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Manjitar. Manjita. I Walking unhurriedly down the narrow path that winds between the tea bushes below Mount Hermon School east of the main school building, years after he was last in Darjeeling, a flood of memories and echoes from a magical past swirled and eddied around his mind. He leaned back against the drag of the downward path – not wanting to miss even one of the images and impressions carrying his mind on waves of remembrance. Laughter lingered before it was lost in languid conversations. Pictures passed before him pulling at his awareness of his footsteps as they fell randomly all across the narrow path. In the pristine clearness of the October day, the sky resting pure and blue over the brilliant top of Mt. Kanchenjunga and the Tibet border at Nathu-La, he wound his way down to ‘Black Rock’. He had been looking east from near the swings outside the Main Building when his eyes had fallen on the rock, perched on the little spur in the valley between two steeply-falling ridges. The rock still looked exactly as it had the first time he had seen it so many years ago. It was a large, dark-coloured rock – shaped almost like the skull of a dog sitting passive and immovable on what he once perceived to be the belly of the dark-green Darjeeling hills as they reclined among tea gardens on the upper slopes and lush, green forests closer to the valleys – and sprawled all the way from their sky-gazing head at the Chowrasta down to their feet washed in the cold, clean rushing waters of the Rangit and the Teesta. On a clear day you could look from the rock over a steep drop all the way down to the Rangit valley several miles to the north as the crow flies. Across the Rangit river the green hills of Sikkim rose dark and silent, sheathed in a gentle haze that gave them a soft focus, till they soared higher than the Darjeeling hills and then gave way to the awesome panorama of the snows of Mt. Kanchenjunga. You could see where the snows of this mighty and majestic mountain fell gracefully to the east and west, gradually giving way to snow-powdered, black and treeless peaks that receded, especially in the east, into the distant horizon. There, seated and still on the cold, comforting vantage of Skeleton Rock, he looked up to the West at the gray stone of the main school building rising out of the pine trees amongst which it sits. To his right, in the East, the little village on the half-ridge between the North Point ridge and the Lebong ridge looked sleepy and still as ever – only the washed clothes whipping in the occasional gentle gusts giving any indication of life. Beyond that, the race-track at Lebong and the tea-garden below it looked like a picture on a postcard framed in the dark, high, eastern mountains in the far distance. On a day like this, during a water shortage, he had walked east, down from Fern Hill to the stream of spring-water that bubbled out of the mountain, and had lain sprawled on the warm, wide, flat rocks with other senior school boys, joking and having fun at each others’ expense; dozing and dreaming while the clothes they had washed in the pure stream water as they bathed dried beside them in the hot afternoon sun. On a day like this he had stood at the waist-high fence in front of the main school building with his girlfriend, ‘fencing’, looking north over the main playing field and the trees that surrounded it down to the Rangit valley far below and up to the snows that loomed over the Sikkimese town of Lachung nestled amongst melting glaciers. On a day like this, as a first-year teacher, he had climbed onto the warm, red, corrugated tin roof of the Stewart building with a blanket, a pillow and a book and lain reading before the warmth of the sun had lured him into the arms of a dreamless sleep from which he only arose when it had descended behind the trees and the chill of autumn spread its fingers around the school. On a day like this, seven years later, he had sat on this rock with Mark Daranjo and Leo Xavier, two first-year teachers, laughing and brimming with the joy of youth coursing through their veins, talking for the joy of words – high on life. II On an October day like this, when all the students who could had gone home for the Puja Holidays, several young-at-heart teachers had taken the senior boys and girls who remained in school to Manjita. In the cool, clear, early-morning air they had driven in the two school Jeeps up to North Point, east on the Darjeeling Hill Cart Road to Lebong and then down the road from there east of the Lebong ridge to the Rangit valley. In the two vehicles girls, boys and teachers sat huddled tightly together among huge cooking utensils, sacks of potatoes, onions, loaves of bread, plastic-wrapped raw meat, canned food and fruit – the makings of snacks, lunch and tea. Spirits were high as the Jeeps, one of them long-bodied, wound their way down the hill. One of them was driven by John Glasby, an ex-student from Australia, in his first year back at Mount Hermon School as a teacher. The other one was driven by the school driver, Saila Daju. As the winding road descended rapidly towards the valley, the tea bushes gave way to lush, dark-green forests of Sal that rose majestically and silently out of thick, tangled