A Trek Through the Quiet Woods - kanasar to Thadiyar

                  During my college days and while preparing for the IFS exams, I had read about stem analysis, stump analysis and increment boring. We never did it practically. Now, when we are sawing this huge deodar tree, felled after several hours of backbreaking labour, I realize how difficult it is to cut trees in the forest using only saw and axe. We have taken nearly one and a half days to fell and saw this 125-year-old tree.

                    After completing the sawing operation, we feel that the hard times are over. But no, Biswal sir proves us wrong the next day. We sit on a carpet spread on the grass outside the barracks near the Kanasar forest guest house and sweat it out, plotting graphs and doing calculations. Supong is sitting in a corner. He seems to be deeply lost in thought. I wonder whether he is meditating. I ask him, ''what's up?" He slowly opens his eyes, "I don't understand any of these graphs. I'm very clear that I don't know anything". Then he bursts into his patented deep-throat laughter.

                    Thankfully, the rigors of drawing weird looking graphs and facing tricky questions in the viva are over. Pramod Pant sir has come from the Academy to accompany us for the trek. A local boy, Bhim, is coming with us as our guide. Our first destination is Deoban, about 14 km from kanasar. We begin at 9 am. Weather is pleasant and all are raring to go.

                    Initially, it is a slightly steep uphill climb.  After that we come to a forest path, sufficiently wide for a four wheeler. It is really pointless to walk fast in the forest. Not that you cannot but you don't feel like. There is so much to see and so much to feel. Unfortunately, Gamble of our batch, Ravikiran is not with us for the trek as he is down with a broken leg. Not much of bird life here. Occasional gliding of  red-billed blue magpies, cackle of laughing thrushes from a distance and great & spot-winged tits flitting from branch to branch on a nearby tree.

                    All of us reach the destination by evening, comfortably. We are served with hot tea and garam pakodas. Late in the evening Pant sir takes us to 'Deoban peak’. He says that the view of sunset from the peak is enchanting, provided we are lucky. All along our way to the peak, the green path seems to smile at us through the lovely, white aster flowers. We get a panoramic view of the neighboring areas from the peak. The ground here is carpeted everywhere with creamy cotoneaster blooms. It will still take half an hour for the sun to go down the horizon. We sit on the huge rocks near the precipice. Quietly. It is a serene feeling with silence all around. Words are not necessary at such moments. A huge lammergeyer glides majestically right below us.

                    Sunset is not spectacular. We take a few snaps and head back to the camp. After dinner, we retire to the comforts of our tents. No campfire tonight as it is very windy. Inside the tent we listen to the whooshing of the roaring wind gushing through the tall deodar, spruce and fir trees and it reminds me of the monsoons back home. Though it is quite chilly, our cozy sleeping bags help us to sleep comfortably.

                    The next day we start at 9.30 in the morning with an old forest guard as our guide. After walking for about two hours, we come across a small tea shop owned by a Gujjar. Having rejuvenated myself with a hot cut of tea, I decide to walk alone. When you walk alone in a forest, you don't feel lonely. You feel content, walking in the cool, green shades with gentle breeze caressing your body, filling every pore with new energy. And you don't feel exhausted (provided the rucksack is not very heavy and terrain not too steep!).

                    I reach the forest rest house (FRH) early, at about 4 pm. Constructed in 1882, on a sloping glade, the building is at an altitude of around 8,000 ft. The entire place looks calm and picturesque, as if directly dropped down from the heavens above. After the tents are pitched, I join my friends for volleyball amidst a lot of hullabaloo. It is good fun. In the night, sitting by the campfire, we persuade Arjun, son of the chaukidar to sing songs. After much prodding, he begins and his sonorous voice compels all of us to lend our ears. He acquiesces to sing another song, much to our delight.

                    In the morning, before starting towards Kathiyan, I take a few pictures of a mare and her foal, owned by the chaukidar. The young one is only five days old and when I inch closer, it starts capering. The local guide says that Kathiyan is 40 km away. I don't believe him. We have learnt not to trust the estimates of distance given by the pahadi (hill) people. They can be extremely arbitrary.

                    Five of us (Garwad, Jakher, Manoj, Rajamohan and I) decide to walk fast today. To our discomfort, only half of the route is through the woods. The rest of the walk is under the scorching sun on a motorable mud road. We stop in between to have a cup of tea at a roadside shack. While I dip a bun into the hot tea and devour it, Manoj comments that the bun belongs to the pre-historic period. Unperturbed, I continue munching it. After asking the local people for direction, we resume our walk. We reach the Kathiyan FRH at 1.30 pm. This is the oldest of all the rest houses I have visited so far (built in 1872). One room in this FRH is supposed to be haunted and we enquire the chaukidar about it. He is evasive and says that he has not seen any ghosts but some people might have experienced strange things. After a cold-water bath, we take a walk to see the village and to buy some snacks.

                    Disappointingly, the ghost haunting the forest rest house decides not to trouble the lady trainees sleeping inside! All the men sleep in the tents hoping that the ghost would not find the tents too tempting to take a closer look!

                    The next morning at 11 am, the last leg of our trek begins. The "Thadiyar March' is coming to an end. It is a 14 km mostly downhill walk to Thadiyar. As we descend, the change in the vegetation is clearly apparent. There are large tracts of chir pine forests with rills on the stems, indicating regular resin extraction by the forest department. The walk amidst the chir forests and along the stream banks is pleasant. When we reach Thadiyar at 3 pm, the Academy bus is already waiting for us.

