Shades of Red

J.K. Rowlings wrote, “The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter.” Similarly, the clubs choose their followers if you happen to be a Bengali. It all depends upon which side of undivided Bengal your parents were born. If you are from the Western side, then your team would be the one in Maroon and Green. If your roots were in the Eastern part, then your team had to be the one in Gold and Red. So, when my father would take me to see the football matches from school, they had to be the ones where East Bengal was playing. By the time I grew up into my teens, I had a best friend, Buddha, to accompany me to the matches. The only problem was that he supported the arch rival, Mohun Bagan. We became regulars to the Delhi’s Ambedkar Stadium where the DCM and Durand Cups were held each year. We would reach the stadium well in advance, buy the cheapest ticket available for the stands and before entering eat chholey-bhature from a vendor-on- bicycle with a big metallic bowl on its carrier and a stove placed on it. In India that is what we call as jugaad. In the initial part of the competition when the Calcutta clubs played the teams like the JCT Phagwara, BSF and Punjab Police, all Bongs would sit together as one entity to ward off the aggressive Punjabis and local fans. But when they faced each other, the divide between the two sides was complete and often led to ugly brawls both inside and outside the stadiums. Even though Buddha and I backed different teams, we celebrated good football and never let the game get the better of our friendship. During those times, the heroes in Red and Gold were men like Sudhir Karmakar and Manoranjan Bhattacharya or Mona da who were the toughest defenders of their time, wizards in front like Jamshed Nasiri and Surajit Sengupta and the reliable goalie, Bhaskar Ganguly. I would dream of these players and hoped to be like them for that was our exposure to the beautiful game.

We got a glimpse of world football when Doordarshan brought the World Cup matches to our homes every four years. This is when we got to see the magicians of Brazil, Argentina, Germany and Italy who would mesmerise us with their brilliant footwork, strategy and scoring abilities. Giants like Zico, Maradona, Rummenigge and Zidane took your breath away but then this was a temporary phase. Our lives truly changed with the coming of the ESPN Star Sports channel introducing the English Premier League in the early 2000. For almost nine months out of twelve, we were now able to watch the English clubs fight for victory on the television with excellent coverage and commentary. This turned the tide against the domestic football as we entered the famed stadiums of Anfield, Old Trafford, Highbury and St. James’ Park, week after week to witness a grand display of strength, speed and wizardry. The players, whom we idolised during school and college days, now seemed amateurs and the colours of Red and Gold faded away as I got carried away by the brilliance of an English team in Red and White.

The admiration and fan following for Arsenal was complete by the EPL season of 2003-04 when they completed their run of thirty-eight matches with twenty-six wins and twelve draws… never before had any team accomplished this unbeaten run in a league known for its competitiveness where anyone could beat the top clubs on a given day. This team under the manager Arsene Wenger was given the title of The Invincibles.  You could feel high voltage electricity pass through you when players like Thierry Henry, Denis Bergamp, Robert Pires, Patrick Viera, Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell touched the ball. It would feel as if they would find a way past the sea of opposing players and the ball would kiss the net at the back of the goal any time. I would make my weekend plans with the family keeping the timing of the matches of the Red Arsenal in mind. People at home understood the passion and happily let me have it my way. My wife and daughter knew two people of the screen, the tall and handsome, Wenger, wearing his immaculate suit and red tie and ‘Onnri’ as the commentators would pronounce the name of the other Frenchman and legend, Thierry Henry. Henry’s touch was silky, footwork so nimble that defenders just felt a rush of cold air as he passed them and his shooting prowess from the corner, free kick or open play with his right foot, left foot and his head would result in brilliant goals. He could do just anything with the ball.

In 2001, I joined an insurance company in Mumbai and in 2006, the joint venture US based partner of the company, AIG, became the principal sponsor for Manchester United. This moved my needle of loyalty partially to the other club in Red. In 2006-07 season, the team under Sir Alex Ferguson won the EPL Championship and the team was Red Hot!  With Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Garry Neville at the back, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Michael Carrik in the middle and upfront were the super stars in the making, Wayne Rooney and Christiano Ronaldo. The team went on to win the UEFA Champions League as well in the same season. The local office in India brought out a calendar with the Man U pictures and I was presented an original team shirt with the AIG logo. Now the move to the Red Army was complete. This was the period of utter madness and fan following with daughter buying Man U key rings and T-shirt for me and office folks celebrating my ten-year stint with a huge cake with the team logo on top. The AIG Global CEO, Martin Sullivan visited India in 2008 and two employees from each of the ten odd India subsidiaries were flown to Hyderabad for a meeting with him and I happened to be one of them. After the big man spoke about the world’s largest insurance company and their commitment to India, we were given time to ask some questions. The question I asked was, “Sir, AIG sponsors Manchester United which is so aggressive on the field, yet the same company’s India insurance arm is very conservative in its approach. Why don’t you bring in the same drive and aggression that will help us score more goals in business.” Mr. Sullivan smiled and said, he surely would have a word with the local leadership team. The very next year, AIG which was too big to fall, crumbled but the team with its logo prominently displayed went on to win the EPL thereafter in 2007-08 and 2008-09, then again under a new sponsor logo in 2010-11 and 2012-13. This team had now become the New Invincibles.

The EPL turned Blue from Red 2013 onwards. With Manchester City, Chelsea and Leicester City winning in this period in different shades of Blue except for two seasons in 2019-20 and 2024-25 with Liverpool winning under the mercurial manager, Jurgen Klopp. Manchester United, my club in Red, however, was faring dismally in this post- Ferguson period and was often found in the bottom half of the league table. But I stood firm on my loyalty with Manchester United with just one aberration. In the spring of 2023, I had a chance to visit London as a trainer in an international insurance programme. With an extra day at hand, I was planning to visit Manchester and Old Trafford but my daughter insisted I should go to Liverpool instead and see the birthplace of Beatles, my favourite band of all time. The curse of my team was on me and I almost missed my train to Liverpool due to a mix-up by the travel aggregator. Anyhow, I managed to get onto the train and went to Liverpool and saw the museums and other places dedicated to the immortal band. My train back to London was in the evening and I landed up visiting Anfield, the home of the Red arch-rivals of my Red Club. This would be an absolute blasphemy for the die-hard Man U fans. Every step of the way at Anfield I could feel ‘You will never walk alone’ ringing in my ears but my love for the game got the better of me.  I soon began enjoying the place soaked in history and even bought a few memorabilia from the club store for my family and friends. Incidentally, this Red team has recently equalled the number of times EPL was won by my Red club.

