Darjeeling Beneath the Cosmetics

Writer Marcus Dam left Darjeeling when he was 15 "and sick of the place". In Calcutta, however, distance made the heart grow fonder. He returned recently and noted the changes. This article is excerpted from the 'Miscellany' supplement of the Statesman..When I went back this time, the skies were not the same. The city seemed to have changed over the years. It wore a smile that seemed to mock the native as he tried to return. The only thing that possibly kepi me going was a flood of memories that, came crashing to my mind, tossing me into a cemetery with gravestones overgrown with weeds: Nature paying its respects to the sahibs and their memsahibs who came to an alien land, thousands of miles away, to rule – and die..Fresh terraces have been carved out of whatever hillsides that remain for tomorrow´s gravestones. Once, the cemetery was my makeshift stage, the headstones my devout fans; I would strum a Beatles tune on a borrowed guitar. Today, the cemetery is bursting at the seams with the dead. Like everything else in Darjeeling. Leaving you no space to laugh at the discordant notes without being overheard. Or to cry out just for the heck of it….Spilling into public life is a new xenophobia, so long brewing in the shadows of´ bahadur-babu loyalties. Darjeeling, the place that long lay lost in the pages of photo albums and tourist brochures, is simmering with political passions and injured feelings that threaten to burst into violence any moment. The clerk at the reception of the hotel glares at me with barely concealed hostility. He refuses to answer my queries in his own language —the one I took as my own when I grew up in the hills. I am not surprised — newspapers have forewarned me of such behaviour. Nonetheless, the forbidding look on his face jars my mind: I realise that I am no longer wanted in a place where I was born and which I consider my home..I check into my room and watch from my window the roads winding up the hills. How the soft fog carresses and smothers the roads in its embrace; how the mist creeps in through the window to hold me. All this may sound rather sentimental, but the hills are no longer as depicted in those slickly produced tourist guide-books..Yes, the truth is that the inexorable march of politics has scarred Darjeeling beyond recognition. Till now forced to be content with being just an obliging masseur to tired bodies and fatigued minds, Darjeeling is now coming to terms with itself. And, as it does so, shaking off that image of ethereal beauty which spurred the fantasies of the seasoners it seems to say: "Accept me the way I am. Wash away the cosmetics. Clear the cobwebs of myths that people have spun around me, people who never quite understood me." I listen..I meet a "man on the street" — I need a quote for my story. He echoes what has become, I feel, the voice of Darjeeling. "Leave us alone if you don't understand us." The daisies on the hillside are not for plucking. Not because the daisies have shrivelled up, but because the hillsides have changed. To put it in terms more academic: a social metamorphosis has begun. Insulated from the mainstream for decades, its people are now putting down their demands in clear, unvarnished terms..But there is hardly anyone to listen. There is the GNLF leader Subhas Ghising, flexing his muscles and painting himself in leader's colours. The West Bengal Government seems to have resigned itself to an unhappy coexistence. Meanwhile, the Centre, which had its hand thick in the political pie, now wails and watches as things seemingly go out of hand..Caught in the crossfire of these opposing political forces are the people of Darjeeling. And every homecoming widens the gap between memories of the past and doubts about a future that is uncertain. People are groping for new social moorings; they're even willing to burrow into linguistic intricacies to find out what exactly their language is..Even the Himalaya — in whose niches resided my childhood´s imagined wonder, the S now Queen—has changed. The Kanchenjunga is no longer visible from the many vantage points as I meander up from the lower Chowkbazar downtown. Jagged housing structures have sprung up breaking through, the ground in a frenzy matched only by the desire to own a house. Real-estate developers, with their men, machines and concrete, are not short of clients..So all year round, new houses are built and old ones raised to newer heights, the hillsides get disfigured —and Darjeeling buckles under their weight….He was a Lepcha. His ancestors, he claimed, were of the earliest inhabitants of the region. Then came the sahibs, lured by the pristine, cool beauty of the hills — and out of the S sweltering heat of the plains. They set up a health resort, and a people´s home became a "hill-station". Then began an era of colonisation which continued well past Independence, forcing the Lepchas into a state of penury, snipping off their roots and robbing them of, perhaps, the only thing they had left — social identity..And there he was, this Lepcha, lumbering up the hill, selling newspapers: his face weather-beaten and wrinkled, on his tired shoulders a haversack crammed with newspapers. As he emerged from around the bend, I would run down my staircase and snatch the paper from his outstretched hands. He would wait for the change as 1 excitedly peered into the sports pages, the smell of fresh newsprint and the morning air gently rubbing against me as I tried to find out what had happened to Calcutta´s Big Three. On one of my earlier homecomings, I was told that my Lepcha friend had given up his job and retreated to the "caman" down the hills, where he looked after his tiny orange orchard. Today, those who read newspapers go to stalls..Even the names of the roads have changed. The highway that snakes up the hills from Siliguri, known till recently as the Hill Cart Road, has been changed to Tenzing Norgay Highway. Predictably, such changes haven´t gone down well with many old-timers. Fortunately, the "Pagla Jhora" (waterfall gone crazy) — whose turbulence during the monsoon triggers landslides — is still called "Pagla Jhora"..As the agitation picks up momentum anew, rumblings from the hills may once grab the headlines. Violence may reappear on the snaking streets, bombs may find their targets — unless the deafening voices of the people are heard. Meanwhile, Darjeeling waits for the healing touch — and the clerk at the hotel´s reception to flash a smile and greet the native´s return.