by Ruskin Bond
The premature death of my father was one of the causes of the decline of the family. To replace him, Haji Muhammad Siddiq asked Abdul Aziz to leave Lhasa and come settle near him in Leh. Although he was more Tibetan than Ladakhi, my uncle accepted and thus undertook the journey accompanied by his wife and nine-year-old daughter. He had loaded his goods onto my father’s mules and took a few of the same servants.
The caravan followed the usual track passing through Shigatse, Lhatse, and the high Brahmaputra. Arrived in Toksum, three days’ walk from Mayum La, the travelers heard that Khampa brigands infested the region and had already attacked and pillaged several nomad camps. Khwaja Abdul Aziz was not a man to be stopped by such rumors. He only took the precaution of verifying that his Mauser rifle, which he carefully cleaned, was in good order. And the caravan went on its way.
After the caravan had crossed the Mayum La an episode occurred which has remained famous in the family annals. Abdul Aziz and his companions set up their bivouac on a deserted plateau at a high altitude. As usual, they let the mules graze around the campsite during the night. In the morning the servants had gone to collect them when my uncle noticed a group of horsemen in the distance. At first he thought it was a caravan but when they approached their gait seemed unusual to him and his suspicions were aroused. The strangers came up to the bivouac and whilst conversing amongst themselves, began to attach their mounts to tent pegs. Abdul Aziz noticed that each one was armed with a long flint rifle with a powder keg as well as a sword. One of the two servants who had remained in the bivouac, himself a Khampa, pointed out to them that no one had authorized them to touch the tents, to which they replied with arrogance that they had no authorization to take anything from anyone.
So Khwaja Abdul Aziz, holding his Mauser, approached and sought to drive them away: “You have no business here. Go away. All this is ours.”
“Who are you?” asked the bandits.
“I’m going to show you who I am,” answered Uncle in a tone expressing not the least fright but rather growing anger.
Then the bandits began to load their rifles. Abdul Aziz, even angrier, cried out to them: “Do you think we came into the desert without better weapons than yours? For us, your rifles are only sticks.”
At that moment, the little girl, frightened, began to howl but her mother, who was calmly eating her tsampa, ticked her off sharply, “You should be ashamed to cry. Tears have never helped anything!” And, baring her chest she turned toward the marauders, “Just kill us if it pleases you!”
Less courageous, the cook of the caravan, a Ladakhi Muslim, prostrated, terrorized, before the bandits, crying, “Kuch, kuch! Please, please! [spare us].”
Abdul Aziz’s indignation reached its peak. He railed at his cook: “You’re as crazy as you are cowardly if you think people like this know what mercy is! You’re no man!” And he spat in his face. Then, aiming his rifle at the closest bandit, he shouted to them, “If you want to fight, I’m ready. But whatever happens, don’t forget that there is law in Tibet and the Government have means of arresting criminals like you and punishing them as they deserve.”
The brigands made hesitating movements, looked at each other, and exchanged a few words which the Khampa servant understood. They wondered if they weren’t in the presence of a high-ranking official and if it wouldn’t be more prudent to let him remain alive. At the same time they noticed the other servant coming back with the mules. So they withdrew, untied their horses, jumped into their saddles, and galloped off.
Abdul Aziz followed them with his eyes and saw them reach a glen where some companions were waiting for them. He remained turned in their direction for a long time, his rifle in his hand, ready to fire at the first one who still dared to approach.
The little girl who was so frightened was later to become my wife. She kept all the details of the episode engraved in her memory.
Nevertheless, the caravan set off again with no further mishap. At the next lap, nomads who already knew what had happened came and prostrated in front of Khwaja Abdul Aziz. It seemed miraculous to them that he had escaped from the bandits when so many of their own people had fallen victim to them. He himself only made this brief comment about the incident.
“If those villains hadn’t made me so angry, we would all be dead.”
