Kalimpong

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There’s something about Kalimpong that sets it apart from other hill-stations. It lacks the typicality that smaller hill towns frequented by weekend tourists acquire; mall roads lined with shops selling hand-knit sweaters, cotton candy or bhutta at every bend and noisy video game parlours tucked between shops promising imported goods. Kalimpong is different. It sits demurely like a Queen on a ridge overlooking the Teesta River in West Bengal.

It was the April of 2010 when a sprightly cabbie drove us into Kalimpong at God’s own speed. My eyes were tightly shut but my ears did not miss noticing how, unlike most taxi drivers, he wasn’t rattling off sites we could see over the next two days of our stay. He kept saying the word “relax” throughout the drive and then “historic!” when he waved us and our two backpacks goodbye outside Morgan House. The import of both words, twined together, came rushing to me when I beheld my lodge, sitting like a grand old man on the outskirts of the town.

It was but evident that Kalimpong was going to make us relax in the lap of History!

The first excursion

Most mountain roads offer two choices—one which makes you ascend and another which makes you descend. After a night spent in a huge room with a fire place and a bathroom overlooking an impeccable golf course, we climbed down a creaking wooden staircase and decided to walk up the road early next morning. High on caffeine and thankful for the pleasant weather, many smiles were exchanged with men in fatigues of the Indian Army’s 27 Mountain Division. Till we came to the end of the road which read Zang Dhok Palri Phodang monastery.

The football match at the monastery

Once upon a time, many Buddhist monks fled Tibet and established monasteries in Kalimpong. Here was the biggest one in front of us, housing rare Buddhist manuscripts, yet seeming as humble and without fanfare as would be expected of a faith purely propagating peace. We walked around its desolate corridors, whispering to each other lest we disturb the syrupy calmness of the place, till we met a friend, the pigeon. There he was, sitting patiently, waiting for the football match to begin as if, while a stone’s throw away, the monks were busy with their early morning sport already!

Ah! Does not Kalimpong translated in Lepcha mean “the ridge where we play”? We must have stood there long enough to become the official spectators of the friendly match which made no sense and yet, in a strange way, spoke volumes about the co-existence of the Nepalis, Lepchas and other ethnic and non-native migrants living in Kalimpong. As if to reinstate the idea of friendship, on our way down from the monastery we bumped into four boys who seemed to have bunked school only to loiter around curvaceous roads, enjoying their companionship and posing happily with it too. A turn away we wondered why they would want to play truant when their school looked just out of a story book. But in a place where even ruins of a past long gone were serving as a cricket scoreboard, it wasn’t hard to guess what exciting alternatives existed to sitting in a classroom!

We got back after the morning sojourn to Morgan House, to a hearty meal justly followed with the flourish of snoozing in our armchairs in the sunny lawns.

Walking through the town

We decided to hit the town the next day, a couple of kilometres of an easy walk in balmy weather, on a narrow road lined with colourful houses on both sides and very clean streets. A lot of these tiny residences had made room for wayward walkers, clearing a settee in a corner of their low-roofed living room and serving instant noodles and hot beverages, all made in their own kitchens. It was a pleasant surprise for us city-dwellers to notice how none of them charged over the marked price, and certainly nothing for the oodles of warm smiles they added to every serving. How many places offer that?

We reached the town-centre in what seemed like a hop-skip-jump. At Thana Dara we stood to catch in a breath, the whole heart of the town. McFarlane Memorial Church waved from another hill-top as we took in the hustle, the bustle and then gradually the unmistakable signs of a different kind of play this time—the play of politics. Hand-written public notices asking for support for the “cause of Gorkhaland” dotted the street corners in all conspicuousness. Some shops included Gorkhaland in their addresses! A movement, which began some decades back, had been revived in the recent past, and through “bandhs” and agitations aimed to write a new chapter in the history books.

As the smell of fresh pastries drew us into the famous 3Cs Bakery on the Main Road, we sat discussing how what seemed so peaceful a day before now showed signs of latent disturbance. The hill-town was in flux, and probably at a point in time which would cleave it along ethnic lines. A Punjab Lodge smiled at us from a distance, as if wondering about its future too, like we were wondering about Kalimpong’s over confectionary and fresh brews. It was over a sumptuous meal at a friend’s place that we learnt more about it all, and how the locals aspired for better infrastructure and development for their dear town, and nothing else.

