The vanishing green

I go to Siliguri sometimes, on office work. When I went there for the first time, I was under the impression that I am going to some kind of a hill station, at the foothill of the Himalayas. Nice cool breeze and cheerful people, maybe. What I found was a nightmare. The town is filthy, badly maintained, populated by short tempered, edgy people. The roads are narrow, the bazaars are just like any bazaar in heartland Bengal, the air is heavily smoke laden. And off course, the mountains are nowhere to be seen. The entire town gives an impression of business like activity, people selling fake foreign goods across the streets, the town being on the Indo-Nepal border.

When I spoke to the people they said the city was like what I expectd it to be, but some 50 years back. These days, if you want to feel the mountain breeze, you have to go up. I generally go with very tight schedule, still I somehow managed to squeeze out some time, hire a car and started up the mountain road. I had seen beautiful photographs of the Coronation bridge at Sevak ( bridge over Tista) and those of Kalijhora and I wanted to see those places. Kalijhora, I heard is an wonderful place and the photographs I have seen ( taken by a friend when she visited the place with her famil back in 2001) make the place look heavenly. At Kalijhora, Tista takes a sharp turn and there is this river washed valley which looked like a valley of flowers in the snaps. The whole valley was full of beautiful green grass and flowers.

So I took this car and couple of kilometers up the road, the air started to clear up, a forest started on both side of the road and air became distinctly cooler. Then Tista appeared and started running along the side of the road and it was beautiful. Like any other mountain stream, the Tista is green, and cuts deep gorge across the mountains. And then the coronation bridge came into the view. It's a beautiful old bridge and you get a great view of the mountain and the Tista from there. But as I neared, I winced to see that the place was crowded with screaming shouting badam eating tourists, and the serenity was nowhere to be seen. The ground was littered with peanut shell, gutka packets and the like and looked awful. In fact people were dropping their waste cellophane bags right in Tista.

Then I drove further up to Klijhora, hoping to catch the beauty of the place. And lo behold! They are making this giant hydel water project there. Public Works Department has taken over the whole place and what used to be the valley of flowers is now full of cranes and trucks and workmen. They are even changing the natural course of the river to facilitate the project! The place is changed beyond comprehension and looks like a battlefield. So much for my sight seeing.

While coming down I stopped at a place where again the river bends creating a small sand filled riverbank. This was a place where the sahibs used to catch trout in the running stream. I got down there and saw a huge group of tourists having picnic with loud hindi film music. The beautiful bank is litterd with bottles of alcohol and all sorts of garbage

I am not surprised. The worst is yet to come. There was a global conference on environment recently where the scientists warned that within 50 years due to global warming, the Sunderbans would be completely submerged, killing the flora and fauna that we have there. 60% of the flora of the great Barrier Reef would be gone forver.

We, as a race, are chalta hai types. Unless the govt imposes restrictions, the green would never be saved, the city will continue to eat up all the greens we inherited over those millions of years.

The losing battle

For many years now, I have been fighting a losing battle. I grew up on books, and before I knew, they became an addiction. Later they proved to be more addictive than all the dry and liquid stuff consumed at high school and college days. In fact, to think about it, they were soporific (for the uninitiated, that’s sleep inducing) while the books proved to be stimulating.

To me, a large part of the recipe of the stimulation lied, apart from the content, in the process of reading, feeling, touching, and caressing. . In fact, a new book often felt like a woman, a new woman in life. You have to handle her carefully, keep your senses open. Because you are reading her for the first time, you have to go slow, sometimes read between the lines. You feel her for the first time; her smell is new to you. In fact the best way to read her is to go to bed with her, once the initiation is over. Then you lie down with her, hold her really close to your bosom (ok eyes for the older, cant one ever get a little romantic?) and delve deep into her, loosing and finding yourself. And Chris De Burgh after that:

And then, when it's over, I have tender hands, To hold you through the night, darling, My tender hands will hold you through the night

I held on to the books and tried to breathe solace to my sad, womanless college days.

And then, she changed into her new avatar. The Internet came, saw and took prisoners. With the rest of the things, books changed to e-books. Reading, like dating, became virtual, open, subject to scrutiny, and untouchable (not in the Indian parlance though, that’s caste system and a whole hog of colonial baggage under the mattress). You no longer walk into a bar (read bookstore), spot her at the corner, eye her for sometime and then tentatively approach her. If you are lucky and skillful enough, conversation rolls on and might turn out to be an all nighter, testing all your skills. Now, you meet over the Internet, believe in what she says about herself ( and vice versa), and both try your best to convert the virtual into realty. And if you are lucky and willing to stoop that low, you two might even make out virtually. UGH. Reading, no longer is lazing around with that book, carrying it with you all the time, going back to it again and again.. Now you google/yahoo/whatever on the internet, locate it, and read it on the screen, sitting bolt upright all the time. Your posture during work and pleasure becomes identical. You become a robot, a machined baboon. Days of lovemaking is over.

I, like many, revolted. I hung on to the paper books and perhaps even tried to justify my computer ignorance/aversion with my distrust to e/virtual reading materials. So while I saw my friends gathering information in a jiffy, I ploughed through the pile of books. E books were a strict no no, and I used the Internet mainly for sending mails. I felt like a crusader.

And then I changed job and my new job entailed a lot of use of the internet. Soon, I realized what is known as the information superhighway. I mean, I wanted to know about Impressionism and Monet in particular, and Wikipedia zindabad (that’s long live in
Hindi). I wanted to know about the major poets of the romantic era, and I can find a list of them along with a list of their selected poems in a jiffy. Now I can take a printout of them and find them in my bookstore. I longer have to rummage through the whole hog or seek help.

That’s how I find the Internet useful. References, cross references and more references. I now use the Internet as the ultimate begetter of lost treasure and sunken ships. I have struck truce.

And it feels good. I still go to bed with a book, but now I know, at least have a vague idea about my latest valentine. The battle is over.