Come 2025-26 season and the tide changed. Manchester United came back strongly, after years in exile, to finish third in the league. Arsenal under Mikel Arteta, finally, restored the pride on winning the EPL title after twenty-two long years. His team of champions including Declan Rice, Gabriel, Saka, Odegaard, Saliba, Trossard and Timber showed class all the way through the season, especially on dead ball situations and with their fluidity in movement. They now face Paris Saint-Germain on 30^th May 2026 at Budapest in the final of the UEFA Champions League. A victory here would once again seal their status as equivalents of the 2003-04 Invincibles, if not better. Another magic happened here closer home. My original team of Red and Gold, East Bengal, won the domestic championship after the same number of years of hiatus as Arsenal in England… twenty-two years!

While I am too old now to switch my affinity, I am happy and proud of the different shades and teams of Red I have followed in this life. Anytime there is a football match on air, I am ‘Eveready’ shouting ‘Give Me Red!’

At Qatar WC in ManU Cap

SS

**NB. First three images are from the internet

Epic Fury

Mangalam loved Ganeshan. He hardly remembers his parents for it was Ganeshan who found him as a boy lying alone in the forest with no one to take care. From then onwards, Ganeshan made sure Mangalam got his timely feed of milk when young and then later the best of fresh greens as he grew up. And Mangalam sure grew up very fast. In no time he became the tallest creature in the vicinity. Ganeshan, initially, kept him inside his small hut when Mangalam was a baby but soon he moved him outside or else the man would have had to sleep in a house without a roof. Even though the other temple elephants always had chains round their feet, Mangalam was allowed to roam free. He had the liberty to go anywhere, anytime. He would sleep outside Ganeshan’s hut and wait for his loving master to come out at sunrise when the two of them would go for a long walk to the river-front. Mangalam always found this phase of the day to be the happiest for he could bathe for long in the cool waters and also play with Ganeshan. He would often shower the man with his trunk after he had changed into fresh, dry clothes. This was the daily fun the master and his loving pet had.

Ganeshan was one of the many mahouts who managed the elephants in the big temple. There were five other elephants attached to the temple, each with a separate mahout. The routine for the elephants was pretty boring. On a few auspicious days, the elephants would be decorated all over and made to stand in a formation as the band would play devotional music while the crowd cheered seeing the resplendent animals. Idols of gods and goddesses were placed atop them and they were then made to march through the streets for hours together with the devotees thronging on all sides. These were pretty strenuous days for both the elephants and the mahouts as even a small chaos anywhere could have caused many a death. On rest of the days, the work included a morning visit to the temple, breaking a few coconuts, waving and blessing people who would visit the temple. It was the same routine in the evenings when earthen lamps illuminated the temple complex. Lately, there had been a lot of requests from the people wanting to be pictured with the elephants and quite often they were willing to pay the mahouts some extra money for making the elephants do some simple stunts. Ganeshan was very strict and a no-nonsense man. He never permitted anyone any such liberty with Mangalam. He treated the elephant like his own child and never liked it to be photographed by others. He feared the excessive visibility would lead to some negative impact on his little one. At midday, the mahouts and the elephants had some time to themselves to get some rest or else to move around and feed on the vegetation nearby.

Having lived a large part of their lives together, Mangalam and Ganeshan could  communicate well with each other. Ganeshan spoke only Malayalam, and over the years, the big animal could comprehend much beyond simple commands of sit, stand and eat. Mangalam and his mahout understood each other beyond words. They could understand the feelings and thoughts of the other. A look into the eyes of the other or a change in facial expression was enough for the other to make out if the other person was happy or sad, in pain or in good health. Ganeshan was excessively possessive of his child and even if a thorn were to prick Mangalam, he would not rest till he had taken it out and applied oil on the affected part. Having lost his wife early during childbirth, Ganeshan lived all alone for some time till he found his mission in life, bringing up Mangalam as the child he never had.

The temple’s chief purohit, Srikrishna, was a good man. He not only kept the temple administration and the employees in good order; he was also friendly to the others including the mahouts. He even took time to reach out to the elephants and knew each one of them well by their names. They, too, reciprocated to his calls. However, in this place of peace and tranquillity there lay a problem. It was none other than Srikrishna’s son Kumaraswamy. He was quite the opposite of his father and from his school-days he would indulge in cheating in the classrooms, stealing animals, bullying and terrorising one and all. Over a period of time, Kumar had built up a formidable army of goons who had been close to him since school and now ran an illegal trade in cutting timber from the forest and transporting them outside. While many people knew about the dark trade going on in the vicinity, no one ever had the courage to complain to either the police or to his father and he became bolder by the day.

Kumar’s greed grew with time and one day, Ravi, one of the mahouts, came to Ganeshan and said that he had seen big tusks hidden behind rows of chopped tree trunks in a storehouse deep inside the jungle. He was unable to get close to the place as it was guarded from all sides by men who looked like Kumar’s goons. Felling of trees was something Ganeshan had accepted but chopping of tusks meant that someone was killing elephants for their selfish gains. For some months, there were stories of deaths of elephants doing the rounds but people said they were caused by a fatal disease. Ganeshan now was able to connect the deaths to Ravi’s findings. He asked Ravi to take him at night to the spot where he had seen the store. Reluctantly the man agreed for he, too, loved the elephants. That night, Ganeshan whispered something into the ears of Mangalam and carrying a lamp and a big stick, walked into the jungle with Ravi under a moonlit sky.