Cacti galore

Usually, two days of complete relaxation would not involve a steep climb ending in a collection of cacti! But Kalimpong’s Cactus Nursery, with its exhaustive collection of exotic cacti, was worth the time. We thought we had seen enough cacti in our New Delhi terrace gardens but Kalimpong’s array put that notion to shame. What shapes, what sizes; like monsters from another planet which would wrap their prickly arms around our necks, or chase us away down the hill for staring so rudely at them, even if in admiration of their long thorns. It took one panoramic view of Kalimpong from the Pine View Nursery to bring our breaths back, only to be stolen yet again.

Next door to the thorny beauties on Atisha Road was Chitrabhanu, the house where Rabindranath Tagore penned some of his poems. An earthquake had damaged it, and with no repair it reeked of neglect; historic once, forgotten now. Just like the echo of Tagore’s first Live Radio Broadcast from Kalimpong had vanished into the past, never to be heard again. It does good to stand at such doorways, to see in the mind’s eye what transpired behind the wrought-iron gate and in the house which is no longer a part of even memories now.

Time to leave

We were to leave for New Delhi the next day, and the last evening was spent filling up all extra space in our backpacks with Tibetan artifacts and world famous cheeses and lollipops. At the popular Larks on SDBG Road [which was in less agitated times, Rishi Road] we got cheeses and chutneys to make our mundane city lives delicious, creamy and tangy. As if putting all our misgivings about disturbing divisiveness to rest, a “We Love Peaceful Kalimpong” banner confidently hung from near the ceiling. We looked at each other and smiled. It seemed as if the people of Kalimpong were revealing their one and only dream to us before bidding us goodbye. Perhaps ensuring that we would come back to visit their Kalimpong again.

We do plan to go back, but we also wonder if we will see the same Kalimpong or a different one when we go next. Will the old make way for the new, completely? Or will we still see the old and the new co-existing, sometimes on a football field and other times on a chowk lined with summons to revolutions?

Time is playing out its acts on this “ridge where we play”, and people, as usual, are playthings in the hands of those who write history. Watching all this like a queen sits Kalimpong, in rich shades of green, certain of its magnificent Himalayan beauty yet not at all eager to please. Except, that it does, and something tells us it always will!

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Bhimtal

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“Madam, look straight ahead and then a little to your right. I am the tall man in blue waving at you,” he said for the third time. I was at Kathgodam station, which is only as big as the size of the food court of New Delhi railway station, waiting with my two boys, to be taken an hour away to a colonial homestay atop a hill in Bhimtal. When I finally spotted the taxi driver I realised he had been five feet away from me, had spent 15 minutes just to make me spot him and was actually a short man in a green shirt! The unexpected nip in the air and the drizzle as we crossed the road made my antennae stand up. Have I packed enough for my three-year-old? Did my husband keep his wind cheater? Is it going to get colder?

I brushed off all worry. I had promised my husband that I would relax the feet of my mind and not fuss over whatever roles I played at home. We called our weekend trip the ‘Do Nothing Vacation’ and that was to include keeping not just sight-seeing lists unborn but also all concerns of the brain standing at ease. Little did I know then that what I had shrugged off with an easier-said-than-done expression was going to become a doable mantra for my vacations.

Much like so many towns of Uttarakhand, Bhimtal too has a lake for a heart, a temple on every hillock and ringlets of red sloping roofs surrounding them all. Typically, one would visit to go boating on the lake, eating noodles by the lakeside, posing by the hills, visiting the Gods and overall, breathing in the idea of a ‘hill station’. Not so typically, a tourist might book a homestay a little away from the hustle, carry shoes for easy trekking but also slippers for lounging around and no agenda except to eat fresh home-made food between doing something and doing nothing, alternately.

Doing something

A nursery-goer is a teen only when he reasons back. At all other times, his feet still fit in shoes not nearly the size of your hands. Which is what we kept in mind when we decided to indulge in three physically-involving activities, if only to rev up the hunger pangs for gorging on the delicious fare our hosts had to offer.

A long, circuitous drive away from our homestay lay Chauli Ki Jali, in Mukteshwar. I decided to trust the ‘Tall, blue shirt’ and make that day’s sunset special. The moody mountain weather had gone from chilly to sweaty, but oh dear, “Madam, if AC is on the car doesn’t climb”. Three city-bred spoilt brats dripped their way to what we were told was a breathtaking view from a rocky ledge. It was the absolute truth! As if the mountains were sentinels for a sun which was blushing, trying to hide behind their arms and yet eager to be admired as the clouds made way and stood by. I felt fortunate to have reached in time before it blinked for the night.

