The Unfamiliar Familiar – New avatars of old haunts - 1

 

Part of the plan for the recent trip “home” was to revisit, and show the offspring, some of the old, and much visited places around Dehradun. The list included the usual suspects, of course, Haridwar, Rishikesh, and Mussoorie. I would have also liked to have included Rampur Mandi, but time constraints made it pretty certain that we would not be able to fit that in. ordinarily, six days would have been plenty, but since we were there for a particular event, two whole days were already spoken for, making the rest of the trip a little bit rushed.

Still, off we set on the 23^rd, to do a quick recce of Haridwar and Hrishikesh, to show the offspring the sights, to refresh our own memories, and sort of draw a metal “then and now” picture of these once regular haunts. First stop Haridwar! The way to get there is unrecognizable, if the last time you have been this way, like me, is some 30 years ago. It is all six-lane highways and spanking new hotels, not to mention huge ashrams and temples all along the way. The narrow state roads and roadside shacks of my childhood are long gone. Add to this the arrangements for Kumbh Mela dips, and it was a whole other planet.

 Between the flyovers and the changes in the landscape, I was totally disoriented even up to the time we actually parked the car. Nothing looked familiar, we hadn’t driven through or didn’t seem about to walk/rickshaw through the city, and none of the crowds and dirt and dinghiness I remembered was anywhere to be seen. It was all open grounds, wide roads, and comparatively well behaved tourists (compared to what I remember). The rickshaws, though brand new in design and totally different from the ones from my childhood, are probably even MORE uncomfortable than the ones I remember, and incredibly difficult to get in and out of, especially if you have – as I usually do – 2 huge cameras and a saddlebag/jhola hanging off various bits of you.

It is only when we get to the actual Har Ki Pauri with its old as sin bridges and the iconic clock tower that anything seems remotely familiar. The core area – maybe one square mile – has not changed in the slightest. Well, maybe it is cleaner than it used to be, but that’s all. Beyond that is a huge “bow” bridge spanning the Ganga, a gigantic Shiv idol in the background, the hotels and temples that cheek-by-jowl rise level on level above the Pauri, all new to me. The most noticeable change, however, is the cleanliness, and the much more organized flow of devotees and tourists. Whether this is a general state of things, or a function of the sparseness of the crowd because of the main body of devotees being diverted to the ongoing maha kumbh at Prayag, I cannot say, but the change is welcome.

Time being as limited as it was, we take a quick walk around, with a short hiatus for Bhabhi to get a dip in, while I get some touristy, and not so touristy shots, and off we go! Next stop – lunch. This is something other doonites will have to tell me about, whether this is a change or not. When we lived there, we were fairly cash strapped, so, apart from the annual celebratory anniversary lunches and dinners at The Moti Mahal or Kwality’s, eating out wasn’t much of a thing. And my previous trips to these destinations was long enough ago that all I really remember of food stops are the Dada Boudi hotels which served Bengali fare in Haridwar. So, this phenomenon where an overwhelming 99% of eateries are so proudly “pure veg” is something I am not sure is entirely new. Speculation says the percentages have probably increased exponentially since state formation and the Dev Bhoomi tag, but I cannot state it as a fact. 

Post lunch we drive to Rishikesh. I’ve been telling monkey about the lachhman Jhoola, the views, and the super aggressive monkeys for years. I have been also looking forward to the possible shots I could take, from the middle of the Jhoola, of the gorge upriver and downriver, of the narrow and incredibly fast flowing Ganga, so different from the silt laden, lazy Hooghly that is so familiar. However, big disappointment awaits. After negotiating traffic jams,  past thousands of touristy “yoga” places, and white people dressed in designer rags in search of enlightenment, we finally park the car and walk up to the Lachhman Jhoola only to find it closed because some massive construction project is going on, building a – much higher and seemingly impossible to climb – Jhoola right next to the iconic one from my childhood.

Lower down the hill is a comparatively new – to me at least – Ram Jhoola, which was so teeming with people that the crazies with me felt no desire to get out of the car and onto the bridge, and we drove straight off. The locals in our party told us about the revamped Triveni Ghat, so off we went to take a look see. Again, clean, well constructed and maintained, quite the change from the chaos and dirtiness I remember. The ghat is wide and well made, and this is the spot where the daily Ganga Arati happens. We saw the preparations for it, but didn’t have the time to wait for sunset, and the actual arati. Maybe another time. Will surely make for some good photographs.

I left Rishikesh, disappointed, the only gains, a few touristy trinkets, and some not so pristine mountain air, leaving the purpose of “showing” monkey the place, and my desire to photograph the gorge, completely unfulfilled.

 

Well, I suppose there is always next time.