undergrowth. The air became perceptibly warmer and the light, cool breeze that had been blowing up in Lebong was replaced by a clammy stillness the lower into the valley they descended. Before long, even the air blowing in through the open windows of the Jeep was not enough to prevent a thin film of perspiration from forming on faces and foreheads. Pull-overs and jackets came off and were thrown in a heap into the huge ‘dekchis’ on top of onions and potatoes. Some of the boys and girls in the backs of the Jeeps got up and stood on the rear-bumpers, holding onto the rear roll-bars as the warm air on the road between towering trees pressed against their faces. In the filtered light of the forest road, the damp, mildewed and musty monsoon smell, still not replaced by the dry, crackling almost odorless winter smell of the forests, the Jeeps went swerving along the road towards the Rangit river. Inside the Jeeps, conversation had settled but the boys and girls standing in the backs of the vehicles, hanging on for dear life, were still shouting at each other with the exhiliration of the ride and of being out of school for the day as the forest went whizzing past on either side. In the back of the Jeep he had sat quietly, only occasionally talking to John Glasby and the other students and staff. His first year as a teacher had already been an exciting one. He had really enjoyed every minute of being back in school. It really did feel like he was ‘back in school’ – except now he could go up the road to North Point whenever the school food was less than appealing; he could come back from Darjeeling town as late as he wanted; he could stay awake all night, reading, if he wanted – and yet, he was in school. He knew that for some of his classmates being at Mount Hermon School had been nothing special. For him, however, it had been the second chance at so many things; the first at so many others. Because of the requirement that all boys play games, at least at the house level, he had had a chance, while a student, to play basketball, volleyball, cricket, football, hockey, table-tennis. Because of the encouragement of the school policy, he had done well in the swimming pool. He had participated in track and field and discovered a talent in middle-distance running. Because of the wide range of activities that the school had provided for the students, he had sung masterpieces like the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ with Mrs. Patricia Murray in the choir, sung and acted in productions like ‘Salad Days’ and ‘Mikado’ directed by Miss Cynthia Hawke with Mrs. Murray as the music director. He had co-starred in class plays. He had debated on his House Debate team. He had had the benefit of deeply dedicated and gifted teachers like Jim Darr in Physics, Cynthia Hawke in English and PC Matthews in Mathematics. Mrs. Dam [Biology], Mr. Ismail [History & Hindi], Mr. Mathai [Chemistry] and others like Bill Moore, Patricia Russel, Rev. Johnston and Mr. Murray had all been instrumental in providing an environment that was more family than school. All in all he had left school with a wide range of experiences and now had a very good sense of the value of the education he had received. More importantly, he had kept his love for the school enough to want to go back and help during the two-month-long college summer vacations while he was in college and then, as a young graduate, to go back as a teacher. His thoughts mingled with the conversation, the musty smell of the forest mingled with the smell of gasoline from the Jeep and the warm breeze through windows as the Jeeps reached the more level roads that ran parallel to the river bed on the Indian side of the river. Through the now thinning forest he watched as brief glimpses of the fast-flowing Rangit in its sandy and shimmering bed, bright in the morning sun, flashed almost strobe-like through the trees as the Jeeps accelerated to cover the final stretch of road. III All of a sudden, the Jeeps slowed down, turned off the road and came to a bumpy halt in a small clearing in the trees. Students and teachers climbed out of the vehicles and stretched and looked around. Into the silence left by the shutting off of the Jeeps’ engines grew the sound of the river rushing and rolling over rocks and boulders. The silent stillness of the trees was broken by the occasional, uninhibited arias of birdsong floating among the higher branches of the tall trees, their melodies piercing in their unrestrained exuberance. With his hands full of whatever was handed to him out of the back of the Jeep he walked over dry, fallen leaves that crackled and crunched as he and all the others stepped on them. It was like any of a thousand other riverside forests along the Himalayan foothills till he stepped out of the trees and into the sun. Before him was the Rangit river rushing eastwards towards him around a sharp bend in the distance. Across the river the tree-covered mountains of Sikkim rose dark-green in the Autumn morning-light of the valley in stunning contrast to the blinding brilliance of the sun on the clear rushing water and the coarse, reflecting grains of sand on the river bed. Closer to him was a smaller, fast-flowing knee-deep stream which flowed into the Rangit about fifty yards downstream. Camp had already