It took the duo almost an hour to reach the spot and from a distance, Ganeshan could see a place with barbed wires on all sides. He could also see the chopped timber that was lying one on top of another with the largest numbers at the base and gradually tapering on top to prevent the heap from rolling off. Ganeshan gave the lamp to Ravi and asked him to wait there while he went to take a closer look. Since it was late in the night, there were no guards outside; Ganeshan slipped under the barbed wire fence and tip- toed to the timber stack. Carefully he started crawling towards the store which had electric lamps shinning inside. He slowly reached the window from where he popped his head up to see what was going on inside. He saw big pieces of tusks lying on the floor while the guards were busy playing cards and enjoying their local drink. Ganeshan was shocked to see the sight and wanted to do something to prevent loss of any more elephant lives. In his excitement, he tripped over and alerted the guards who quickly came out. They caught him while trying to slip out of the barbed fence. Ganeshan was dragged inside and the five guards, armed with lathis, started beating him mercilessly. Ganeshan shouted for help and mercy but none came. The guards suddenly stopped showering the blows on hearing the sound of bells ringing violently and approaching the place they stood. Ganeshan knew it was Mangalam coming. All the temple elephants had bells hung on their necks and each made a distinct sound which their mahouts could only make out. The men then heard a loud trumpet and in no time, they saw a huge creature rushing madly at them. Mangalam crashed into the barbed wire and dragged it along the way and stopped only when he reached the spot where Ganeshan was lying down. The guards knew that their lathis were of no use when it came to fighting a charging elephant and they fled the scene. Ganeshan got up and slowly unwrapped the barbed wires around Mangalam’s bleeding feet before walking back home where he applied some medicinal weeds on the animal’s injuries before going to sleep.

At day break, seeing Ganeshan asleep, Mangalam went to the river front for his bath alone. Around the same time, Kumar arrived with his men armed with hunting guns, barged into Ganeshan’s hut and dragged him out.  Once again Ganeshan was thrashed badly and before his elephant arrived, they had gone away after threatening to kill Mangalam unless he was chained. On seeing Mangalam, Ganeshan had tears in his eyes and he tied thick chains on both the hind legs and secured them against a giant of a tree. Mangalam did not protest but understood what might have happened during his brief absence, especially after the incident of the night before. He went with Ganeshan to the temple for his usual duties. Ganeshan went straight to the head priest and complained about Kumar and what harm he was causing to the animals and the forest. The head priest immediately called for his son and rebuked him in public. He ordered him to stop all his illegal activities or else he would himself report the matter to the police. Kumar was not one to listen to his father but threatened Ganeshan with dire consequences. Ganeshan finished his activities at the temple and returned home. In the evening, he went out alone to get something from the market but did not return for long. Mangalam was beginning to feel uneasy at the long absence and kept trumpeting and shaking his head to ring the bells after small intervals. Ganeshan did not return home at all that night and the sun was about to rise. The elephant knew something bad had happened to his master.

Mangalam stood up and, with all the power he had, pulled hard at the chains. He did it a number of times. The chain did not come off but the tree got uprooted. He started to push forward and the chain came loose. He was free to move with all the speed he could muster. He had gone just a little distance down the path leading to the market when he saw Ganeshan’s body lying still on the ground with a number of people crying while sitting beside him. Mangalam went close to Ganeshan’s body and touched it with his trunk. He understood that his master, his friend was no more. He turned around in anger and ran towards the place where the priests and their families had their houses. Mangalam knew the chief priest’s house and went in that direction. The ringing of his bells had alerted Kumar who quickly took out his shot gun and took aim from the terrace. The moment he saw the rushing elephant, Kumar started firing one shot after another. The bullets pierced Mangalam’s thick skin but he kept running and crashed into Kumar’s house, a portion of which fell like a house of cards with the killer himself falling over the railing of the terrace. Mangalam lifted his right front foot as high as he could and brought it down with all his strength on Kumar, crushing every bone in his body. The badly injured Mangalam then fell down and breathed his last.

A few months later, the devotees and the people of the temple pooled together their resources and installed a small statue of Mangalam and Ganeshan just before the Gopuram and the story of the man and his devoted animal became quite a folklore in the region and beyond.

SS 

Petals of Paradise

"Not just a bloom, but breath retained
In roots where secret cares remained,
She heals in silence, veiled and wise,
A prayer  pressed into petal guise."

As the cab from Bagdogra enters the toll gate and the driver stops to show the entry permit, our attention goes to the big, bold letters against the mountain slope-SIKKIM, The Green State of India. The road from Siliguri to Gangtok meanders all along the river Teesta and at every bend you get the most gorgeous view of this mighty river which in March looks muddy, gentle and subdued but can take the most dreaded form and wash away all that comes on its way, if and when it so desires. The ravages caused by the Teesta in 2023 can still be seen all along its course and recalled by many in that region.

In this trip I was looking forward to visiting the Valley of Flowers in North Sikkim having read about how a windswept, remote desert-like valley surrounded by massive mountain ranges becomes a carpet of flowers in springtime. But that comes much later.  As we make our way through the evening traffic to reach Gangtok, what strikes us is that every house here is adorned with flowering plants. These houses can be apartments in three or four-storeyed buildings or tiny cottages with barely two rooms in them or can be a nice little mansion belonging to a well-to-do family but they all have one thing in common. Little coloured pots holding the most colourful orchids, petunias, cacti, bougainvillea hanging from the balconies or terrace railings or simply standing in a row on the sunshades or lintels. They can also be small trees laden with the most beautiful azaleas or camellias adorning a small patch of a garden. Flowers are there all around- in the houses standing on terraced slopes, on street-lamps, on the roads, and the roundabouts- welcoming you, beckoning you, smiling at you. The rain, the sun, the mists, and the clouds all take care of them. Wherever you look they are there, “tossing their heads in a sprightly dance”.

Camellia

Bush Lily

In Gangtok, you will find flowers wherever you go. It can be a monastery or the hotel you are putting up at. Even the famed MG Road of Gangtok, where all the eateries and shops are located, is beautified with flowers. The whole road is a car free zone and so you can stop and stare, or as most tourists are busy doing, click selfies with the flowers in the background. Flower pots are arranged on ornate wrought iron or wooden stands and all they do is spread good cheer, freshness and brightness.