When my heart soars, and my soul feels at home – still

 

As monkey has noticed so many times, and as my fellow knows so very well, mountains energise me. Every time I am sniffing distance from a mountain, let alone actually on one, I am happier, chirpier, fresher, and more full of energy than I ever am at the lower altitudes! Whether this is a hangover from my fantastic childhood memories in the Himalayan foothills, or just a factor of the climatic difference – higher altitudes are, but always, cooler than the plains, after all, and I don’t do well in heat, at all – something about mountain air is an automatic dose of vim for me.

Add in a solid dose of nostalgia and the excitement of sharing my/our childhood haunts with the offspring, and one can imagine just how thrilling the idea of going to Dehradun would be, especially given the long 21-year gap between visits. Over the last 38 years or so, on sporadic travel back to the roots, so to speak, I have noted all the changes my little birth town has undergone, from the immense shock of finding traffic lights on Rajpur Road to how the deer park became part of the city instead of a midway halt in the Sal forests towards Tandoori Nights. And I was looking forward to seeing more of them. A gap this long promised a sea change in the urban topography, and friends kept telling us we would be unable to recognize the town when we got there.

So, complete with tons of woolens and gifts for all and sundry, we arrived. Everyone had been warning us it would be supercold, and since fellow is no longer a polar bear, and since the offspring is essentially a tropical child, we had loaded up on thermal underclothes and whatnot, along with multiple interchangeable layering thingies we could all share. Change number one, even though the Jolly Grant airport is miles and miles outside the “city”, it was nowhere as cold as I remembered, or was told it would be.

 The airport, was another. Way back in the prehistoric mists of time, when I was a wee bairn frolicking in the hills and dales of the terai, there used to be something called a Vayudut that served as the sole airline servicing Dehradun, and their 14-seater, beaten-up, held together with spit and good wishes, Fokker Friendships used to land at what was essentially a converted military airstrip next to a terminal building that was little better than a tabela – a local shed for holding cows and buffaloes. This shiny, bright, super modern, glass and concrete edifice, all done up in artistic columns and tourism posters advertising an Uttarakhand that is new to me, was a pleasantish surprise.

The roads from Jolly Grant to Dehradun were wide, and clean, not to mention wholly unfamiliar. There are hundreds of hotels of all sizes, restaurants (mostly pure veg, in keeping with the Dev Bhoomi monicker) and – surprisingly – tons of bars, lounges, and restro-pubs. This is all new, and unfamiliar, a brand new ring road, 4 and 6 lane highways, uniform boards on shops… most of them sporting the same colour scheme and font, it is all a very long way to the narrow state roads and forests of my childhood.

But all it takes is one turn, and D and I both realize immediately that we are on Raipur road! It’s almost like we can FEEL it! It’s like the underlying bone structure, which, no matter how much make up you slap on, will get you recognized by facial recognition! Yes, it has changed, its about three times the breadth it used to be, for starters, and the storefronts are spiffier, fancier, the basic shops have changed to more updated things like mobile phone repairs and car décor, but the basic vibe is JUST the same, somehow.

 And that remained the underlying experience, for Dehradun, for the rest of the trip. As D said, aaaj bhi shehar Raipur Road se shuru aur Ghantaghar me khatam hai. After 37 years, I am still able to instantly recognize Survey Chowk, Parade Ground, and Rajpur Road, and the Ghantaghar and Paltan Bazaar basically look just the same, though the roads are wider. It isn’t as if changes are absent.in fact they are many and varied, including the presence of three (by my count) giant malls, in what used to be, essentially, a tiny town in my time.  

There are huge apartment complexes, mammoth colleges and educational institutes, and the city is now spread way beyond the Deer Park, but the colony, Guru Nanak Academy, the lanes of Karanpur, and the DAV PG college, look just the same as they always did.

Countdown is still the same, albeit slightly bigger, and – to my very pleasant surprise – serving the exact same food, exactly as tasty. The Gajak is still as flaky, and Ellora is still selling those melt in the mouth Nankhatais and the best I’ve ever tasted, softest, pastries. The momos and thukpa taste the same (better than I have ever had in pune or Kolkata), and the Bhutia market, though enclosed and well painted now, sells the same fleece sweaters and puffy jackets at unbelievably cheap prices.

Tapovan, though, is unrecognizable. Time was, and oh! What a time! When everything after DEAL colony was a narrow road flanked by dense forest and we trekked through the forests all the way uphill for an hour or so to get to the mandir. Now it is non stop urban landscape all the way to the foot of the hill, not a tree in sight, and some forests, interspersed with bungalows, for a couple of kilometers. The temple is bigger, more ostentatious. Chashma is gone. What used to be a natural Sulphur Spring, set back from the road, surrounded by greenery attracting people from far and wide with its crystal clear water (hence the name chashma – clear as an eye) with healing properties – even the year we got married – is now a tap by the road, with trash and discarded rags lying around, making the water unappetizing.