been set up on the wide, sandy beach between the stream and the river and boys had run off to gather twigs to set under the logs of wood and coal that had been brought from school to cook on. Raj & Rachel David, with a loyal crew of staff and student helpers had already started making preparations for lunch. On a small fire that they had almost immediately got started was a large kettle full of pure, clear stream water getting set for the first round of tea. It was unusual to see Raj with an apron on shouting cooking instructions to his crew. We were accustomed to seeing him either at the piano in the music room with a class of junior school students or with the school choir; or at the Grand piano in the school hall. He was also an incredible guitarist. With a large long-handled spoon in his hand, however, he looked more than a little out of place. He was really swinging the lead with his crew. Nobody was fooled, however. Everyone knew that his wife, Rachel, was the real boss in that equation!! Some of the more enthusiastic among the students had already climbed over a large outcrop of rock that extended into the river and disappeared on the other side of it with towels and portable cassette players. He stepped into the cold water of the stream and inhaled sharply as it rose all the way above his knees. In a few steps he was out of the water on the other side and almost immediately his legs were warm again from the rapidly heating morning air in the valley. Having set his load down, he went over to the rock outcrop and climbed over. It was about ten or twelve feet high and was wide and flat enough on top to be a good spot at which to sit or lie around in the sun. One end of the outcrop extended about fifteen yards into the river causing the fast-flowing water to hit against it and be diverted away from the flow of the river. The other end of the outcrop reached around in a gentle, curve back in the direction from which the river was coming. The result was an area about thirty yards long by about twenty yards wide of water surrounded by the outcrop on one side and by the fast-flowing river on the other. The fast-flowing river water lashed against the outcrop and got diverted along the curve. Because the curve went back – against the direction of the river flow – the water that had been diverted actually went in the opposite direction from the flow of the river. Once the water reached the end of the outcrop it was forced back into the flow of the river. In effect, the outcrop formed a pool of water that, around the rocky edge was quite fast-flowing and along the river edge, just inside the actual flow of the river, a little slower. You could jump into the water where the outcrop reached into the river and get pushed along the edges of the pool all along the rock wall back upstream and then float gently back, just inside the main river-flow, to where the river hit the outcrop – a nice sweeping circle to float along. This was where most of the swimming went on and it was a fine place for swimmers. Back on the sand, the lunch crew soon had tea ready and those who wanted it would have a supply all the way till tea-time – when a fresh pot would be made. There was also orange juice and other snacks [biscuits and chips] to munch on till lunch. As the main fire was started and the preparation of the meat, vegetables, onions, ginger and garlic was being overseen by Rachel David – a third fire was being prepared for the rice and dal to be cooked on. He stood around for a while, offering to help and then, when the smoke from the big fire started stinging his eyes and nose and seemed to follow him wherever he went, he wandered off to the stream where some of the boys had started entering the water about fifty yards upstream and then body surfing down till just before the stream entered the actual river and then running up again to repeat the exercise. He thought that this looked like fun and decided to give it a try when the boys, many of who remembered him from when he had been a senior student in the school, urged him to. He stripped down to his swimming-trunks and headed upstream. The fifty-yard ride was a tremendous thrill and the only nervous moment was trying to stop before he got pushed into the river. He tried standing up but the sharpness of the rocks against his city-dweller feet made him let his legs swing around till they were pointing towards the river and then grab onto a couple of rocks on the bank of the stream with his hands and stop himself. Thereafter, he decided that he would keep his running-shoes on while he surfed the fast-flowing water of the stream. The day was hot enough by then to make him confident that they would dry out quickly once he got out of the water. Some of the girls had been watching as more and more boys and teachers tried this and they decided they wanted part of the action as well. After a short discussion, he and Indranil Mohanty decided that they would stand in the stream at a spot ten or twenty feet before it entered the river and catch the girls – some of who were not good swimmers – before they got carried away into the river. At this, Ayinla Shilu-Ao, Lahava Silliman, Nuj Khureya, Karen Adhikari, Ann Gardner[who was a good swimmer] and others joined the fray and soon there were screams