Azalea

Flowers on M.G. Road

However, in Gangtok it is the Orchidarium which steals the show. They have opened this recently on the occasion of completion of fifty years of statehood.  You will find a huge variety of orchids including their state flower, the Dendrobium nobile, and other flowers like the pitcher plant, azalea, anthurium, camellia and peace lily. You get to see a plethora of orchids, which bloom all over the hills of Sikkim between February and April, including some very rare ones under one roof. The best part about this place is how thoughtfully it has been arranged and curated so that it holds your attention from the posters on flowers to the little exhibits in the museum section as well as the actual landscaping and the glasshouse where the real flowers are grown. A whole section is devoted to the renowned botanist, explorer and the man behind the theory of evolution, Dr Joseph Dalton Hooker, who played a big role in shaping Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”. Sikkim’s orchids are world famous having more than 400 species. They need to be protected since many rare varieties have already disappeared from the wild. The Orchidarium is indeed a novel effort in this direction.  Not just in the orchidarium, there are orchids everywhere in Sikkim- hanging from the porch of a roadside café, growing along the walls of a Tibetan monastery, showing up from a dead tree trunk to cascading down from old plastic bottles on a window ledge.  Your heart longs to pick up an orchid from a roadside nursery but deep down you know that the heat, humidity and pollutants of your city will kill these flowers of paradise.

Orchiderium, Gangtok

Orchids

Orchids being grown in bottles

As we make our way up to Lachung in North Sikkim, the vegetation keeps changing along with the landscape around. As you cross Chungthang, where Lachung chu (chu meaning river) meets the Lachen chu to flow into the Teesta, the road diverges in two directions- Lachen and Lachung valleys. As our driver takes the road towards Lachung village he asks us to look on either side of the road. We are greeted by rows of rhododendrons. It is mid-March and the rhododendrons (local name is guras) have started blooming everywhere. By April every tree would be bearing hundreds of these flowers. We enter the town of Lachung like royalty, the rhododendron trees standing guard on either side of the road bearing the clumps of deep red inflorescence with pride, and the Lachungchu merrily bouncing down the rocks and pebbles, gleefully mocking at us at every turn and twist of the road, as if to say, “For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever.”

There are dedicated sanctuaries for orchid conservation like the ones at Shingba and Barsey where they celebrate rhododendron festivals every year. More than 30 odd species of rhododendrons have been identified in this region ranging from giant trees to shrubs with change of elevation. The state tree of Sikkim is Rhododendron niveum where the flowers are lavender or purple. Rhododendrons need not all be red but can be pink, lavender, yellow and white too. The flower is known for its anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties. It provides nectar, pollen and seeds to birds and bees. The wood is used for timber and firewood. Locals make a wine from the rhododendron or ‘gurans’ flower and I also found local stores selling ‘gurans’ pickles, jams and tea made from its flowers, stem and leaves. Apart from its aesthetic value, this plant is definitely an intrinsic part of their lives and ecosystem.

Rhododendron

The next morning, we make our way to see the Yumthang Valley and Zero Point (Yumesamdong) which is at an altitude nearing 16000 ft. The roads here are maintained by the Border Roads Organization with army outposts and army camps all along.  The mountains are no longer covered by foliage of different shades of green, but become more barren and snow covered. The verdant slopes are replaced with shades of grey and white. Even the many waterfalls we passed on our way to Lachung can no longer be found for they have frozen into streaks of ice in mid-flow. The flora changes to alpine vegetation and the green slopes get replaced by the junipers, cypress, pines and firs while the higher regions are completely barren and snow covered.  From a distance all you can see are snow covered peaks and grey-black mountain slopes dotted with white. Gradually, you realise that the specks of white and silver are the fir trees at a distance whose wide branches are holding up the falling snow.

Snow capped fir trees, North Sikkim

In April and May, the Yumthang becomes the valley of flowers. This remote, windswept, bare valley is covered with rhododendrons and primulas. But since we have come a fortnight earlier, we have to be content seeing the tiny shoots and leaves which are showing up in nooks and crevices of the valley floor and slopes. We get to see a few of the small purple flowers called primulas. In a few weeks, the whole valley will be covered by them along with other wildflowers like buttercup, iris, poppy. On our way up we saw some yaks grazing at the lower altitudes. Our guide-cum-driver explained that in a few days, as temperatures rise in the higher regions, the yaks too will come up to this valley to graze. Incidentally, the yaks do not eat the primulas or the other wildflowers. They know what to graze on and what not to.  Hearing this we can only marvel at the Creator’s clock-work precision and also the unwritten rules of Nature.

Primula, Yumthang Valley

There is one more beautiful tree that we get to see in Pelling which lies in West Sikkim. Pelling offers the most glorious view of Mount Kanchendzonga. Another novel feature here is the cable car ride they have recently started which takes you to the Pelling Skywalk from where you not only get a great view of the third highest peak in the world but also the Pelling Buddha or the magnificent statue of Chenrezig or Avalokiteshvara- the Bodhisattva of Compassion. On climbing up the long flight of stairs we get to see a beautiful magnolia tree next to this statue. I happened to read somewhere recently that the magnolia is one of the oldest trees on earth, as old as the dinosaurs! Scientifically, Magnolia genus is considered an ancient genus having hundreds of species dated to the cretaceous period.

Magnolia, Pelling

Soon after returning to Mumbai, we are completely taken aback by a diktat from the governing body of our cooperative housing society stating that in view of the recent renovation and exterior paint of our building, no flower pots will be allowed on the window sills. Reason being that while watering the pots, residents are ruining the walls of the building. No amount of pleading or reasoning or demonstrating how not a drop of water has ever been spilt by me and the walls beneath my window do not carry any stains of mud or water due to overflowing, I am unable to keep my flower pots. They have to go. This is Mumbai, plants do not add to its beauty, only concrete does. The committee will certainly decorate the society garden but with cement fountains and statues, the lobby will be adorned with glass doors and artificial plants. Residents can go in for indoor plants, those which do not need direct sunlight. And, of course, artificial flowers are so much more colourful and maintenance free. Here the human voice reigns. So be it!

Fortunately, for this strategically located state sharing borders with China, Nepal and Bhutan, the original inhabitants, the Lepchas, worship Mount Kanchendzonga as they believe the first Lepcha man and woman were made by the creator from its pure virgin snow. He is their guardian deity, their creator, their protector. So, they do not allow anyone to step on this peak. They worship the sacred rivers Rangit and Teesta and they still inhabit the holy land of Dzongu. The Bhutias whom they allowed to settle in their land are their sworn brothers, with their guardian deities of Sikkim being witnesses to this blood brotherhood.