Part of the plan, of course, was to take quick trips to Haridwar, Rishikesh, and Mussoorie, because who knows when we would be able to go back, ever, and it made sense to show monkey these places too – even if it was just for the bragging rights of “been there” but given that this post is so long already, I’ll leave the recounting of that experience for another day!

Of found families and the unbelievable luck of accidentally falling into the love of good people

 

Our recent family trip to Dehradun has been pending for about 20 years – just about as long as monkey has even been a concept. Ever since the fellow and I knew we were going to be parents, the idea has always been to take the offspring to Dun “one day” to show them all the places near and dear to our hearts, places we went to school or college, hung out, met each other, acknowledged each other as “that person”, and more.

Part of that planned agenda has also always been to introduce the monkey to our people. These are people who have always been – in our childhoods, and still – more than family to us. These are people who, especially in the case of the fellow, often filled in for “real” families when they have fallen short of the expected levels of care and affection.  These are people who – regardless of the gap between visits or calls – still make us feel exactly the same level of intimacy and comfort whenever the next encounter happens.

Monkey has heard of these places and people from practically the day it was born, and finally, on the 22^nd of January, it had the chance to actually be there. Now, the thing one needs to know about my offspring is that she is not, in any way, an extroverted, outgoing, hugely social child who fits in and becomes a part of any circle you drop her in. Au contraire, she is a shy, reticent child, who takes time to open up, usually sits by quietly in bigger social situations, and doesn’t just suddenly “gel”.

So, when my shy, reticent child is laughing uproariously at the antics of total strangers, telling them how all the tales heard in her childhood are finally materializing as names begin to match faces, and calling people she JUST met “dadi”, you know some major magic has gone down. Monkey is a morning creature, and hardly eats anything post sunset, or bothers to be sociable. This child of mine ate about three times normal of a meal, and stayed up yakking and laughing till about 11!

A long time ago, I had taken some friends of mine from Pune to visit Dun with me. They had accused me, well, one of them had, of becoming a totally different person there. This time I noticed it myself. My Hindi changes, becoming the theth UP Hindi with the typical northie lehja, my “aap”s flow naturally and effortlessly, the namaste aunty/uncles fall from my lips unnoticed even by me, and the bhaiyyas automatically become bhaiji. I feel like I become truly myself the moment I breathe in that pine and eucalyptus laced air. I have always attributed this transformation to a kind of regression, a going back, to the shareef, tameezdar, UP girl I used to be, oh such a very, very long time ago.

This time, I also saw the same transformation in my child. This threw me a bit, given that this child is a pure urban, Punekar/kolkattan with no history of the Tehzeeb and no cause for any regression or throwback, since she has never lived this life. The best explanation I can come up with is of the “meme”. Not the internet phenomenon – although that also derives its name from the original – but the original evolutionary biology concept of the meme/gene where memes are bits and cluster of knowledge that seem to pass on from generation to generation, without conscious teaching or transmission, a bit like genes pass on biological information.

This kept happening during the entire stay. Uncle and Aunty soon became chacha-chachi, people she met for the first time, for very short times, people who were uncles and aunts to me/D just automatically became dadu/dida and all of this came so naturally, so organically, that any outsider would be forgiven for thinking that she had known these people all her life! From asking for more food, to demanding gajak, to making chacha take her to eat the bhutia version of the momo instead of the Nepali version she is used to – my reticent and retiring child suddenly bloomed into this clan creature I had only ever encountered in D’s extended clan.

My morning bird goes to sleep – still – by 8pm, and no calamity, no force in the universe can wake her or force her to socialize after that. Many a “I shall tell my grandchildren” story has originated from people trying to be nice to her or even looking at her funny (in her estimation) – after sunset. This child of mine, actually sprang up out of bed, from deep sleep, got dressed, went out with us, and ate out and socialized for hours, simply because chachi wanted to spend more time with her?!

Six days felt like the blink of an eye – and all the care and “apnapan” one felt is inexpressible. The “Ye to humara bohot accha beta hai” was expected and appreciated, sure, given that this family was one of the prime reasons D is still alive. The bonus was the “hun main uska saga chacha” angrily and vehemently when I mentioned that he was no less than her own uncle, or the “camera rakh kaam kar” monkey got, while serving as my assistant in the ladies program on the 24^th, or the “arey ye bitiya to badi pyari hai, ise rakh ke ja do mahina mere paas”!

Coming back laden with kilos of homemade achaar (because I happened to mention I like this one), and gajak (because we all like it and monkey had never eaten it before) and a piercing sense of loss, monkey tells me she feels closer to these people than she does to some “legit” family. It is sure, then, that this immense love I feel, every time I set foot in that town; the closeness and immediate intimacy and warmth I become enveloped by, these strangers who just accidentally become so much – this is not a me-only phenomenon. After all, D found this – his found family – one of the multiple ones he has, quite by as much of a twist of fate, accident of circumstances in the first place.