“Perhaps Darjeeling is not a town, perhaps it is a narration that is being put together for more than a century.”
This quote from No Path in Darjeeling is Straight is one way to sum up what Parimal Bhattacharya’s book is about, for much of the memoir comes across as an attempt to understand the titular hill town, and how it came to be the way it is.
With its rich cosmopolitanism, and a history of influx and rapid urbanisation, Darjeeling’s narrative is layered and complex, and Bhattacharya attempts to unravel it in crisp, clear prose.
The book, Bhattacharya’s second about Darjeeling (he previously wrote Darjeeling: Smriti, Samaj, Itihaas in Bengali and rewrote the book into English himself) is mostly set in the early 1990s, when he first went there to teach English at the Darjeeling Government College.
The worst of the Gorkhaland agitation had subsided by then, but there was a lingering unease, and in later chapters, Bhattacharya discusses the Gorkhaland question at length. His tone is marked by empathy throughout the book, something he has felt is lacking in the way Bengalis see the issue.
Settling In
As a young man who had never been to Darjeeling before, whatever Bhattacharya knew of the town was through his grandfather, a garden variety ex-babu, who believed Darjeeling to be India’s answer to the Lake District of the Romantic poets, and whose favourite flower was the daffodil, even though he had never seen one in the flesh.
The book begins, then, with the shattering of myths that have been built around the town. The way the people of the plains see hill towns, especially one such as Darjeeling, as places of rest and retreat, steeped in nostalgia.
In his essay, A Night in a Garhwal Village, Ruskin Bond describes how hard life is in the Himalayas, and how patient and resigned the inhabitants are as a result. Bhattacharya takes it up a notch, however, and Home Weather, the opening chapter, speaks of the havoc rains wreak on the town and on the psyche of its dwellers.
The locals are used to the weather, but outsiders succumb to suicidal tendencies it gives rise to. A chunk of the chapter morbidly discusses people who were driven to kill themselves during the monsoons.
The locals, however, brave the elements since they have no choice.
Endless rains seep into cracks of brittle metamorphic rocks, seek out fissures, and one fell moment in the dead of the night, trigger a landslip... Darjeelingeys wake up on a grey, silent morning to discover that the scattering of huts on a hill slope that stood there for so long is no more.
Bhattacharya then launches into evocative descriptions of how he spent his time there, and also exploring the history of Darjeeling through accounts by those associated with the Raj.
The memoir takes on the shape of a biography of Darjeeling, and this is so deftly interwoven with the personal that the reader does not notice when the book’s two main protagonists – Bhattacharya and the town he remembers so fondly – switch places.
The memoir is deeply personal, even when the town assumes centre stage. The chapter titles are very meta, the title itself refers to the chor batos, the trails that the locals are deeply familiar with and use to get by.
To give you another example, the penultimate chapter is titled Pemba’s Umbrella. By then, I’d guessed Bhattacharya’s strategy – he’d take his time building up to situations where <insert title here> had appeared or had happened.
In Pemba’s Umbrella, the Pemba he talks about is one in a series of examples of how hill-folk deal with difficult situations, and ordinarily perform acts that would be hard to imagine for one not used to life in remote regions of the Himalayas.
The chapters also mark important epochs during his stay in Darjeeling, though they do not follow a very strict chronological order. Even if they do, I was too absorbed in what he had to say about things to pay much attention to which year of his stay it marked.
In narrating the story of Darjeeling, Bhattacharya makes sure the past, present, and in the final, rather speculative chapter, the future are all covered.
Darjeeling, Who Do You Belong To?
Darjeeling lies at the intersection of several cultures and ethnicities – Lepcha, Bhutia, Nepali, all of whom identify as Gorkha. The town’s physiology has been wrought over by forces of nature, and also by influx and departure.
The Gorkhaland movement has had a very defining impact on Darjeeling, its populace, and the town and the movement have come to be deeply associated with each other. Bhattacharya recalls his mother’s reaction (fear) when it first became known that he would be posted to Darjeeling indefinitely. His grandfather, on the other hand, was excited at the prospect because he would be living in a quaint and charming little hill station.
These are two of the prevailing attitudes that Bengalis have towards Darjeeling; the third, according to Bhattacharya, is one of a ruler, as he explains later in the book.
And yet the notions that an average Bengali still nursed about hill people – that they were simple (read, brainless), emotional (read, headstrong), plain (read, easy to please), and obedient (read, never ask questions, tame as a pet animal) – smacked of the attitude of a ruler, not a neighbour. It spawned a dark harvest: anger.
In his buildup to the last chapter, where he freely discusses Gorkhaland and what it has done to Darjeeling, Bhattcharya introduces his readers to the way of life unique to Darjeeling, ‘the spirit of Darjeeling,’ which he feels can be detected by any traveller discerning enough. There are mentions of local hangouts (including Keventer’s, which also featured in the 2012 film Barfi!), several books (and at least one film – Ray’s Kanchenjunga) that happen in or around Darjeeling. Bhattacharya tries to define the spirit of Darjeeling. Most Bengalis in Darjeeling, he thinks, are impervious to this spirit, as they spend all their energy clinging to ‘home.’ Bhattacharya, however, though always aware of his ‘outsider’-ness, fully revels in it.
After the primer on the anthropological make-up of the town, Bhattacharya talks about the all encompassing nature of his beloved “Darjeelingeys”, and makes it clear that they have no compunctions accepting outsiders like him in. In his opinion, they are more open minded than, perhaps, Bengalis ever will be. They have several different languages, but share one in common – Nepali.
Bhattacharya explains how sharing a language and racial intermixing has led to a blurring of lines between the three communities and enabled them to come together for a separate statehood.
Darjeeling may have changed administrative hands thrice officially – from Sikkim to the British to the Government of India – but the question of its ownership remains problematic.
The Gorkhaland Question
I don’t know if that state will be born, what price in blood will be paid for it, or what its shape will be. But I do hope that the wounds in the minds of the hill people will heal one day.
In the final chapter, Bhattacharya briefly takes the reader through the history of the formation of the Hill Council. Prashant Tamang’s victory in the third edition of Indian Idol brought the movement to the fore again, and brought in a fresh wave of change. Bhattacharya recalls visiting the city again, and being stunned by the shift in cultural practices that had been forced on the people because of the demand for a Sixth Schedule status.
Rather naively, he hopes that the “elder brother” (the West Bengal government), and the “younger brother” (Darjeeling), are able to resolve their differences and live peacefully.
In less dramatic terms, he also muses on the actual possibility of Gorkhaland happening, and why or why not is Gorkhaland possible.
While the proponents of Gorkhaland harp on Darjeeling’s tea, tourism and hydel-power potential, and its opportunities in international border trade, the detractors point to its small size, topographic obstacles and limited scope for revenue to make it a viable state.
No Path in Darjeeling is Straight is Bhattacharya’s ode to the town he connected with early in his youth, and which is still important to him. He has been quoted as saying that he would like the book to be translated into Nepali, so that it becomes accessible to more people, especially to those from Darjeeling.
Abounding in vivid imagery, the book manages to steer clear from embellishments of any variety, and Bhattacharya is able to present a very whole picture of how things stand.
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