Sikkim’s ecological fragments

During my first visit to Sikkim in the winter of 2010, I went to a place called Dzongu – a land which is revered and considered sacred by the indigenous Rong, or Lepcha, people. It was dark, and I was outside taking in the fresh, cold mountain air. As I looked around, I could faintly see three lights far apart from each other shining dimly at a much higher elevation. Too distant to be able to make out easily, I asked my host in the village, Lakpa daju (elder brother), a middle-aged man with a default smile and zeal to do something for Dzongu and the Lepcha people, "What are those lights in the darkness on the other side of the hill?" This was my first trip to Dzongu, and I had reached at night. Somehow in the darkness of night, I had the impression that this house was at one extreme of the hill and nothing lay beyond it. Lakpa came out curiously, looked in the direction I was pointing and said, "Oh those? Lights from the houses…" He went in promptly, perhaps because of the biting cold outside.

I stayed out for a while, trying to enjoy the dark silhouette of the mountains and valleys nearby, but it was very cold and I had started to shiver, so I went in looking for some warmth in Lakpa's wood-fire kitchen. After taking a sip of raksi (rice wine) he said, "Those are newly built houses, they were not there earlier. But soon there will be many more." He went on to explain his understanding of village expansion: "People got married; now they cannot live together with the family. Nuclear family is the reason; everyone wants to build their own house." The property, mostly land, in the hills of Sikkim gets distributed among the siblings. Many people use it when they want to build a new house, while some prefer to save it for the future. Five children for a family can translate to five more houses in the near future for which they would likely have to use a patch of land that was earlier designated for agriculture. Lakpa started counting the probable number of houses he expected would be built on that hillside in the next year. He reminisced about seeing bharal, or Himalayan blue sheep, every time he would go down to the river, and tried to recall the last time he had seen a musk deer near the village. He then promised to show me around the following day.