It was a gentle downhill walk from Dhakuri and this gave me the opportunity to learn what an achiever D already was at the age of 23. He was married with two kids, the assistant headman of his village and a vociferous campaigner for the Youth Congress. He had also been working with the Forest Department for environmental conservation and prevention of forest fires and of course, was a registered trekking guide for KMVN and private trekking outfits.
I also learnt that, for a guy his age, he didn’t care a whit for the musical trends of his time. He loved Hindi film music but as far as he was concerned, nothing after the year 2000 was worth listening to. He had particular contempt for A R Rahman because he felt his music sucked the soul out of what made songs by his heroes, Anand-Milind and Jatin-Lalit, great. To prove his point, he made me listen to his favorite song, a torturous ode to gentle objectification, “Kudrat ne banaaya hoga”, a song that literally went “God must have made you when he had a lot of free time on his hands”, on a loop on his phone and if the climb up to Dhakuri was physically gruelling, this made sure the walk down to Khati was no less so.
When we reached the village of Wachcham, we rested in a shed plastered with posters of Mayawati, the leader of Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP), not because we needed to rest our bones or refresh ourselves with more chai, but because D, being an ardent Youth Congress worker had to get into a long debate with the people huddled together at the shed, many of whom were BSP supporters. In the middle of this squabble, an environmentally conscious gentleman pointed out that the Tehri Dam was a catastrophe waiting to happen and that it was the Congress party which was responsible for its existence, a point that didn’t sit too well with D, who reacted with supreme fury by calling the man a communist who had no space in the modern world. D felt that the dam was necessary for the economy of the region and for jobs and livelihoods to flow.
As the conversation meandered on endlessly, Panditji got tired of it and left the scene. I followed him as we walked down the stony trail to Khati. Panditji was highly disappointed at the selfish nature of the people who had been arguing. “They’re only interested in themselves,” he said, “not in the general well-being of humanity. They come to temples when they need something but none of them realise that good things will happen to them only if they consistently respect the rules that God has set for the people of the world. They’re greedy and it is this greed that’s going to destroy the world They might make a lot of money by indulging in corruption but God is going to make sure they pay for their sins in the next birth.”
“If bad things are going to happen to them in the next birth, why worry about it now? They’re going to suffer anyway, right?”, I said.
“That’s not the point. When I grew up, we feared our Gods and respected the rules set by our elders and our ancestors. We were taught not to do or say certain things and we tried our best to be good people out of the fear that doing bad things led to bad consequences. The young people these days don’t have that fear. They do anything they want, laze around all day, do drugs, fall in love with girls not approved by their parents, indulge in politics, don’t care for the rituals and traditions.”
“So what do you think of the Tehri dam?”
“I support the Tehri dam because it provides livelihood to local people. For the longest time, politicians only took money but never did any work. So any work that happens is good.”
“But people say the dam has destroyed the forests and only exists to serve the needs of people living in big cities.”
“People say all kinds of idiotic things. As long as it is beneficial to someone, it’s good. It’s providing work to young people who would be wasting their lives uselessly otherwise. And many young people go from villages to cities for work nowadays, so if the needs of a city increase they have to find resources from somewhere.”
“But how does this fit in with your philosophy that greed is bad? Surely, young people are going to the cities because they aren’t satisfied with the life in the villages and want to make more money?”
“That’s not greed. That’s moving with the times. In the olden days, you could live a satisfied life by tilling your land and taking care of your family without seeing anything of the outside world but that’s no longer possible in this day and age. You need money to survive and you can’t make any money just living in your village. You have to move out and seek work. You’re stupid if you don’t do that. I see many village boys just loitering around doing nothing. That’s not healthy. We never used to loiter when we were young. We always had work to do. Greed is when a wealthy politician promises to build roads and give you electricity and when he gets the money for it, he keeps all the money for himself. At least with the Tehri dam, the government has built something and it’s doing some good to ordinary people somewhere.”
Soon, we reached the cobbled paths winding through the terraced farms on the outskirts of Khati village. D ran up, patted my back patronisingly and said, “Good job! You’ve learnt to walk in the mountains today.” He put me up in a one room house that belonged to one of his friends that was covered with a stony roof and furnished with one desolate wooden cot and a squat toilet in a corner.
The sun was setting over the Himalayan mountains and even though I had walked over 20 km in the day on fairly steep terrain, adrenalin was coursing through my veins and I wanted to explore the village to see what it was like. These desires were put to rest emphatically by D who said, “You’ve walked 20 kms today. You have to walk 20 more tomorrow. So just eat and go to sleep. You’ll need it.” It was good advice as the moment I had finished my simple meal of dal, rice and vegetables, I slipped into a deep slumber.
