Travel
Darjeeling: demographic ivide
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.
--- Guy Debord (1931-1994). French activist and philosopher
The hill station is immensely tourist-trodden and one is never far from the madding crowd. Rapid commercial and residential development spurred on by the ever-increasing demand of visitors has resulted in a deeply dense Darjeeling. An endemic problem in the hills is the frenetic developmental enthusiasm. A blanket of humanity crowds the serpentine lanes that weave through mountains edges and passes, as mushrooming buildings cling to its slopes. Heavy vehicular traffic creates congestion. A shortage of water requires water-carriers to haul the liquid commodity for usage by high-end hotels. These carriers have created deep tracks in the road surface. Buses, trucks and heavy vehicles carry the following ditties on the back: 'I miss Darjeeling', 'Singh is King', 'Pray for us' or 'Best to Come.' A visit to Kalimpong – said to be the more serene site - was cancelled since a round trip could take up to five hours. Urban blemishes in the form of piles of construction debris and garbage, open drains, missing manhole covers mar any residual sentiments of being in the lap of the Himalaya.
Here lies a legacy otherwise. For 'Dorje Ling' – 'Place of the Thunderbolt' – has been a perennial favourite and possibly fallen victim to its own success – falling prey to being loved to death. Yet an earlier generation or two carry a different picture in their heads. While charting a journey into memory; they reminisce of a more peaceful and pristine past. It was a coveted destination – a piece of paradise. Today, the ground reality differs. An expanding middle class; disposable income, improved transport and greater accessibility are all factors for the increase in tourism – the world over. Tourism is the great new commodity. 'Get-aways' are no longer the privilege of the few but the practice by many. And Darjeeling is not devoid of visitors. Manobina Dasgupta in a review of Discursive Hills: Studies in History, Polity and Economy published by St. Joseph's College Darjeeling notes "…The natural beauty of the mountains has generated tourism, but growth in infrastructure haphazard." Echoing the sentiment, Ruskin Bond laments in Mussoorie and Landour: Days of Wine and Roses (1997): "Stand still for ten minutes and they'll build a hotel on top of you."
For a generation in the Subcontinent now aged 50+ – many schooled in Darjeeling. St. Paul's, St. Joseph's College, Loreto Convent, St. Helens and countless others remain educational institutions of repute. That same generation may have honeymooned in the same hill station in the 1960s and 1970s. That generation would today be amongst the Senior Citizens of West Bengal and Bangladesh. Noteworthy, is the Great Divide amongst their memories and that of subsequent generation. In my exchanges with friends in both Dhaka and Kolkata, it is revealing how different are their mental imprint from decades back and my impressions based on my first visit as well as my expectations (as also a Senior Citizen) of Darjeeling. Centuries back, Francis Bacon declared 'Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education'; in the elder, a part of experience' in Of Travel (1597).
The Zero Point of the town has to be the Chowrasta with Nehru Road constituting the main road taking off from it. It is generally still referred to as The Mall where one strolls to see and be seen. The Oxford Book Store founded in 1890 is one of the shops in a row of Tudor-façade buildings. Selling Tibetan trinkets, shawls, silver bric-brac and woolies is the Habeeb Mullick & Sons store that also dates to 1890. A bibliophile's dream, the vast space stocks a variety of titles. A glance at some of the book spines reveals the following: The Darjeeling Tea Book by Gillian Wright, For all the tea in China by Sarah Rose, Darjeeling Tea: The Golden Brew by G.& S. Banerjee. Coffee table visual gems include: Kanchenjunga Guardian of the Eastern Himalaya: Five Treasures of the Eternal Snow by Tim Hauf and Himalaya: Where Gods and Man Meet by J. Poncar. Innumerable are books on Tibet, the Lord Buddha and the Dalai Lama.
Further down is Das Studios, a landmark camera stockiest. Of Nepali origin, I spoke at length with Mrs. Das. The spacious shop's provenance goes back to 1927. Dramatic images of Everest, Kanchenjunga and the Himalayan wall make for captivating visuals. So too do photographs of Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay. Tenzing 'Tiger of the Snow' was a resident of Darjeeling. He was the Director of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute for many years. Founded in 1954, it remains an obligatory visit with well displayed and documentation of the paraphernalia required for the herculean endeavour. Tenzing died in 1986 and was cremated on the premises. The Institute remains one of the leading centres of mountaineering in the region.