No one in Sikkim is allowed to pluck flowers or spoil nature. Locals are allowed to take photographs and videos of those violating or stealing from nature and send them to the local authorities. Those who defile nature are immediately fined. No disposable plastic is allowed in there either.

If the mountain and rivers are your Gods, no man can dictate your lives. In Sikkim, Nature reigns supreme. The Gardener here is the Lord himself.

DS

My Dabang Uncle

Beta, hum apne zamane mein dabang thay…. Son, during my time, I used to be a fearless man. So said an eighty-seven-year-old man in an extremely calm tone while sitting on his wooden chair with a pillow to support his back. Met the gentleman, whom I addressed as Uncle, after more than forty years. He is the father of one of my closest friends, one who is more of a brother with an association of close to half a century. The Sens were on their way back home after spending a week-long family vacation in Sikkim. They needed to stay one night in the plains before embarking on the morning flight to Mumbai and the friend insisted that we stayed at his home at Siliguri while he himself was temporarily staying at the other extreme end of the country.

Even though he had aged, Uncle’s mental faculties were as sharp as could be and so was his overall health except for a slight wobble in his walk that he had developed lately. We stayed for no more than fifteen hours in the house, but his disciplined lifestyle of doing his exercise and puja for over an hour, both in the morning and evening, his sleeping and waking up time allowed us talk time for no more than two hours. He was able to recollect almost every event in history, each and every person’s name he would have encountered including names of teachers who had taught his children and had an analytical viewpoint about politics in the country and the world. It was amazing to see him so aware and alive. He still is an avid reader and his range of books is huge starting with Ramcharitmanas, Bhagwad Gita to Agrarian Movement in British India and books on travel. He eats healthy, home-made food and manages all his activities independently.

I was well aware of Uncle’s dabang-bazi in his hey days. He had been a mass student leader during his college days at Patna and many of his contemporaries and juniors later went on to occupy seats in the parliament and bureaucracy. All these people held him in high regard. He could get any work done in the power corridors of Delhi with ease. But, today, he was a changed man. I was expecting to meet a frail old man who would find it difficult to communicate but what I experienced was an eye opener for how to live life in complete peace with your surroundings and make the best of what life has given you. He had no words of remorse or anger towards anyone, just words of gratitude. I felt the warmth of his love and affection and unknowingly he planted a seed in my heart that made me think about life’s true essence.

During the conversation we were having, Uncle uttered the two words… Jivo-Sivo. He then went on to quote, “जो जीव (प्राणी) मात्र से प्रेम करता है, वही वास्तव में ईश्वर की सेवा करता है।" D spoke out the original immortal lines of Swami Vivekananda in Bangla, “জীবে প্রেম করে যেই জন, সেই জন সেবিছে ঈশ্বর,” which when translated in English means, “He who loves living beings (Jiv), he is the one who truly serves god (Shiv).” All the old man was saying that only a compassionate and loving heart is the one who is a true servant and devotee of God. This dictum alone has been the core philosophy of his life.

And how does the man who at some stage in life was a dabang serve people? Simple, he takes care of people without any expectation. Uncle comes from a very humble, rural background. He was the fourth in the family of the six siblings and the most educated of all. He moved out to Siliguri as a government employee while others stayed behind in the village. He took on the responsibility like an eldest son and made sure that the extended family back home was always reasonably provided for. He stood by them in good times and bad.

Uncle initially got his elder brother's daughter and her husband, who had passed their school in 1970, enrolled in the Teachers Training course in Sasaram. The duo went on to become principals of high and middle school respectively. During one of his trips back to his native village, he found that the sons of his younger brothers were going wayward. He immediately brought them over to Siliguri and then admitted the two boys in the same prestigious boarding school at Kurseong as his own son. Some years later, two daughters of his younger brother were enrolled in a boarding school for girls at Kurseong. These girls were brought up just like his own daughters and, later, he worked tirelessly, as a father would, to find the right grooms from families where the two would be well taken care of after leaving home. And he also made sure that he chose homes where they did not demand dowry. When these sisters’ brother, who was staying in the village, lost his wife, shortly after the birth of his daughter, the little one was also brought to Siliguri, educated and groomed well. He even went beyond the family of his brothers and sister and even bore for the education expenses of another bright but needy student during his tenure at the Dhanbad School of Mines. The list seems endless and his care for these children was done purely out of love. The house on 2^nd Mile Sevoke Road behind Himalayan Flour mills became like a gurukul where under the shade of the vidyavriksh (tree of knowledge) many a flower bloomed.

Today, Uncle is taking care of the education of another girl who happens to be the grand-daughter of his late sister. She came in as a school girl and is currently studying in a college in Patna. The girl makes sure to call up Uncle everyday just like a devoted grand-daughter. She is, however, mortally afraid of the son, my friend, for he keeps the teenager in check for splurging on clothes and other luxuries which Uncle pays for and overlooks with the blind love of a grandparent.

Uncle says that now that he is quite old, the girl at Patna will be possibly the last one he will be able to take care of. He misses his wife dearly whom he lost some years ago. He said that she was the real source of his strength and was the glue that held the extended family together over the years. She loved all the children like her own and never ever scolded or raised her voice on any one of them. Her life was an amazing repository of folk songs and idioms who, in another time and clime, might have been another ‘Teejan Bai’.

Living alone can be difficult for old people but not for Uncle. He now has a sweet, young house-help who calls him Dadaji and takes care of his cooking and cleaning of the house. Uncle keeps her just as he would do with his own child… she eats with him, sits with him while he watches the television and accompanies him everywhere. His love and affection for the girl are to be seen and admired and the girl, too, reciprocates in the same manner and dotes on her ‘dadaji’. My friend has taught her driving. She proudly showed us her driving licence. He says that, in later life, it would hold her in good stead and the girl should be able to do work beyond that of a house help and earn her livelihood independently. Like father, like son… the same philosophy of life.

While Uncle was speaking, I looked at him closely. He appeared to be the calmest looking man with a round face, soothing eyes and a voice that was gentle. He reminded me of the monks that we had just seen at Sikkim’s famous monasteries at Rumtek and Pemayangste. These monks in reddish brown kasaya (Buddhist robe) had renounced worldly life to live in seclusion in the service of their God. The monasteries were so peaceful and the chants of Om Mani Padme Hum in the air there gave me a sense of calmness and inner peace.

