Tidbits of the region’s media

Was glad to note that Kalimpong has finally made it into the calculations of the babus at the West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation, who put out a full page ad in The Telegraph extolling a township "Where The Mountains Meet The Sky". We, who have more friends in Kalimpong than in Darjeeling or Gangtok, had always thought that the "den of spies" {Nehruvian words) would have its day as the exclusive destination for high-end tourists. May it be so. Tathasthu.

Angrita Sherpa deserves a hundred khadas for having made it to the top of the world once again, but no thanks to the Rising Nepal daily, which carried the following news: Angrita Sherpa Saturday scaled Ml. Sagarmatha for a record ninth time, a feat no other mountaineer Ms equalled after Tenzing Norgay Sherpa reached the top of the world with a New Zealander in the early fifties. Several difficulties with this item, which was obviously prepared by a xenophobic sludge with origins in the midhills of Nepal.

If it is "record ninth time" the feat could not have been equalled by another mountaineer, could it? Tenzing Norgay was famous for having climbed Sagarmatha with you-know-who the first time, not for having topped it nine times. And why this inexplicable reluctance to name Edmund Hillary other than by nationality? Perhaps the reporter simply forgot Hillary´s name, just as he forgot the date 29 May 1953 of the first topping. Early fifties, my grandmother´s gout!

If few people remember Tenzing Norgay in Nepal—once (so briefly) a household word bandied about with nationalistic pride—it was touching to see his children bring out an advertisement in the Kathmandu papers in commemoration. Why has Himal, the Himalayan magazine, not done a posthumous profile of a man who, clearly, seems to have been a cut above all native climbers who have come after him? Could it be that they just made them better in the fifties—administrators, educators, politicians and mountain climbers?

"Fires ravage Garhwals", stated The Telegraph, with the headline-writer clearly being one who prefers the plural form, both, for fire and Garhwal, to the singular. There was, of course, more than one fire, but two Garhwals? Most likely a colonial hangover dating back to the days when Garhwal was, indeed, divided into Tehri Garhwal which was under a raja and the rest of Garhwal which was administered by the British.

Do we like the use of this traditional Sikkimese dancer motif to sell Sikkim State Lotteries to plains people? No,and I wonder if the Lepcha or Bhutia are complaining. The winners for 26 different draws between 1-10 June 1995, as advertised in the Indian dailies, one notices, are all from the Calcutta, A sansol and Burdwan areas. Looked at from one angle, it is good that the Sikkimese seem not to have taken to playing the numbers. Little birdie tells me that the Sikkim State Lotteries {managed by K & Co. of Noida, U.P.) is a Himalayan conspiracy to reverse the resource flows and bring money up to the Himalaya from the Ganga maidan.

For the geopolitically-minded, hear ye that South Block in its wisdom has undone what it had once done. It used to be that the "Secretary North" over in the Indian Foreign Ministry used to handle Bhutan and Nepal, while China was over with the East Asia desk. Then, during the barony of J.N. Dixit, China was clubbed with Nepal and Bhutan because supposedly the policy towards the three countries had to be "integrated" An impossible task, so Salman Haider, the newest baron of South Block, has decided to revert to the old setup, with China going back to the East Asia desk where it belongs, and a joint secretary assigned to look at Nepal and Bhutan exclusively.

Time to let some air out of the tyres of the Uttarakhandi agitators who insist they have been left at the bottom of the heap of Bharatbarsha. Gautam Vohra of the Development Research and Action Group (DRAG), in a report on Uttarakhand to the government NGO-funding agency CAP ART, states that the hills of U.P. are no more neglected than other regions of the country. In fact, it is "better placed economically, socially and culturally than many other regions." The lament that the development programmes do not reach the people is also not specific to Uttarakhand. As elsewhere, "the marginalised sections are the ones who remain neglected. And they will continue to remain neglected, unless they decide to do something about it." But Vohra-saab, you cannot have it both ways. The Uttarakhand agitation was what they were doing about it!