Everyone from our 'older generation' recalls Keventers for breakfast and coffee on the rooftop for unparalleled views of the mountain lineup. Satjayit Ray shot some of his scenes for his film 'Kanchenjunga' (1962) from this venue. The Bollywood blockbuster 'Barfi' (2012) also featured Keventers. Signed photographs by the film directors grace the wooden stairway. Today, the supposed panorama is lodged or hidden between 'Opium', 'Chanakya' and AD Ark - a boat constructed on the rooftop that offers 'Foodings and Lodgings.' One of the waiters has been at Keventers for over half a century and the other a mere 30 years. We paid a visit to the rooftop of Keventers for coffee but were alarmed at the panorama of construction-covered mountain sides. Where are the forested slopes of the hill station? To mind came the evocative line penned by Rabindranath Tagore: 'Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven' (Fireflies). We, however, were in view of the Darjeeling Club, popularly known as the Planter' Club. The land was donated by the Maharajah of Cooch Behar. Legend has it that only the royal rickshaw pulled and pushed by his liveried porters was permitted to park in the main porte-cochere of the Club. A coveted location as it straddles a hill; it once upon a time had an uninterrupted view of the Himalayan snowy peaks. Another landmark is the Glenarys Bakery. Here too disappointment prevailed. The Hot Chocolate was not hot and the Lemon Tart had no lemon and the tart was tasteless.
Mouth-watering momos were savoured in a hole-in-the- wall outlet. Selected by our taxi-driver, we crossed pools of slush and stagnant water and piles of construction debris in order to climb a rickety staircase to an upper floor where one could barely stand. This was a makeshift mezzanine landing on which we were seated at a formica-covered table and served succulent dumplings of vegetable and chicken. A mean mixed noodle dish was also satisfactorily consumed. Yet it was at a halt in Kurseong that we devoured the best momos. A popular stopover for the Bagdogra-Darjeeling vehicular traffic, the wooden building sits perched on a precarious slope.
A visit to Tiger Hill, the most recommended spot to view Kanchenjunga revealed a mist-covered scenario and of course no tigers. Another spot in Darjeeling is known for sighting the Himalaya – 'the architects of Time.' We were standing over 'The Highlands Inn' a quaint cottage with hanging gables and a rooftop ablaze with blooming geraniums and pansies. Adding further colour were multi-coloured prayer flags fluttering across poles and trees. Not a clear day, neither us nor Inn occupants had any view of the 'abode of snow.' We were close to 'The Matterhorn', currently the Raj Bhavan and earlier the summer residence of the British Lieutenant Governor. It was built in 1936 on land owned by the Maharajah of Cooch Behar.
In retrospect, the best view of the 250km. stretch of the Himalayan massifs with Kanchenjunga at 8598m. was seen from the window of the aircraft as we approached Bagdogra airport. A swirl of wispy white clouds in an azure blue backdrop caught my vision. Some minutes later, the mirage of white concentration revealed itself. There lay before my straining eyes, a magnificent vista of snow-capped jagged peaks of which one in particular soared above the others. I was in sight of Mount Kanchenjunga - the world's third-highest mountain and the highest in India. The name is derived from the Tibetan words for 'big five-peaked snow fortress' or 'big five-peaked treasury of the snow.'
Until the early eighteenth century, the area between the present borders of Sikkim and the plains of Bengal, including Darjeeling and Kalimpong belonged to the Rajahs of Sikkim. In 1706, they lost Kalimpong to the Bhutanese and the rest of the area in 1780 to Nepalese Gurkhas. The presence of Gurkhas led to conflict with the British East India Company. A series of disputes with the Gurkhas led to their defeat and the British then restored the Rajahs of Sikkim. One such dispute in 1828 led to the dispatch of two British officers to Darjeeling. They foresaw the site as an ideal hill station – a retreat from the heat, humidity and discomfiting dust of the Bengal delta. It was densely forested and largely uninhabited. By 1840, there was a salubrious sanatorium, a cemetery, hotels, roads and houses. En route to Tibet, the Hungarian Sanskrit and Tibetan scholar Alexander de Coros based at the Asiatic Society, Calcutta died in Darjeeling in 1842 and lies buried in the cemetery. In a measure of remembrance, on Coros' death anniversary, the Hungarian government to this day honours his memory with a wreath of garlands on his grave. By 1857, there was a population of 10,000. Darjeeling became the summer seat of the Bengal government based in Calcutta. Darjeeling has never looked back.
According to The Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vo. 11, 'It was only after the acquisition of Darjeeling by the British government in 1835 that the official and non-official European families in Bengal could have a hill-station cum sanatorium.' In The British in Bengal: A Study of the British Society and Life in the Late Eighteenth Century by Suresh Chandra Ghosh, "For the convalescent who survived the doctor's care – almost none survived the surgeon's – there were as yet no hill-stations, no modern sanatoria. A trip to Chittagong, a resort to Madras, a journey by river were all that the patient could look to as aids to his recovery…It was on such a voyage to Madras in search of health that Mackrabie died…As a result Bengal, a land of exile also often became a grave…" The father of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray lost all of his five brothers while they were in service in Bengal. The novelist was born in Calcutta.
(The second and final segment of this article will appear next week)
Raana Haider is a writer who travels. India: Beyond the Taj and the Raj, University Press Limited,
Dhaka, is her forthcoming book.
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