My Dabang Uncle, on the other hand, has lived in this world with all its hardships and challenges yet he has devoted all his life in the service of people beyond his own family. In a world where we define our families as me, my wife and my children, he went much beyond. In this shrinking, selfish and self-centred world, this monk wearing clothes like you and me, taught me in a short time and in the simplest of languages, the true essence of life… Jivo-Sivo. My Dabang Uncle lived his life fearlessly in pursuit of this one life principle. I also came to realise that we do not need to seek the gods in temples and monks in monasteries. They live amongst us. ‘Seek, and ye shall find’.

SS

  

The Strait of Hormuz

To lose or not to lose? This was a question I had been debating for long.

No. I am not talking about losing my virginity. That is something about which there was no doubt or delay. Lost it at the first instance and never looked back.

This was something more public and a difficult decision to make.

Many a times I contemplated doing it and made the initial strides as well. Just before the swoosh, held back and went back to status quo. The fear of public shame and mockery was one big reason but even more important than that was a painful memory of the past which wrecked my mind and haunted me in daylight.

Strait of Hormuz is the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman. In human anatomy terms, it is like the small space between the nose and the lips which the dictionary calls it the philtrum.  Every time I stood before the mirror with lather on my Strait of Hormuz and the the Gulfs of Oman and Persia to the right and left, a face would emerge out of the glass. A big-eyed man with hair flying everywhere with a dark bush of a moustache shouting at the highest pitch any person could emit…

Moustache is the mirror of human soul and mind, Moochh toh man ka darpan hai.

Insaan ka character uske chehre se nahi, uske moochhon se pata chalta hai!.

Jis ka mooch nahi, uske paas niyat nahi.

The very thought that Utpal Dutt would blow my ear drums the day I took off my little moustache kept intact for close to fifty years. He would have called me…

Moochh munda kahin ka… one who has shaved himself clean.

Golmaal was released in 1979 when I was sixteen and since then these abuses, which were a shade lesser than what some heads of states write on their social media handles, have deterred me from shaving them off.

The moustache in the initial years had its advantages. My sister who was elder to me by close to three years was denied entry into a theatre hall for an ‘A’ certified English movie while I watched it with my friend the very next day. For once, my scores in class tests did not matter, the slight growth of hair on my face made me feel superior to her.

I still vividly remember how on a cold December morning in Delhi, I first went to the homes of two of my friends in South Extension from where we took the Mudrika DTC bus on Ring Road route to go to a remote cinema hall beyond Delhi University to watch the ‘Spanish Fly’ which was the highest X rated movie to hit the movie theatres in those days. All three of us had added on those initial growth we had, a couple of coats of eye brow pencil that I had flicked from my mom’s handbag at home. The high point then was to celebrate the end of class ten ICSE Board exams by watching Padmini Kohlapure in Insaaf ka Tarazoo at Odeon. We made so much noise that day, it would appear to the other people in the hall as if we had secured the highest six-point grades in the just concluded examinations. The faint lines of moochh had once again got us the entry that day with no questions asked at the gate about our age to watch an adult movie.

Since then, the moochh, however, small, shapeless and non-descript has never left my side. It is there in all my photographs from college to work, my wedding to daughter’s wedding and beyond. I was not particularly proud of it but could never think of removing it as well. I would envy my friends who had thick bushy moustaches, some even had the curvy ones which make them look macho when young and in later years it gave them gravitas and personality that I missed.

Post-retirement phase of life is the best time with no pretty face to impress or feel shy of any awkward looks by colleagues and clients. The time is ripe to check box some of the bucket list items.  This long-standing one seemed doable at the date and time of my convenience. Easier said than done. These important decisions for the ‘family man’ cannot be unilateral. The serious matter of moochh was placed before the Honourable Internal Court of Justice at Home. All matters of importance have to be decided unanimously here since, apart from the appellant, the court bench consists of only two judges. A split verdict would mean the defeat of the motion for the appellant has no casting vote here. A very fair judicial system was in place at Lilium, Mahindra Gardens.

The senior and older of the two judges was of the opinion that she has been reminding the appellant that with his moustache turning from black to grey to white, he looks extremely bad in in the selfies and group photographs that are shared on the family WA chat. She said that had the moochh been thick like a handlebar, it would have looked impressive. She was strongly for the motion and banged the gavel shouting… Just Do It and Do it Now!

The younger judge vehemently opposed the motion. She said, I have seen this thing grow no bigger or shorter since the time I was born. I picture my father forever in my heart and mind as one with the moochh and he should never remove it. My dad does not look one bit old for his age even with the moustache going all salty. He will look funny without it.

Having failed to get any decision on the opening or closing of the Hormuz Strait on earthly courts, I had to go to a higher level of judiciary. Only the divine intervention could decide the fate of my moustache. The problem with us Sanatanis is that we have too many gods and goddesses. Who could be the arbitrator for this most important decision was the bigger question? Who-so-ever gods I met, he would pass in on to another saying he was busy or did not have jurisdiction over the matter. This was quite similar to the great nation’s Attorney General who said that courts did not have right to decide the fate of religious matters. Similarly, the heavenly gods refused to intervene in a human matter that was of utmost importance to just one individual on one of the zillions of lives in the billions of planets they were managing.

With none of the gods adjudicating, I started thinking deeply on the subject. Except Brahma, is there any other Hindu god who bears a moustache? My research yielded zero results but surely in the huge pantheon we have, there still might be one or two. This was a divine clue for me… if gods do not keep moustaches and only the evil forces they fight to save the world inevitably have thick and bold ones stretching from ear to ear, my answer was for the taking. No matter what Utpal Babu said and shouted, I needed to open the f**king Strait or live in Hell and allow unobstructed traffic from east to west. After all, gods had spoken to me.

And so, on the All Fools’ Day, when my working-class brethren were doing their madness and mockery in their respective worlds, this retiree took a new blade… one that was as sharp as a finest Katana moulded by the best swordsmith and befitting the hands of the fiercest Samurai. Then with one clean stroke, cleaned off one side and then followed up on the other side. I washed my face and lifted my head to see my face in the mirror… Utpal Sir had vanished and what remained was my head with a small growth of hair still there on my balding head but the dreaded Strait of Hormuz had been opened up. The Strait now looked clean and smooth…

As I stepped out of the bathroom and faced the senior lady judge at home, I was surprised to hear her say… you’re looking young and good!  Quickly did FaceTime with the younger judge living afar who, too, now approved of my new look.

