Making Sense of Mountains(2) - Called By Hills

Both: The book & the journey of booking the trek happened in parallel. It was like one was feeding the other.

This is the second non fiction book which was on my list after reading 2 heavy (BIG) books - {The Loneliness of Sunny & Sonia and then Railsong} books which spans a generation and are sprawling with multiple characters I decided to switch track. 

This is a book like nothing I had read before. A book written so beautifully - that I could visualise every line of the book in my mind. In some sense its a small book - but I read with elongated pause just imagining what I had read about the house or the dogs which started staying with her & her husband, hoe she made a space in the mountain almost like occupying the forest without permission - And how the mountains & their people accepted her. Of course after much doubting and testing. 

A book which tells about the same place (near Ranikhet) but covers an expanse of 25 years +. I have stayed in Bangalore for last 20 years & the story all my friends and relatives have heard is that “Indranagar (where I stay) 100 ft road had 1 store and now….can’t count”. But beyond this my imagination can’t stretch because I never really lived here - with 10 hrs in office and frequent travel Indiranagar was just a place of convenience.

But for Anuradha Roy it was a slow process of adaptation, understanding the nuances of the hills, the people, the plants, the animals (wild or pet) bureaucracy and of course development. The animal - people divide and her last chapter hauntingly titled “The wounded Mountain” - A closing chapter so poignant that it almost made me cry.

I can still visualise how her dog disappeared and the despair of not finding her, or how the foxes disappeared not to be seen as the roads being built in the mountain pushed them away and away. No one knows where.

As we were moving from Dehradoon from where we were picked to be taken to the base camp at Katgaon, we were stopped several times because roads were being made - I could see 10’s of JCB’s boring their hard steel spikes into the mountains and removing rocks, landslides where the rocks got loose, or large swathes of land just not there because during rains landslides would have just broke that part of the mountain.

One part of my  mind was crying at the devastation being cause because pf people like us who need the roads & one part of the mind was rejoicing that at least I am able to see the mountains. I am not sure my next generation or there next will have the opportunity.

This is kind of dichotomy which I carried with me as 25 of us drove towards our base camp.