(The Telegraph, Wednesday April 25th 2018)
On the morning of 24th January
we woke to white: it must have snowed steadily through the night for the trees
to be so laden and for our surroundings to acquire such a hushed stillness. From
our windows we could see that every range between us and the Trishul and Nanda
Devi had changed colour. It was the first snow of the season, and the first
sign of any moisture in months.
Two days later, walking in the forest,
I came upon a rhododendron scarlet with flowers. At the foot of the tree was a
hollow with snow still ankle-deep, as were many sheltered parts of the forest
that saw little sun through the day. To find rhododendron in flower in deep
winter is as strange in these hills as sighting a peacock. Soon, reports began
to appear about the early flowering of the Rhododendron
arboretum all over the western Himalaya. It appeared that my
tree-in-a-hurry was not the only one to bloom ahead of time, rising
temperatures meant that trees were flowering prematurely in many places.
The first blossoming of the buransh, as rhododendron is called in
the Kumaon, is followed by one of the more picturesque festivals of the hills,
Phooldeyi. Children appear in the morning bearing steel plates with peach,
plum, and buransh blossoms that they scatter on doorsteps, in the hope of a
little pocket money. It is a festival that marks spring by saying, “Winter’s
over”.
In rural areas the flutterings of
climate change are swiftly apparent. Someone points out it has been a year
since we saw the raven, which used to be a common sight. The pushy grey pigeon
of the plains has been making determined moves to oust our whistling thrushes
from their nooks and the thrushes are too elegant, too understated, too musical
to win crude power games. From our windows, through December, we could see that
as days passed without winter rain, the sides of the high peaks darkened: what we
were looking at was not ice but black rock. There was a scattering of white
only at the very tops of the peaks.
For most people in the plains, the
hills come alive in summer. Many who live here – those who are not hoteliers or
taxi-drivers – dread its arrival. Winter is a time of icy cold and utter calm,
of walks through empty forests, trees laden with oranges -- and water in our
taps. The bliss ends in summer, when pleasure-seekers thunder uphill in their
four-wheel drives to hotels that will suck all the water out from the town
systems to feed their flushes and showers.
Summer is for water wars. Not only is
there less water to go around, it is an open secret that the hotels make offers
to waterworks employees that they cannot refuse – and soon after, our supply
dries up. Days can pass without water and every conversation begins with the
words “Paani aya?” Around communal
taps you can see a queue of assorted water-gathering vessels from plastic
jerrycans to buckets and pitchers that are stand-ins for their human owners.
The bucket queue, though inert, pulses with potential for wrecking the peace. Buckets
that have somehow acquired life and gone up or down the queue illegally can ignite
blood-feuds.
In Capetown, as they approach Day Zero
when municipal water supplies cease and people are limited to 25 litres of
water a day, the South African cabinet is drawing up plans to deploy police at
the water collection points. This dystopian scenario does not seem too far-fetched
in Indian hill stations. Squabbles and intrigues over water conjure up more
conspiracy theories than bank frauds.
The spindly, alcoholic waterworks
clerk charged with turning taps on and off becomes the most sought after man in
town. Once, having searched for him fruitlessly for more than a week, I spotted
his familiar bald head just below the dip in a slope and rushed towards him
with a grovelling “Namaste” only to find that I had interrupted him at a
critical point in his al fresco ablutions. We did not have water
in our taps for several days after that.
Other than news of water, the bush
network remains alive through the summer for news of fires. After a winter as
dry as this one has been, the hills crackle like heaps of kindling waiting for
one carelessly tossed match or cigarette -- or for arsonists involved in timber
smuggling, as some allege.
Bush fires in California and Australia
are fought aerially, with water and fire retardant sprayed from helicopters.
Here the fires have to be beaten out and fire-lines created to prevent their
spread. There are evenings when we stay up hypnotized by the slow approach of
necklaces of flames that creep closer and closer. The air is dense with the
smell of smoke. For the firefighters raking firelines across the slopes it is even
harder to breathe than it is for us. Most terrifying of all is to see ridges
covered with chir pine burst into flame. And down in the burning valleys around
us, there are wild animals with no escape routes.
Ironically, one of the prized features
of hill holidays for well-off metropolitan tourists is the “bonfire dinner”. Most
hotels offer it as the cherry on the package tour cake, so that at the height
of summer when the snow peaks -- or whatever remains of them – are hidden in a
dust haze, people gather around blazing bonfires and sing and drink their stress
away. Owls hoot and foxes call unheard as the antakshari competitions hit their high notes. It is unusual to find
tourists in the hills who come here to walk or climb or birdwatch. Instead, we
are often stopped by cars that pull up next to us, after which a window slides
down and someone demands: “Yahaan
Place-to-See Kya hai?”
Since Ranikhet is resolutely lacking
in “Place-to-Sees”, the administration cleared away a substantial stretch of
mixed oak and kaphal forest some
years ago and created an artificial lake complete with duck-prowed boats and a nylon
rope-bridge for “adventure tourism”. If Nainital and Bhimtal have famous lakes,
could Ranikhet afford to be left behind – even if there were no water in the
taps? This pond of brown, largely stagnant water is now featured in tourist
brochures as “Rani Jheel”. Park benches circle it and signs lead the way to it,
including one on a road above the lake that points to the “First View of Rani
Jheel”.
And so the buses and 4X4s come and go,
leaving trails of Lays and Bingo. I recently read about a Swedish way of
exercising called Plogging, which simply involves picking up the trash while
jogging. We have been doing this for years. Once a week every summer, when we
walk, we leave home with large bin bags and carry on for as long as our
energies last and our bags have space, picking up trash dumped by picnickers. I
now have an intimate sense of the consumption patterns of metropolitan Indians.
They love eating, specially junk that comes in foil packets; they love drinking
alcohol, especially super-strong beer and Old Monk rum. They consume quantities
of gutka. And they drink bottled water.