This victory was relatively easy and now I decided to take a walk outside and see how the known people in the building and the market place react. In order to reveal my new look gradually, I acted like SRK in Om Shanti Om… the Manoj Kumar look with my fingers covering the area around my mouth… leaving just enough gaps between the fingers for the curious folks to peep through. The walk was uneventful and surprisingly no one even noticed my moochh-munda look. I passed the test of public scrutiny with ease and now my ghosts could rest in peace. From now, no more worries about trimming, no more mistakes of ensuring the two parts on either side remain of the same size… it is now just chop... chop...chop… and swoosh every day!

The blockade of the Strait had been removed for good. And peace reigned in the world.

SS

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

On 17^th of October 2017, Google decided to put up a doodle to honour Nain Singh Rawat on his 187th Birthday. Who was this man of whom I knew not? I started looking into the various articles on the internet, wrote a piece then but never went on post. Fast forward to early 2026, post returning from a wonderful experience at Sikkim, got to hear a podcast (Books and Us) done by a close friend, Ranjit Monga, where during the conversation with Pema Wankchuk, the author of Khangchendzonga- Sacred Summit, he broached the topic of the pundits. This got me reading on the subject once again and was amazed at the revelations which connected me back to the work done eight years ago.

The Background

In the late 1700s, the British East India Company undertook a series of surveys in undivided India to obtain precise geographical knowledge about the territories it would rule. The series of surveys collectively undertaken was known as the Great Trigonometric Survey of India. It was credited with having been the first real effort to plot the vastness of the subcontinent from the north to the south and measured the heights of many Himalayan peaks including Everest, K2, and Kanchenjunga. By the 1850s, the British East India Company’s sway over India was near completion, they feared the Russian expansion from the North. The Tibetan region stood between the two powers. The British needed intelligence information on the region. However, Tibet forbade the entry of foreigners; it closed all its political borders and trade routes including the trade roads through Nepal via India to safeguard their gold fields.  So, the office of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, Dehradun, devised an ingenious plan to recruit a few local school teachers, who were referred to as pundits to survey the trade routes running from Nepal to the Tibetan region. These pundits disguised as lamas, traders and merchants, could venture deep into Tibet and Central Asia without arousing suspicion.

At the Survey’s Dehradun headquarters, the pundits were trained to use the sextant; they were taught celestial navigation and to gauge altitude by measuring the temperature of boiling water. They were trained to measure distances, storing data and concealing instruments in the most ingenious ways. The pundits, with a poetic bent, often turned their observations into poems and recited them during their travels. Here are some tales of the heroic pundits who risked their lives on foreign soil in the most difficult terrain and yet achieved great success. This was also the time when Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, was on the British throne and ruled the waves.

Nain Singh

Nain Singh was the man from the Kumaon Hills. In 1863, post his selection, he went to the Great Trigonometrical Survey office in Dehradun to undergo training for two years. In 1865, Nain crossed into Tibet from Nepal along with a party of traders. As luck would have it, one night the traders slipped away with his money for the trip and he was left stranded in an unknown land. Fortunately, he still had his box of instruments that were concealed in a box with a false bottom. The instruments included a sextant, a thermometer, a chronometer and a compass plus he had a rosary which had hundred beads instead of the usual hundred and eight. Nain would slip one bead for every hundred steps he took and, in a prayer-wheel, slipped pieces of paper in which he recorded compass bearings and distances.

Nain Singh begged his way across the terrain and in January 1866 he entered the Forbidden City of Lhasa where he even visited Dalai Lama briefly. He would quietly go to the roof of the inn where he stayed to use his sextant to determine the latitude by measuring the angular altitude of the stars. He used his thermometer to record the boiling point of water and, using his scientific calculations, was able to estimate that Lhasa was at an altitude of 3420 metres which was just a hundred metres lower than the more recent measurement. After some time, Nain left Lhasa and headed west for 800 kms along River Tsangpo. After two months, he slipped back into India in October 1867 via a sacred Mansarovar Lake.

While on his second voyage, Nain explored western Tibet where he stumbled across the gold mines of Thok Jalung.  In the summer of 1874 Nain Singh was sent to survey a route from Leh to Lhasa by a much more northerly path than the one he had taken in 1865. This was Nain’s third and final clandestine penetration into Tibet. Nain Singh's route now took him on to new places including the great lacustrine plain of central Tibet that were virtually unknown to the world till then. Although he retired from exploration, he continued to serve the Indian government with the training of younger explorers.

Nain Singh was awarded a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society. Colonel Yule, addressing the Royal Geographic Society at the time of its presentation of the medal, said of Nain Singh, " His observations have added a larger amount of important knowledge to the map of Asia than those of any other living man." In 2004, the Government of India released a stamp in honour of Nain Singh.

Kinthup

When the British were surveying the Himalayas, they were sceptical about the origin of the Brahmaputra. Some said it was the same as the Tsangpo river from Tibet, and some claimed that both the rivers are different. The British surveyors in 1880 hired a Chinese lama and a pundit called Kinthup, a Sikkimese Lepcha, to figure out the truth. Both of them were supposed to be on a pilgrimage in Tibet. The plan was Kinthup had to throw 500 specially marked wooden logs into the Tsangpo. Men appointed by Survey Official, Captain Harman, were going to keep a watch in the Brahmaputra for the logs. If the marked logs reached India, both rivers could be declared one and the same.

The journey started in August, 1880 and soon the lama and Kinthup reached Lhasa. Lama being a fun-loving man, was not too happy about  walking so much and facing the rugged terrain of Tibet which was covered in snow most of their journey. Soon, at a place called Thun Tsung, the lama fell in love with the wife of his host. The husband of the woman found out about this misadventure, and as compensation, the lama and Kinthup were made to pay everything they had to save their lives. In the next town, the lama sold Kinthup as a slave and rode off on a horse with all the instruments they had for survey.

