Malicious Gossip by Khushwant Singh

Author:Khushwant Singh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoirs
ISBN: 9789350294673
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2012-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

Himachal

“In a hundred ages of the gods I could not tell you of the glories of Himachal,” lamented a Sanskrit poet. In my three score years and six I have seen some of that glory fade under my rheumy eyes. Admittedly, I know only a small portion of Himachal: Simla that I loved but love no more; and Kasauli with which I have made my terms because this is where I intend to spend the remaining years of my life. But I am sure that what I have seen with my eyes is also happening elsewhere in my home state. There was a time when given the choice between Kashmir and Simla, without the slightest hesitation, I would have opted for Simla, because it was to Simla that I belonged. Everything about it was bathed in romance. I rejoiced to see the rays of the rising sun kiss the tops of Jakhoo and Shali peaks; the crying of barbets and the cheeping of cicadas through the warm summer days was heady music to my ears; the plaintive songs of hill women as they cut grass on the hillside touched emotions too deep for tears. I watched many a sun go down behind the deckle-edged snow peaks and sighed for the day that had passed. The nights were equally bewitching—the silence of the moon-bathed valleys broken by the tinkle of mule bells, the haunting notes of the muleteer’s flute, nightjars calling to each other and the distant murmur of innumerable streams. When the rains came, they came in ceaseless torrents which lasted several weeks when heavy mists blotted out everything as if to heighten the desire to see what they had hidden from view. Suddenly, unseen hands would lift the gossamer curtain to unfold magic visions of freshly washed forests of pine, fir and wild rhodondendron, emerald green paddy fields through which ran swollen torrents sparkling in the sun.

The Himachal I loved was the Himachal of Rudyard Kipling:

So long as ’neath the Kalka hills

The tonga-horn shall ring,

So long as down the Solan dip

The hard-held ponies swing,

So long as Tara Devi sees

The lights of Simla town,

So long as pleasure calls us up

Or duty drives us down,

If you love me as I love you

What pair so happy as we two?

By all that lights our daily life

Or works our lifelong woe,

From Boileaugunge to Simla Downs

And those grim, glades below,

Where, heedless of the flying hoof

And clamour overhead,

Sleep, with the grey langur for guard,

Our very scornful Dead,

If you love me as I love you,

All Earth is servant to us two!

Most of my Himachal is gone for ever. Mule caravans have been replaced by diesel-farting trucks; the flute and the pahari song by Hindi filmi music blaring out from loudspeakers. Every year more and more of the mountains and their evergreen forests are being eaten up by human beings. As roads are driven further into the mountains, more woods are chopped down, more habitations spring up with their cinemas, dhabas, loudspeakers and liquor shops. If this is progress, to hell with progress! Give me back the Himachal of my younger days.

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