Now that the rain is over, ruminate

Raaja Bhasin

Before mobile phones transferred the world, the weather forecast and the neighbourhood gossip to our pockets, we watched, from McLeodganj, a group of Gaddi herdsmen moving with their flocks across the Dhauladhar mountain range. The first snows had fallen and below the jagged peaks dusted with fresh white, a line of sheep and goats slowly worked their way over a treacherous, almost non-existent path. Almost rhetorically, one asked, “When do these men know that it is time to move? How do they know that the snows may be early or late?” That the passes through which they, and their ancestors, have trekked over the centuries, moving from their summer to winter pastures, may close early, and they, and their flocks, will be trapped. To the best of my knowledge, that has never happened. Reading the signs of the sky — and of the plants, birds and animals around, they leave on time. Every day, at dawn, the women and children go ahead and set up camp at a pre-planned place, and the men, the flock and dogs try to reach before dark. The pattern repeats itself over several days as they move to the plains from the hills. There was a time when the villagers of today’s lower districts of Himachal, like Kangra and Hamirpur, would wait for the Gaddis to come and vie with one another to have them camp in their fields. The manure that came with the sheep and goats was something that could help gain a better crop the following season.

These were, and hopefully still are, people who live in close touch with nature. They do not have the presumption that most of us have — like the hydro-electricity project that proclaimed, ‘We tame nature.’ Sorry, no one tames nature. At best, we move hand in hand with it and learn that each season announces its coming and its passing.

When the monsoon arrived this year, it did so in its normal wet way. The first signs that nature sends out were there. The dormant ‘snake plant’ or the ‘cobra lily’ of the genus arisaema rose from the soil and informed us that the rains were just round the corner. The first tree ferns appeared, the mosses and their cousins, selaginella, became greener and succulent. Then, one day, there were clouds, and the next day, it rained — and as we now know, it rained with might, even with anger and venom.

While nothing had prepared us for a monsoon such as this, a friend pointed out something. He said, “Have you realised that not a single traditional Himachali home or a colonial house has been destroyed in these floods? Some may have been damaged, a retaining wall may have collapsed, but all the structures are still standing.” While it will be difficult to establish the veracity of this rather sweeping statement, on the surface of it, this seems true.

There is a phrase in Pahari, approximately written in English as ‘ghaur-bhaur’. To the best of my knowledge, there is no equivalent of this in any other language. The Arabic word ‘watan’, which is frequently used in both Urdu and other languages, comes close. Yet, the Pahari ‘ghaur-bhaur’ has a wider reach and is more encompassing. It is also open-ended. It means home — both the physical structure and the associated feelings with it; the second word ‘bhaur’ covers the surroundings — the fields, forests, streams, birds, animals, family, the devta, deity and all what one would associate with ‘home’, in its widest possible sense. It is a storehouse of experience that comes not just from one’s own lifetime, but includes that of ancestors and the area around. It is a collective memory, the experience and the security of home, in its widest possible sense. Aided and abetted by the wisdom of our own species, ‘ghaur-bhaur’ is what has been stabbed. Roads that were pointless, ‘development’ that is questionable.

After this monsoon, all of us seem like characters from the Buddhist ‘Tittha Sutta’ and the episode of the blind men who set out to examine the elephant. Every once in a while, nature gives us a tap on the shoulder to remind us who’s the boss. If we don’t take heed, we are also given a solid kick in the shins. As has just happened. I write this on what one trusts will be the first of many of autumn’s golden evenings when the sun slowly winds its way towards the horizon. The cob that lies hidden in the ‘cobra lily’ has turned a deep red and announced that the rains are over. The sky is filling with September’s fires and hopefully, with sense and hope. 

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