                    Our driver Bisht says that it is a ten-hour journey to Dehradun. We have no complaints. All of us shout merrily on the successful completion of the trek. It has been a wonderful experience. The towering deodars, the feel of the carpet of slippery pine needles beneath our feet, enchanting old rest houses, Arjun's soulful songs, gliding of the lammergeyer near Deoban Peak- all will be etched in my memory for a long time to come. The quiet woods of the hills beckon us. We will be back. Hopefully, soon.

                                        April 2002    

The Only Constant

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” 
- Lao Tzu

Last month, after celebrating my son Adithya’s birthday with a boisterous bunch of fifteen of his friends, we were terribly exhausted. A dinner table discussion that followed amongst three families revolved around the changes that have taken place over the years in our daily lives. And the birthday was the starting point.

Most of the middle class families in the eighties, especially in small towns and rural areas almost never had birthday celebrations. I remember my mother or father saying to me, ‘Oh! You are twelve now’ or ‘tomorrow is your birthday’. That’s it. No cake, no wishes, no gifts, no party. A mom-made delicacy of our choice was the only deviation from the routine. I don’t think we were disappointed by the absolute lack of festivity or fanfare. We had never seen any birthday parties then. So, nothing to compare with and crib. Ignorance is always bliss.

Now the times are different and so are the societal ways and habits. Today, here in Bengaluru, my children attend the birthday parties of their friends and so it is quite natural for them to expect to have their own! Cakes, sweets, presents, return gifts (I discovered this phenomenon recently!), music, a bit of shouting and a ransacked house. I don’t see anything wrong with this, especially when the group is confined to kids. Of course, it is a bit tiresome job-arranging the parties-but it’s okay. I do not wish to pontificate to my kids about 'I never celebrated birthdays, so why should you?', kind of stuff.  Even though it is an overused cliché, change is the essence of life.

When I joined the service, I remember a senior officer giving me a long sermon about how he used to ride a bicycle as a range forest officer in the early seventies. He went on and on about his exploits as an officer ending with the criticism of present crop of foresters who ask for vehicles as soon as they join the department! Thirty years is a long time and I graduated to a motorbike during my range officer days. Today, the trainee foresters are usually provided with Gypsies or Boleros. Should I envy my younger colleagues? Swift mobility is critical for efficiency.

Thanks to mobiles and internet, we are now inundated with forwarded emails, smses and whatsapp messages on the emotional tug of our childhood. Mostly on how different our younger days were in comparison with the present generation’s. Jagjit Singh made us collectively sigh with nostalgia listening to his immortalized rendition of ‘woh kagaz ki kashti’. I have come across some wonderful quotes on how we (the older generation. C’mon, we are pushing forty!) enjoyed our evenings and holidays a few decades ago, maybe not uttering the word ‘bore’ even once, even though there were no mobiles, TV, computer, Xbox or tablets. Nowadays we do not see our kids playing hopscotch and lagori. Innumerable indoor games like ludo, snake and ladder and different versions of cowrie-based dice games have all but vanished from the lexicon of our children. Almost all city-bred kids possibly cannot recite a single rhyme in their mother tongue. Is this something to be worried about?

 Twenty years back I might have perhaps laughed if someone had told me that I would be paying money to eat jackfruit one day. Or shell out twenty rupees for a litre of drinking water. But that’s how things stand in the twenty first century. We buy and eat jamun, guava, ber, anjur and all other assortment of local fruits which were a part of the regular diet of school children not far too long ago. 

In our homes, electronic appliances have all but substituted hard labour. Washing clothes, baking, grinding and increasingly, floor mopping and dish washing have been taken over by the machines. A relative of mine who is very traditional and conservative used to criticize the use of gadgets at home. ‘If you don’t bend and work, how will you get physical exercise?’, was his irritated jibe towards his tech-adopting relatives. He detested the invasion of dining tables into our kitchens in the eighties. Within the next ten years, he had almost all those machines in his house. And yes, the dining table too. It is very convenient for the elderly, no?

Our diets have been altered considerably over the years. Oats, cornflakes, readymade wheat flour, canned food articles, pepsis and colas, innumerable bakery products etc. are a regular part of our meal. We see a mad rush in the sweet shops on the eve of festivals. Who has the time to roll laddus or bake halwas?

Life has gained pace over the years. People have new aspirations and ambitions. Education is becoming more eclectic and also competitive. Families have grown smaller. Women are increasingly becoming financially independent. Everything is 24 x 7. Time is at a premium. Changes are inevitable.

But all the sighing and shake of heads about ‘things have gone bad’ are firmly based on the assumption that things were wonderful in the (g)olden days. Or to take the argument further, that there was always a utopia before. Was it during the Maurya period or Ashoka’s rule or Gupta dynasty or Akbar’s regime? Or Vijayanagara empire? Does this hypothesis stand the test of closer scrutiny?

Bengaluru was heavenly once. It is in a shambles now. We can curse and despair or look at it as a bouquet of opportunities. Metro connectivity, increasing awareness among young voters, positive alternatives in our otherwise bleak political spectrum, talent pool of educated youth, local initiatives for a greener city. One day, this city could well be one of the most livable in the world.

Change is the biggest leveler of all, just like death, or the traffic of Bengaluru!

As long as change does not adversely affect human beings as individuals or as a society, does not threaten the basic fabric of our peaceful existence, there is perhaps no need to battle this force of nature.