Uncle had, in fact, a strong temperament and he wasn’t lacking in pride; perhaps he kept something of the arrogance of certain aristocratic Tibetans with whom he had been in contact for so long in Lhasa. Such a character undoubtedly made him a respected and even feared leader, but did not perfectly suit the occupation which was to be his from then on in the trading company directed by my grandfather Haji Muhammad Siddiq. With his wife and daughter, he moved into the big house in Leh over which the patriarch reigned and with whom he became the principal collaborator in place of my father. It was thus that he was assigned to lead the Lopchak first in 1940 and then in 1942 when I accompanied him.
However, certain indications already made us sense that the days of the trade caravans were approaching their end. My cousin Abdul Haq, who didn’t like the precarious existence that these long expeditions into high desert lands forced one to lead, was interested in new means of transport and in the possibility of traveling more rapidly and safely between Leh and Lhasa through India. He had taken the opportunity, which he thought good, of selling the mules and all the caravan supplies that we still owned and the family bitterly reproached him for this. Consequently, at the time of the 1942 Lopchak, we no longer had a caravan which belonged to us. We were entirely dependent on the supplies of the Tibetan administration who put at our disposition 200 to 250 mules whereas on the Indian side, the government of Kashmir advanced us the modest sum of 10,000 rupees.
At the end of that September of 1942 when we went down toward the Indus after having crossed the Rupshu, also called Ladakhi Chang-Tang, and when we approached the border of Tibet, Khwaja Abdul Aziz at least had the satisfaction of telling himself that he was going to cross it as an official. As for myself, I was not easily consolable, having had to be separated from my young wife. All sorts of confused thoughts rushed into my mind. My diary is a witness to this. I also express in it the confused hope of finding light at the end of the way and I wrote:
“Lhasa, perhaps, will give a direction to my life.”
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THE VIEW FROM CHEENA*7
Jim Corbett
Naini Tal can best be described as an open valley running east and west, surrounded on three sides by hills, the highest of which, Cheena, rises to a height of 8,569 feet. It is open at the end from which a motor road approaches it. Nestling in the valley is a lake a little more than two miles in circumference, fed at the upper end by a perennial spring and overflowing at the other end where the motor road terminates. At the upper and lower ends of the valley there are bazaars and the surrounding wooded hills are dotted with residential houses, churches, schools, clubs, and hotels. Near the margin of the lake are boat houses, a picturesque Hindu temple, and a very sacred rock shrine presided over by an old Brahmin priest who has been a lifelong friend of mine.
Geologists differ in their opinion as to the origin of the lake, some attributing it to glaciers and landslides, others to volcanic action. Hindu legends, however, give the credit for the lake to three ancient sages, Atri, Pulastya, and Pulaha. The sacred book Skanda-Puran tells how, while on a penitential pilgrimage, these three sages arrived at the crest of Cheena and, finding no water to quench their thirst, dug a hole at the foot of the hill and siphoned water into it from Manasarowar, the sacred lake in Tibet. After the departure of the sages the goddess Naini arrived and took up her abode in the waters of the lake. In course of time forests grew on the sides of the excavation and, attracted by the water and the vegetation, birds and animals in great numbers made their home in the valley. Within a radius of four miles of the goddess’s temple I have, in addition to other animals, seen tigers, leopards
, bears, and sambhar, and in the same area identified one hundred twenty-eight varieties of birds.
Rumors of the existence of the lake reached the early administrators of this part of India, and as the hill people were unwilling to disclose the position of their sacred lake, one of these administrators, in the year 1839, hit on the ingenious plan of placing a large stone on the head of a hill man, telling him he would have to carry it until he arrived at goddess Naini’s lake. After wandering over the hills for many days the man eventually got tired of carrying the stone, and led the party who were following him to the lake. The stone alleged to have been carried by the man was shown to me when I was a small boy, and when I remarked that it was a very big stone for a man to carry—it weighed about six hundred pounds—the hill man who showed it to me said, “Yes, it is a big stone but you must remember that in those days our people were very strong.”