Over dinner, the cook told us about the legend associated with the place. How women would crawl through a narrow tunnel and sit perched on a precarious rock to prove their ‘morality’. As luck would have it, none in the history of Chauli ki Jali had lost their life to yet another unfavourably designed exam. Would I have survived it? I quickly filled up my mouth with a spoon full of caramel custard. The deliciousness dispelled all needless clouds of doubt.

Snaking through mountain roads as a child always made me wonder what lay beyond and below the fence which marked the edge of a road. Can one see where exactly two mountains meet in a valley overgrown with wilderness? A neat line, perhaps borrowed from a map, and as illusory? I did find out when we three trotted off for a Village Walk in Nathuakhan the next morning. With every step downhill, the paths were increasingly wet and slippery—or not there at all. What was there in abundance though were all shades of green and they were getting darker with the descent. A corn plantation shared apartment space with a cow shed. A few steps below stood a temple tree—old, grand and worshipped. I remember looking up from the bottom right to where we began at the top, my line of vision crossing houses and curious children, women carrying big bundles of sticks on feet in broken rubber slippers and past cracking sounds of pine cones. The sky looked as blue but the world around me was so far removed from what I witness in Delhi, it is difficult to imagine its existence sitting at my writing desk today. Likewise, the exact mountain scent without feeling nostalgic.

On his father’s shoulders, my son climbed all the way up that day, after much convincing that for the cute calf there was not room enough. I looked at my husband’s shoes leading, feeling for steady rocks. I wasn’t worried, at all. If anything, I was glad to see how the workings of gravity were well known to this clever three-year-old.

Clocks in cities run much faster than they do in small towns. And on hills they often seem to come to a standstill

The next day, rather encouraged, we decided to trek up to the Ridge, for a picnic. The Ridge is a long and narrow flatland which is essentially the top of a hill, overlooking Sat Tal on one side and the main town of Bhimtal on the other. With sticks in hands and the enthusiasm typical of early mornings, three pairs of feet set out to climb towards the prospect of earning their paranthas and apple pie. With frequent breaks for gazing at the world below or at the size of wild mushrooms, never seen before, we were finally perched at a point where, call it my hunger talking, everything seemed bite-sized [though not the lovers sitting across from us, disappointed at the intrusion]. There is something about being a family which sharing a meal brings out. If that meal happens to be some miles above the sea level, it’s closer to divine in all ways—a sense of oneness that nothing else can make you feel. Not just with one another but also with the nature that surrounds you: the breeze that keeps you cool, the canopy that provides shelter. Is that what the lovers were thinking sitting where they had walked hand-in-hand, far away from us now, under a tall fir?

This time, the daddy had done his homework and made the boy collect daisies for his mother all the way down. On his own two feet, walking by himself, rules of gravity forgotten.

But mostly doing nothing

Clocks in cities run much faster than they do in small towns. And on hills they often seem to come to a standstill. While with much bravado I fill you up on all that we did on the spur of the moment over the three days in Bhimtal, it barely covered a fraction of the time we spent doing… well, nothing at all!

How do you do nothing? Can you? Is it possible to empty the mind of all to-dos and tasks, thoughts that bother and deadlines of lives you and me call ‘ruts’ yet run circles in? It’s possible. It’s possible to do nothing but lie inside a child’s tent, pretend camping and make up stories about the grasshopper that hopped over to get a glimpse of the boy who finished his milk. It’s possible to sit a few yards away from this action, with a book, immersed in its joys. It’s also possible to just stare into infinity, and at birds who with their fluttering, bring you back to reality. There is enough in nature to create wonder and awe and as many nooks to visit with a beau, a boy, or a book. It is times spent thus that make you feel you did nothing and yet you realise how invaluable they were because you actually filled up those hours doing what you never get enough time to. How refreshing!

This was the first family vacation where I let all today’s worries and tomorrow’s agendas take wing like grass held up in the wind. It was almost a study in contrasts, of doing and not doing. A hangover of the intoxicating ‘letting-go feeling’ was carried back to New Delhi, enough to notice the tiny nose runny as soon as we bundled up in the train that was homeward bound but saying with conviction, “You’ve climbed mountains, my son. What can a silly runny nose do to you?”

The feet of my mind were indeed relaxed.

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post Vacation time: Doing nothing in Bhimtal appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.