and laughter as, one by one, all the others discovered what fun it was. For the rest of the morning, all the way till the call went out to round everyone up for lunch, he stood in the water and watched as students took turns helping him. Every now and then he would join the queue for a ride down the stream and cool off in the water. After a fine lunch of South-Indian-style meat, vegetables, rice & sambhar dahl, rich and spicy in contrast to the usual school fare, many of the girls, boys and teachers lay back on the rock outcrop, on dry towels and dozed off or chatted. A few of the crowd were in the gently rotating water of the pool formed by the outcrop. Occasionally there would be a big splash as one of the boys ran off the rock face and cannonballed into the water – trying hard to splash someone asleep too close to the edge. Gradually, as it got hotter and hotter, people started getting into the water again. This time everyone was in or around the large pool. The non-swimmers seemed to have had enough of the water and were happy to sit on the rock and chat and just watch. IV From his perch on the rock he watched her – as he had all day – as he had all year from the time he had first noticed her in that inter-school girls’ basketball match held at the school. She had been on the school team and something about the fire in her eyes, as she fought tooth and nail for victory, had caught his attention. Ever since then he had felt a rush and a surge in his heart-beat whenever their paths crossed. Several times he had caught himself planning to ‘inadvertently’ be in a position where their paths would inevitably cross and had been powerless to stop himself. When it got hot again he dived into the water and, without any pre-meditation, they found themselves suddenly face-to-face – without an excuse to sidestep – almost as if propelled by a conspiring fate into the intensity of the moment – the months of averted glances and practiced indifference falling away in the moment. Suddenly his whole universe became an immense vortex whirling around him as her eyes locked with his. Her voice and his – mingled in the lazy, early-afternoon heat and blended with the roar of the river close by – and the natural circular flow of the pool – intensified the sensation of spinning in a large tunnel enveloped in a sound like the rushing of many waters. The steep, forested hills on either side of the river – rising dark and now only a blur in the sharp and heightened focus of the moment – spun around the parrying of their agonizingly halting conversation and it was like the whole valley had conspired to join in the tentative and clandestine dance that they had correographed for themselves over the months. As they tread water and talked – the eye-contact and proximity making him breathless – he longed for a way to hang on to the moment and eternalize it. He felt like he was being drawn and stretched between the inevitable fleeting of the moment on the one hand and his desperation to perpetuate it on the other – a lesser Icarus, not heroic, not monumental and not, alas, tragic either. He never remembered what words were spoken – just the look in those eyes as their feet danced dangling in the water and their bodies circled, flamenco-like, in a dance of discovery – an ‘Alaap’ to the falling cadences of an inevitably desolate Raag. A sudden burst of laughter from beyond the rocks pierced the mirage of their isolation and the shattered remains of their focus were carried swirling away on the turbulence. The moment passed. The reality of the scene intruded on them as they floated apart in unspoken agreement. He drifted spread-eagled on his back, gazing wide-eyed at the azure of the eastern sky – floating with the current towards the outcrop unable to get enough air into his lungs to quell the agony of the wrenching in his gut. He floated around slowly a couple of times, passing her each time as she swam against the current towards the rocks seeming to stay in the same spot. V The third time he passed her – a look in her eyes caught his attention and pulled him up short. Was it fear? Still not recovered from the intensity of his reaction to the proximity and intimacy of the brief exchange, he stopped right in front of her, treading water. “You ok?”, he asked. “No”, she gasped back, “I can’t get to the rock to get out”. Without a doubt – fear. An uncharacteristic break in her voice. “You’re swimming against the current”, he said. “Turn around and go with the flow”. “No”, she said, with a quick glance at the big river rushing past just outside the safety of the pool. “Don’t worry about the river. You don’t have to go into the river – just follow me”. “No”, she said again, some of her panic transferring to him. Suddenly, the looming hills on both sides of the river looked foreboding. The situation took on a whole different perspective. In his mind he got a fleeting glimpse of the two of them – as if looking down on the scene from a great height – suddenly small and helpless in the context of the vastness of the Himalayas, the still, blue sky and the relentless river. Colour vanished. Sounds coagulated till all he heard was one mighty roaring in his head that sounded like the thundering of approaching doom. “Relax”, he said, his voice sounding puny and lacking the confidence he was trying to convey. “Turn and face the rocks and I’ll push you”. She turned and he started pushing her in the small of her back, breast-stroking against the current as he did so. They didn’t make much progress. All day he had swum with the current and hadn’t realized how strong it was. He soon realized that trying to push her against the current when she already seemed to be weakening was probably the worst way to try and get her to dry land – but she was too afraid to go near the river – and letting the current take her to where the outcrop jutted in to the river meant going close to the main river current. Then he heard a voice from the rocks – “Are you guys ok?”