Provide yourself now with a good pair of field glasses and accompany me to the top of Cheena. From here you will get a bird’s-eye view of the country surrounding Naini Tal. The road is steep, but if you are interested in birds, trees, and flowers you will not mind the three-mile climb and if you arrive at the top thirsty, as the three sages did, I will show you a crystal-clear spring of cold water to quench your thirst. Having rested and eaten your lunch, turn now to the north. Immediately below you is a deep well-wooded valley running down to the Kosi river. Beyond the river are a number of parallel ridges with villages dotted here and there; on one of these ridges is the town of Almora, and on another, the cantonment of Ranikhet. Beyond these again are more ridges, the highest of which, Dungar Buqual, rises to a height of 14,200 feet and is dwarfed into insignificance by the mighty mass of the snow-clad Himalayas. Sixty miles due north of you, as the crow flies, is Trisul, and to the east and to the west of this imposing 23,406-foot peak the snow mountains stretch in an unbroken line for many hundreds of miles. Where the snows fade out of sight to the west of Trisul are first the Gangotri group, then the glaciers and mountains above the sacred shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath, and then Kamet made famous by Smythe. To the east of Trisul, and set farther back, you can just see the top of Nanda Devi (25,689 feet), the highest mountain in India. To your right front is Nanda Kot, the spotless pillow of the goddess Parvati, and a little farther east are the beautiful peaks of Panch Chuli, the “five cooking places” used by the Pandavas while on their way to Kailas in Tibet. At the first approach of dawn, while Cheena and the intervening hills are still shrouded in the mantle of night, the snowy range changes from indigo blue to rose pink, and as the sun touches the peaks nearest to heaven the pink gradually changes to dazzling white. During the day the mountains show up cold and white, each crest trailing a feather of powdered snow, and in the setting sun the scene may be painted pink, gold, or red according to the fancy of heaven’s artist.
Turn your back now on the snows and face south. At the limit of your range of vision you will see three cities: Bareilly, Kashipur, and Moradabad. These three cities—the nearest of which, Kashipur, is some fifty miles as the crow flies—are on the main railway that runs between Calcutta and the Punjab. There are three belts of country between the railway and the foothills: first a cultivated belt some twenty miles wide, then a grass belt ten miles wide known as the Terai, and third a tree belt ten miles wide known as the Bhabar. In the Bhabar belt, which extends right up to the foothills, clearings have been made, and on this rich fertile soil, watered by many streams, villages of varying size have been established.
The nearest group of villages, Kaladhungi, is fifteen miles from Naini Tal by road, and at the upper end of this group you will see our village, Choti Haldwani, surrounded by a three-mile-long stone wall. Only the roof of our cottage, which is at the junction of the road running down from Naini Tal with the road skirting the foothills, is visible in a group of big trees. The foothills in this area are composed almost entirely of iron ore, and it was at Kaladhungi that iron was first smelted in northern India. The fuel used was wood, and as the king of Kumaon, General Sir Henry Ramsay, feared that the furnaces would consume all the forests in the Bhabar, he closed down the foundries. Between Kaladhungi and your seat on Cheena the low hills are densely wooded with sal, the trees which supply our railways with ties, or sleepers, and in the nearest fold of the ridge nestles the little lake of Khurpa Tal, surrounded by fields on which the best potatoes in India are grown. Away in the distance, to the right, you can see the sun glinting on the Ganges, and to the left you can see it glinting on the Sarda; the distance between these two rivers where they leave the foothills is roughly two hundred miles.
Now turn to the east, and before you in the near and middle distance you will see the country described in old gazetteers as “the district of sixty lakes.” Many of these lakes have silted up, some in my lifetime, and the only ones of any size that now remain are Naini Tal, Sat Tal, Bhim Tal, and Nakuchia Tal. Beyond Nakuchia Tal is the cone-shaped hill, Choti Kailas. The gods do not favor the killing of bird or beast on this sacred hill, and the last man who disregarded their wishes—a soldier on leave during the war—unaccountably lost his footing after killing a mountain goat and, in full view of his two companions, fell a thousand feet into the valley below. Beyond Choti Kailas is the Kala Agar ridge on which I hunted the Chowgarh man-eating tiger for two years, and beyond this ridge the mountains of Nepal fade out of sight.
