Amongst the hundred odd ways we can classify people, their choice of mountains or beaches is a usual undertone amongst the urban travellers. In the tech-times that we live, surrounded by information, by screens, it is easy to be everywhere in the world at once, but you miss the feeling of being somewhere. You miss to experience what surrounds you in real. It leads to universal banality, like Baudrillard says. And like always, it is easy to caution yourself, but more difficult to live it through. So here is an attempt to rediscover imagination, philosophising the dailies of people and life in the Himalayas, from my very own soiled eyes.
Mountains, for me, have been reservoirs of freshness, of health and prosperity, and lot of hope, ever since I visited them first. Perhaps some 11 years back. You can call mountains as Nature Giants – showing you the limitless boundaries of nature, to witness centuries old trees staring and laughing back at you, for the life’s little troubles that you are surrounded with. The Giant Tree tells you of the lives that she has seen, surviving, and enjoying the survival, and later being destroyed all at once, leaving no trace. What is left are few narratives, here and there, not even explaining the tail of the elephant well enough. That’s what it all is, generations passing information to each other in Chinese whispers and by the time it reaches the present, you only have a bare minimum that holds the original, and sometimes not even that. But you know it had valid origins and it is ever calling you to seek for it. A friend from Nagaland is practicing a traditional skill from his ancestors that involves communicating with trees, and he says this isn’t at all extraordinary. In fact, it is the forgotten ordinary that he is only trying to remind himself of – the knowledge of which has been passed to him through generational constructs of his genetics.
And that’s the hope mountains give me, they feel like historical storage units of our ancestral and natural heritage, least touched by modernity, specially as we move farther from the mountainous city dwellings.
How deeply modern are we?
If we believe in the State of Crisis, from the start to this very day, modernity was about forcing nature to serve obediently to human needs, ambitions and desires. And that is the constant trade off we make as we pass our daily routines.
Am I modern and pro-development to push for roads to the interiors of the hills, that builds better connectivity, and thus better transportation of both people and goods? Realising greater economic well-being for all. Or do I wish to hold the cultural exclusivity and the natural vulnerability of the place at higher pedestal and let the communities’ own ways of surviving be valued and conserved.
The answer can be a simple yes, roads and development should be everyone’s right and we must make lives of people easier, less difficult. Roads will surely bring easier connection to the world. It also brings the world to them, because those places connected well will always benefit with easier exploration, government linkages and reap the fruits of knowledge and growth. My travel to Pangna, Karsog, Mandi (HP) and Chopal, Shimla (HP) were two extraordinary smooth travels where I could go to the exteriors of the district in a very smooth road travel.
But how much of the world reaching them is ideal, from the community’s point of view? Because the world brings the urge to grow, mostly exponentially. It brings to you a lifestyle that is less demanding physically and has its own concept of luxury alternate to the rural prosperity. The plastic wrappers floating in these outskirts is an example- it brings to you new flavours and snacks, but it creates a new problem – plastic waste.
Let’s ask the same modernity dilemma on food and agriculture?
We are increasingly as consumers, made conscious of what we are eating and look for safe, healthy, nutritious, ‘organic’ food options. Because why not? Today, there has been a possibility of gaining profits from people’s healthier food choices. The markets have sustained long on our unhealthy ones from aerated drinks to plastic noodles. Any markets thrive on a consumer base. Bauman says it right, a consumerist attitude may lubricate the wheels of the economy; it sprinkles sand into the bearings of morality. How moral can be modern, and how moral are we traditionally?
As society, we are moving far from how the food is produced but would like to have the perks of a consumer to have organic food choices. Today’s farmers’ adulting kids, do not want to spend their lives in the heat doing extremely laborious field work. An approximate 1 hectare of land, that can perhaps produce organic food for 4 families for the entire year, requires approximately 5-25 human hours every-day. An organic or naturally produced food would additionally want you to engage with naturally available ingredients like cow dung and cow urine; and even engage with the foul smell of fermented compositions used as alternates to the fertilisers and pesticides.
We value the food that comes out of this labour but we don’t have a recognised place for such labour in our modern lifestyle discourse? Like Suman Sahai had once said in a panel, some one joining the army in the family is seen with much prestige in most social circles but farming may not be seen as a progressive career. It might be more than how we disregard physical labour but army still is seen prestigious, we have eroded the respect out of farming. Do we deserve organic healthy food as we live in our modern dailies?
Our modern identities and our traditional religions – Where is the balance?
Himachal is full of local deities and they give huge regard to the rituals and traditions with it. While the deity (As they call it devta) comes in some one from the community and he remains the deity till He is guided by a supernatural force on the deity passing from one body to the other, purely based on his will. It usually goes down the family lineage but it is not always the case. The deity is involved in the biggest and smallest successes or events of the community. I got the chance to visit one local festival in Karsog. The occasion was two parents had asked a wish that their son gets a job. The son finally got the job. According to the process, once your wish comes true, you are supposed to offer gifts to the deity and celebrate it with a food fest, feasting on one or many of the goats slaughtered as sacrifice to the deity. Before the feast, there is a ceremony where the local deity (an actual person who in this case had come in his own Maruti Alto, wearing trousers and shirt) would be prayed to and asked if he is happy. While in the one I attended, the deity was happy but in case he is not, one is asked to follow his guidelines that can make him happy.
I loved the local celebrations and such locally rooted ideas of power and culture. But there are the modern-traditional contrasts visible in these meta narratives of celebrations.
Music is amalgamation of Bollywood in their local rhythms. Always love the tradition of singing on dholak. Check here and here.
Each caste has their own deities, but the upper caste is strict on who can enter their temples and festivals. Whether you are from the village or have come as tourist, you have to pass this filter. Can we keep the local traditions without the caste horrors? Can we take salt out of a dish once its dissolved?
The local celebrations is bringing so much plastic wastes to the top most hill of the region – usually the place of the deity. You only encounter the vastness of nature, with dark spots of plastic trash.
The young ones aspire to model, to learn English and computers and visit a city like Delhi once in their lives.
So what do we do at the crossroads?
I don’t think I have any meaningful way to choose between the two. “Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.” (Jean) So we all do know what choices are we leading to, and we kind of believe in the zero-sum of the universe, holding everything else together for us. Capitalism driving todays so called modernity thrives on convenience and comfort. Can we push that away in the barter of depth and purpose?
anshulbhamra 
Took me back to our little getaway in the Mandi Himalayas, Anshul! 🙂
And yes, may be too much meaning is killing us… food for thought.