear reader, while I move on to the next one.

    The second, even bigger problem for me is this: I am a non-practicing Hindu (i.e. not a gau rakshak or a bhakt) but do not wish to be cremated at Benaras or Haridwar, for the simple reason that I do not want half of my torso floating around in  polka dot Jockeys till I land up at the Ganga barrage in Kanpur- though, I must confess, since I belong to Kanpur this will be my final "ghar wapasi" of sorts. There is also that little problem of getting caught in a ten kilometre traffic jam on the way to Haridwar, or of bumping into a sulking Mr. Modi in Benaras and being mistaken for a potential NDA ally.

    There are other reasons too for avoiding the barbeque and being toasted by my colleagues and neighbours. I don't wish to be converted to CO2 or methane or whatever toxic gas ex-bureaucrats are composed of, and burn another hole in the ozone layer. I'd much rather become top soil and end up as a begonia or a daisy and, if my luck holds out, perhaps be plucked by a pretty young girl some day! My desire, therefore, is to be buried- and that too on my own land in Puranikoti village, and not in a cemetery which is probably an encroachment on forest land. (Having served for almost four years in the Forest department, I certainly cannot become a party to this, you will agree). It took me two years of bending and genuflecting to obtain permission from the govt. to buy this land, and another three years of scraping and begging to build the house on it, so I don't intend giving it up so easily. I fully intend to hang around there- as a daisy, if you will but more likely as a cactus shrub- to further ensure that the Deputy Commissioner Shimla does not resume the land on the grounds that , since I don't have an Aadhar number, I never existed officially. But the problem of that damn Death Certificate remains, now worse confounded. You see, one also needs a certificate from a crematorium or burial ground authority that the body has been properly disposed off ! Without this the police are likely to dig me out again, register an FIR against me and then I'll become case property. And we all know what happens to case property in police stations- it gets buggered-sorry, burgled!

    Maybe I should just convert to Jainism or Buddhism, climb into that hole in the ground I had dug up for a rainwater harvesting tank, and take "samadhi". Or, better still, I can claim that my birth was not biological and that therefore no Death Certificate is needed. After all, we do have a precedent for this at 7, Jan Kalyan Marg, New Delhi, and we all know that obsession is nine tenths of the law, don't we? That should solve all my problems. Or maybe I should just listen to the Beatles and Let It Be. But there's reason to worry here too: what if my sons decide to be like the chap who, having just lost his wife and being asked whether they should bury, cremate or embalm her, shouted: " Don't take any chances- do all three!" That would be too much of a good thing.