Turn now to the west. But first it will be necessary for you to descend a few hundred feet and take up a new position on Deopatta, a rocky peak 7,991 feet high adjoining Cheena. Immediately below you is a deep, wide, and densely wooded valley which starts on the saddle between Cheena and Deopatta and extends through Dachouri to Kaladhungi. It is richer in flora and fauna than any other in the Himalayas, and beyond this beautiful valley the hills extend in an unbroken line up to the Ganges, the waters of which you can see glinting in the sun over a hundred miles away. On the far side of the Ganges is the Siwalik range of hills—hills that were old before the mighty Himalayas were born.
* * *
Come with me now to one of the villages you saw in your bird’s-eye view from the top of Cheena…
The headman [of the village] is dead now and his daughters have married and left…but his wife is alive, and you who are accompanying me to the village, after your bird’s-eye view from Cheena, must be prepared to drink the tea, not made with water but with rich fresh milk sweetened with jaggery, which she will brew for us. Our approach down the steep hillside facing the village has been observed and a small square of frayed carpet and two wicker chairs, reinforced with ghooral skins, have been set ready for us. Standing near these chairs to welcome us is the wife of the headman; there is no purdah here and she will not be embarrassed if you take a good look at her, and she is worth looking at. Her hair, snow-white now, was raven-black when I first knew her, and her cheeks, which in those far-off days had a bloom on them, are now ivory-white, without a single crease or wrinkle. Daughter of a hundred generations of Brahmins, her blood is as pure as that of the ancestors who founded her line. Pride of pure ancestry is inherent in all men, but nowhere is there greater respect for pure ancestry than there is in India. There are several different castes of people in the village this dear old lady administers, but her rule is never questioned and her word is law, not because of the strong arm of retainers, for of these she has none, but because she is a Brahmin, the salt of India’s earth. The high prices paid in recent years for field produce have brought prosperity—as it is known in India—to this hill village, and of this prosperity our hostess has had her full share. The string of fluted gold beads that she brought as part of her dowry are still round her neck, but the thin silver necklace has been deposited in the family bank, the hole in the ground under the cooking place, and her neck is now encircled by a solid gold band. In the far-off days her ears were unadorned, but now she has a number of thin gold rings in the upper cartilage, and from her nose hangs a gold ring five inches in diameter, the weight of which is p
artly carried by a thin gold chain looped over her right ear. Her dress is the same as that worn by all high-caste hill women: a shawl, a tight-fitting bodice of warm material, and a voluminous print skirt. Her feet are bare, for even in these advanced days the wearing of shoes among our hill folk denotes that the wearer is unchaste.
The old lady has now retired to the inner recesses of her house to prepare tea, and while she is engaged on this pleasant task you can turn your attention to the bania’s shop on the other side of the narrow road. The bania, too, is an old friend. Having greeted us and presented us with a packet of cigarettes, he has gone back to squat cross-legged on the wooden platform on which his wares are exposed. These wares consist of the few articles that the village folk and wayfarers needed in the way of atta, rice, dal, ghee, salt, stale sweets purchased at a discount in the Naini Tal bazaar, hill potatoes fit for the table of a king, enormous turnips so fierce that when eaten in public they make the onlookers’ eyes water, cigarettes and matches, a tin of kerosene oil, and near the platform and within reach of his hand an iron pan in which milk is kept simmering throughout the day.
As the bania takes his seat on the platform his few customers gather in front of him. First is a small boy, accompanied by an even smaller sister, who is the proud possessor of one pice, all of which he is anxious to invest in sweets. Taking the pice from the small grubby hand, the bania drops it into an open box. Then, waving his hand over the tray to drive away the wasps and files, he picks up a square sweet made of sugar and curds, breaks it in half, and puts a piece into each eager outstretched hand. Next comes a woman of a depressed class who has two annas to spend on her shopping. One anna is invested in atta, the coarse ground wheat that is the staple food of our hill folk, and two pice in the coarsest of the three qualities of dal exposed on the stall. With the remaining two pice she purchases a little salt and one of the fierce turnips and then, with a respectful salaam to the bania, for he is a man who commands respect, she hurries off to prepare the midday meal for her family.