. It was John Glasby. "She can’t get back to the rocks”, he called back, “and she doesn’t want to go back that way with the current”. "Push as hard as you can”, he said from the rocks, “I’ll get her hand when she’s close enough”. They were, by this time, both running out of energy. With one big breath and one final burst, he thrust against the water, swimming hard against the current. With agonizing slowness, she got closer and closer to John Glasby’s outstretched hand. With one final push, she managed to reach out and grab the hand – and then she was out. He looked around and saw that he was alone in the water. Everyone else had gone over the rock for tea. Glas had come back to call them. With every muscle in his legs aching from the exertion and his lungs feeling like there was a fire in them, he turned over onto his back and allowed the current to carry him in its circular path around the pool till he got his breath back. Then he got out and lay on his back on the rocks, his eyes closed against the gradually sinking sun. VII Before the movie in school that evening, teachers and students stood around in the study hall – which had been cleared of desks for the vacation – talking and relaxing. When she came down from her dorm and joined the crowd, she looked at him briefly. One of her close friends said something to her and she laughed consciously and looked at him again and he remembered their brief conversation before they had piled into the Jeeps to head back to school. She had been sitting alone in the distance, scraping around in the sand beside the rushing river while all the others sat around over tea and snacks. A couple of her friends came up to him and told him to go talk to her and he did – but not without a little nervousness. He walked towards where she was and sat down facing her. The skin on her arms, shoulders, back and legs glowed golden brown in the early evening sunglow. The near-black, one-piece swimsuit stretched tight against her was all that kept the now-cooling breeze coming off the mountains off the rest of her. If he had had a shirt on himself he would have offered it to her to keep her warm but she seemed not to notice the signs of cold showing on her. They sat silent – only her scratching around disturbing the stillness – only the sound of the river a few feet away and the wind in both their shoulder-length hair interrupting their thoughts . . . When she looked up, eyes liquid with the molten glow of the sun setting over the western heights looked steadily into his. They weren’t the same proud, aloof eyes that looked up at him as he sat above her on the warm sand. It was like she saw him for the first time – recognizing him as a person. "Thanks”, she said. He shrugged, “It’s ok”. He shrugged – but he was breathless again. Then she had talked to him about life at home on the tea-garden that her father was manager of – of their labrador and of other things. It was an invitation into her life and even though he knew it was for just a brief moment – he savoured it as they both looked at each other and talked. Somehow, the very wide-openness of the valley, the river, the mountains and the sand had the dual effect of creating an intimate and private space for them right there in the open. The sound of the water and the blowing of the breeze in the gradually fading light conjured up for them an invisible wall within which they could bare their hearts while still in full view. In the Study Hall before the movie he looked in her eyes and saw the acknowledgement. It was enough. VII Looking down at the Rangit from his perch on Black Rock – he descended out of his reverie and slowly became aware of his surroundings again. With his face turned towards the river way down below him and Kanchenjunga glowing in the setting sun he whispered into the wind blowing around him, "I dreamed of you once – years ago . . . And when I woke And you weren't there I gasped to fill my lungs with air Breathless Drifting down Reaching out For one more touch One last look into your eyes Before the dream forever flies And with the daylight slowly dies And with the daylight slowly dies.” *********** The sun had descended behind the ridge on which the school stood. It had begun to get chilly out there. He stood up. "Life’s good”, he thought, smiling at himself as he walked back up to the school building. In the valley at the foot of the ridge that leads down to the Rangit river east of Lebong is a place that will live forever in his memory. By : Robin Sengupta Graduated : ISC 1971. Date : 16/1/2004 10:9 |
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