For seven months, Kinthup had to work as a slave in Tibet. He used to cut grass and sew clothes for most of the time and, one day, he escaped. Unfortunately, his master found him but before he could harm Kinthup, the poor pundit ran into a monastery nearby, flung himself at the head lama’s feet and begged for mercy. The head lama purchased him from his Tibetan master for fifty rupees. Kinthup lived in this monastery for five months before he was given a temporary leave to make a pilgrimage. However, instead of the pilgrimage he promised to do, he made his way once again down the Tsangpo. At one isolated part of river, he began cutting down wooden logs of specific size and marked them. He hid these logs in a cave beside the river, and then he returned to the monastery once again.

It was long past the decided time for events of his mission and, therefore, he was worried if Captain Harman’s watch for the logs had been called off. He had to send a message to India that they should watch for the logs. Trudging through heavy snow for two months, he reached Lhasa as only the capital of Tibet was connected to India. At Lhasa he met a man from Sikkim to whom he gave a letter which was addressed to the Surveyor-General informing him of the plan to throw fifty logs a day for ten days in the tenth Tibetan month of the year. He again went back to his monastery and patiently waited for the tenth month when his master, the head lama of monastery, set him free for his good behaviour after nine months. He could now freely carry forward his mission.

In the tenth month, at a place called Bipung, he threw 500 logs in ten days into the Tsangpo. He worked one more month in Tibet to earn money for his return to India and, finally,  reached India in September, 1884. That was his five long years of journey for one mission. After his return, Kinthup found that his letter to the Surveyor-General had never been delivered. No watch had been kept for his logs and, perhaps, they just drifted away without anyone noticing them. For the worst, Captain Harman had also died, and nobody believed in the adventure of Kinthup. He was a just a man with stories, and only after about thirty years, the British equipped with better technology could find that everything Kinthup told them was nothing but the truth.By this time Kinthup was nowhere to be found. Sometime later in early 1900, he was traced to Simla where he was presented with a thousand rupees as a mark of recognition and reward by the British for his services.

Sarat Chandra Das

On the fringe of Darjeeling town, where the Hill Cart Road winds into a thick urban sprawl, is a neighbourhood known as Lhasa Villa. It is an old derelict cottage where a century ago, a spy once lived. He was Sarat Chandra Das. Born in 1849 in a middle-class Bengali family in the Chittagong district of East Bengal, Sarat Chandra Das studied civil engineering in Calcutta. Even before he had obtained the degree, he was appointed the headmaster of Bhutia Boarding School in Darjeeling. Coming from the Gangetic plains, young Sarat Chandra was captivated by the beauty of the mountains. He explored the hills around the town and made a trip to the neighbouring kingdom of Sikkim.

Ugyen Gyatso was an assistant teacher in the school. He was a lama from the Rinchenpong monastery in Sikkim that was affiliated to another monastery in eastern Tibet. Ugyen procured a passport for Sarat and accompanied him to Tibet. For the secret mission, Sarat Chandra’s salary was raised from one hundred and fifty rupees to three hundred rupees a month. Sarat Chandra went to Tibet twice; first in 1879, for four months, and then in 1881, for an extended stay of fourteen months. Sarat published a book, in 1902, Journey to Lhasa- The Diary of a Spy. For the book, he had used much of the classified materials to prepare two reports for the intelligence and survey departments.

In Tibet, Sarat befriended, Lama Sengchen Dorjechen who had an avid interest in Western science.  Through Sarat Chandra, the lama procured many small things like smallpox vaccine, a photographic camera, magic lanterns and even a complete lithographic press. While Sarat Chandra studied Buddhist literature in the lamasery’s library, Sengchen took a sabbatical from his ministerial duties to learn arithmetic and English from him. He had even begun to write a handbook on photography in the Tibetan language.

Sarat Chandra was taken by the Tibetans as one among the long line of scholars who had brought new knowledge and wisdom from India, the land of the Buddha. He, too, had seen Tibet as a high and dry repository of priceless ancient texts and belief systems. The fascination and respect were mutual and he returned with two yak-loads of rare books and manuscripts, splendidly pulling off a mission fraught with great hardship and danger. He was feted by the British government for this, was sent to China as part of a diplomatic mission and he became quite a name in the Himalayan explorers’ circuit.

But there was a dark aftermath. Soon after Sarat Chandra returned to India, his true identity and the purpose of his mission came to light in Tibet. The people who had hosted him and assisted him inadvertently during his stay were charged with sedition. They were arrested, mutilated and thrown into dungeons. Sengchen Dorjechen was drowned alive in the river Tsangpo.

This lucidity and precision in describing a little-known land helped the British in what was known as the Francis Younghusband expedition there in 1903. The British forces easily defeated the poorly armed Tibetans with Dalai Lama escaping to China. This also drew a curtain on a fascinating chapter of espionage that had continued for most of the nineteenth century. Overnight, men like Sarat Chandra became redundant, forgotten, a relic from the past. Some say the it was Sarat Chandra Das on whom Rudyard Kipling based the caricature of an English-educated Bengali spy in the figure of Hurree Chunder Mukherjee in his novel, Kim.

In the autumn of his life Sarat Chandra Das was a bitter man, recounting in his autobiography the raw deal he had been given by the British government. Sarat Chandra embraced Buddhism with zeal, wrote abundantly on spiritualism and founded the Buddhist Texts Society. A year before his death, he visited Japan accompanied with Ekai Kawaguchi, a Japanese monk and a Tibetologist like him. Sarat Chandra’s home in Darjeeling, named Lhasa Villa, was a most sought-after address for the scholars of the world who had anything to do with Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.

Last Word: Wishful thinking of my friend Ranjit who remarked, someone should make a movie on these ‘pundits’ whose life is no less remarkable than the spies glorified in movies. I thought over the suggestion and realised that there will be no one attempting to make the biopics for these real-life heroes and spies who mostly worked silently behind the scenes and never went berserk with the killings and bombings of the reel-life heroes. They will never be glorified as the Bonds of yesterday and the Dhurandhars of today. But for me, just getting to know about these pundits, and being able to share their stories with you, makes me feel honoured.

SS

References:  Various articles and pictures from the internet and podcast by Ranjit Monga- BOOKS AND US- Khangchendzonga- Sacred Summit- S3 Ep1 with Pema Wangchuk https://open.spotify.com/episode/47U9W2gwMaXvnrgrR6mHxL?si=l7E7MzYJQayGp_cluhfCAA