A report in the Gorkhapalra dated 13 Asar on "young cheats" of Nepalganj provides an interesting Himalayan morsel on the side. This hottest plains township of Nepal´s southwest is the also one that is farthest from any Himalayan peak. However, it hosts an establishment which goes by the name "Ganesh Himal Rice Mill". Ganesh Himal is the spectacular range just north of Kathmandu Valley. We thank the proprietors of the Ganesh Himal Rice Mill for their Himalayan frame of mind, commiserate with them for the un-Himalayan 45 degrees Celsius temperatures they have had recently, and wish them a good threshing season when the paddy comes in.

While he may indeed have returned after having engaged in—as the Press Trust of India put it in lachrymose terms—"a saga of sustained human endurance and unconquerable spirit", Major Harish Kohli gets no prizes on the side of imagination. The major led a high-altitude ski expedition that traversed the Garhwal Himalaya and discovered and christened two new passes. One´ was named Rajiv because the former Prime Minister of India was an enthusiast of all adventure sports.

The second, and this is the choice that has to be met with strident opposition, was christened "Dennis the Menace." Why? Because, explained Major Kohli with evident earnestness, "Dennis is the epitome of youth in every human being." Aaaaarggh-Oh, don´t tell me that this column by Chhetria Patrakar is actually read and has influence. On second thoughts, please tell me that is so. Vishnu International, lampooned in my last for mistaking a beehive for Mount Kailash, now shows a sketch of the real Kailash in its ads. As for the shape of things to come in highpilgrimages, and for_,the ultimate degradation of what was once remote and holy, here is the punchline in Vishnuji´s latest ad; "Travel by private jeep. No need to walk," Aaaaarggh.

Ishanya is a Sanskrit term which refers to the northeasterly direction. Ishani ("The North-Eastern") is an occasskmal journal published by Natwar Thakkar of the Nagaland Gandhi Ashram, seeking to promote discussion on development issues of "this fascinating, bewildering mosaic that is Northeast India." In an article, former Chief Justice of India P.N. Bhagwati laments that there is only one high court for the entire region comprising seven states, and declares that henceforth each state must have its own high court. (Ishani, Nagaland Gandhi Ashram, Chu-Chu-Yimlang village, Mokokchung District, Nagaland.)

About a year ago Himal did a cover feature on Film Himalaya ´94, in which one article dealt with "delinquent documentaries", in which a film-maker taking liberties to create an artificial sequence with a lynx in Mustang had been exposed. The Banf Festival of Mountain Films is one of the more prestigious events of its kind. Chhetria Patrakar has just learnt that the 1994 Grand Prize for Best Film went to that very film that Tony Miller was shooting, Mustang The Hidden Kingdom. The lynx sequence might well have ended up in the editing room floor, but the fact that Miller won rave reviews in the West proves the point made again and again at the Himal-organised film festival last year: the views of the subject peoples will differ significantly from those of the audiences and film critics in the West for whom most Himalayan films are packaged. Someone should ask Miller to submit his new film to Film Himalaya ´96…

It is cold comfort, but comforting nonetheless, to learn that it is not only Himalayan hill stations that are succumbing to the concrete jungle. According to Ananta Krishnan of The Indian Express, Mount Abu, the only hill resort in the Aravali hills of Rajasthan, is fast being overrun by a population and construction boom. The number of hotels doubled within 1985 and 1992, to cater to a tourist inflow that is now up to 5000 a day {the permanent residents number 16,000). There are 104 hotels, several public schools which accomodate 10,000 students in the area, and numerous unregistered guest houses. The nature of tourism has also changed, say the locals, with leisure visitors giving way to weekenders who come in a tearing rush and depart in a cloud of diesel fumes. Now where have I heard of this before?

Billy Arjan Singh, the famous conservationist of Tiger Haven at the Dudhwa National Park, is a morose and embittered recluse who fears that the countdown for the end of the tiger has begun, reports Tariq Hasan in the TOL "The tiger as a species is not likely to last more than five to ten years," says Singh, who believes that the official count of 4000 tigers in India is way off the mark because of "the inherently faulty system of counting tigers on the basis of pug marks". Like Chuck MacDougal who wrote in Himal a few issues ago, Singh believes that there is not a large enough "contiguous tiger population" anywhere in South Asia now to maintain a viable gene pool.