Hilly story portal

Coated by warmth in the biting-cold Himachal altitudes, Ashis Dutta is entertained with stories of wandering ghosts and wars

And so his ruh — you know what is ruh? Atma, soul — bumps around, from one mountain to the other, wanders through the alpine forests you see all around here. Bhataktehai, can’t escape.”

The petite tourist town of Kufri, in the high Himachal mountains, is some 12 km away, and the serpentine tarred road — feeble pulse of the nearest human movement — five. From there, a track of slush and snow and stones, often loose, veers steeply up now, down the next moment in a precarious bend. The pine and deodars, tall and thick, were miser with letting the sun in even at noon when we drove through. Twenty minutes on the jostling, twisting track and not a sign of a soul around. Another 10 minutes and the track ended abruptly at the sharp edge of a ridge. Hurrah, arrived. Up there, beholding the sky above, snow-crested peaks pasted against the sky now at eye-level, the luxuriant valley way below, and crisp mountain breeze caressing my face. For a moment, I felt like an eagle. If only I had wings.

Around a kiln
The sun went down beyond the mountain and darkness fell in a sweep. It was freezing outside. Chaman Lal, our host of the homestay, had lit up the improvised fireplace. A small kiln of iron, size of a shoe-box, placed in the middle of his drawing room with a pipe from behind that cleverly lets the smoke escape without choking the room. A large aluminium urn, filled with water and covered loosely, sat over the kiln. “This keeps the room warm and also provides humidity,” said Chaman Lal as he opened a trap door of the flaming kiln and shoved in two dry twigs taken from the crateful lying beside.

We squatted on rugs around the kiln, warm, listening to Chaman Lal, as he was in the middle of his story as to why a special puja was being organised at his cousin’s place, three mountain-folds away, next week on full moon, to let the unhappy atma escape the strings of earthly bondage. For good.

Chaman Lal’s wife, Saanvi, a teacher in a local primary school, brought tea, and there was a spontaneous wow around. She smiled and said, “Ten days ago, you wouldn’t have been able to come. The kachcha road up to here was blocked with show. It was freezing then.” Well, for us, it was freezing at that moment, too, as we held out palms close to the urn on the kiln.

Chaman Lal chortled. “If this is cold, what would you then say about Siachen?”
“Siachen?”

Saanvi intervened. Eyeing Chaman Lal, she said, “Fauji saab served in Siachen,” and, pointing at a framed picture on the wall behind, added with a tinge of pride, “and got a bravery medal in Kargil War.”

Our stories thereafter changed trajectory, from ghosts and local beliefs to biting realities of Siachen and Kargil. Chaman Lal turned out to be an engrossing storyteller. Only his Himachali Hindi sometimes needed slow deconstruction. As the temperature outside was icing further down, the excitement inside the room around the kiln was stirring up. We, from the stiffening and isolated outpost at Siachen, far from the Base Camp, could sense our rivals, over there across, through our night-vision binoculars.

Saanvi intervened again. This time for dinner. And we descended from the intrigues of Kargil.

“Everything tastes superb, really,” I said, “Dal, sabji, paneer, everything.” I caught our hosts eyeing each other quizzically. Finally, Chaman Lal confided disarmingly, “O jee, Saanvi cooked all the other things, but since she was to be late from school today, I gave tadka to the dal, and we both were apprehensive about it.”

Next morning, the sky was glass-clear and the high Himalayan ranges dazzled across the northern horizon, rising majestically above the green peaks. Chaman Lal explained, “Sir jee, that part is Lahul and Spiti Range. But you can see more. From east to west, you see more than 200 km of the Great Himalayan Range, white, above the green Sivalik mountains.”

To the orchard
I met Lakshman later in the day in the modest apple orchard Chaman Lal tends to around his home. At first, this lanky, rustic, 30-something looked to be nothing more than a farm helping hand our host recruits from time to time. But 15 minutes into the conversation, Lakshman turned out to be my professor of, what I would christen as, Apple-Orchard-Engineering.

Winter made the apple trees bare their soul and stand in rows like pale skeletons waiting to be executed. Lakshman was pruning the trees. “Pruning apple trees is a skilled technical job,” Chaman Lal said, “and Lakshman is a trained and experienced pruner.” Prodded by Chaman Lal, Lakshman delivered a short lecture demonstration on pruning. How to select branches to be pruned and leave out the buds, which can so easily be mistaken as tiny branches. “An untrained pruner can inadvertently shrink the yield of a tree without even knowing,” interjected Chaman Lal. “Why are you applying the orange paint?” I asked. Lakshman smiled in a flash. “Not paint, sir, it is malam, medicinal cream for plants. The pruned part exposes the tender inner cells of the branch, which can get affected by frostbite. This is a protective cream. We should be careful not to leave any exposed part unprotected.”

Lakshman then did something unexpected. He handed me his pliers. I startled. He gently guided me to a slender branch, “This one... yes, cut it here... harder, yes.” And thus, with the magnificent Himalayan highland as witness, I became his apprentice pruner.