The hills are alive

The Himalayas

An appreciable part of 1965-66 and later was spent in cherishing the goodness of ‘ Sound of Music’ and Julie Andrews. Such powerful was Rogers and Hammerstein’s presence that fifty years later humming the score flawless is easy and meaningful. Since then I find no actress equal Andrews’ vocal chords, beauty, mind and ability in togetherness.

Reminding Ray's Kanchenjunga

 Satyajit Ray’s depiction of human faculty of consciousness in the backdrop of Darjeeling’s mist and sun is another world away from Austria.But  these two  films have one very vital entity in common, the hills.

Vast lush green hills lying before enormous length of snow clad Eastern Himalayas is undoubtedly a thing of beauty seen from Shrubbery in Darjeeling town. For that all you need is silence. A child not more than six, so garrulous, holding his father’s hand on way to school had just turned the corner at Lover’s Walk (Mall Road in Darjeeling), went mum in the face of Kang-chen-dzonga standing tall, heavily dressed in white before azure (sky).

Lover's Walk

 Such is it’s authority that the father drops the school bag from his left hand and genuflects, now face to face with the mighty Himalayas. Seeing his father do so, the son acts accordingly but not that fast with ease. I am sure he too will follow the humble weakness unspoilt, soon. Such human behaviour exhibited by this man who has not even seen the walls of a school, is the need of this hour.

Darjeeling for that matter is still alive adapting to the changes of human behaviour. So long you are alive you change adjusting to the new conditions within and without. A man, likely a tourist from the plains, had littered the clean asphalt down the hill toward the Nightingale Park only to be cleaned by a little boy silently walking behind him unnoticed. Such appearance though not common puts a slap on my face, but not silently this time assuring Darjeeling is breathing. Changes are there with  heavy carbon deposits from the innumerable four wheeled modern dragons. Glenary’s

Glenary's

still exists but without the table being laid immaculately, the fork and the spoon equidistant from the plate. Das Studio’s existential agony to upkeep the city’s history is visible in spite of  Mrs Das’ veritable presence adorning  huge displays of old world Darjeeling.

Business is in the air like any other metropolis. The seller  must sell his  product  whatever it may be, by hook or by crook. Rule books disappearing fast in modern  world, chaos is imminent. With the vanishing of Capitol Cinema and Rink Cinema the Englishness is no more a feast. Now is the time for the ‘Desi’ idiology to come up, making it known to all what’s cooking in the  kitchen. Loud gestures mainly from the tourists fill the air throughout the year. Morning walks are difficult, the air seems heavy. The Natural History Museum behind Alice Hotel is in a shambles but still holds the rarest of collections from the hills only for the man who has an eye for it. The Mall is now called the Chowrasta,

The Mall

kept fairly clean when you take into consideration the quantity and quality of crowd it has to bear with. Makeshift shops populate the narrow stretch down from Sunflower Hotel to the home for government vehicles. Some congest the romantic walk toward Mahakal Mandir likely waiting for an extension  till the view point.

The concrete is eating away the cooler presence of  hills.

C R Das' House

The humankind knows it well but have no strength to resist.  Neither they have the courage of Aurobinda nor the humanness of Tagore. The hills no more breathe air, it breathes money. From Tagore to Goswami or else from Gandhi to Basu the hills are alive,may be in their own different way, crying out for a passionate, peaceable coexistence.

NOUS AT NADIR

Sundays are always an obdurate melancholy. Appearing uninterruptedly every sixth day it hardly promises imagination. Much of the day is passed in the thought, ‘So many things to do, so little time left.’ While  doing nothing and idling away your brain is a difficult task too. It may give the cerebrum some serious rest, a much sought after relaxation of twenty-first century but it spoils away your time.Unable to do so, one lazy Sunday afternoon I was struck with the idea to research “Information, Intelligence and Common Sense”.  Are any two of those same? Or separate entities deserving togetherness.  Are they comparable? Is one dependant on the other? Such random thoughts having descended on made leave my cozy divan for an Oxford face saver (my dictionary) and finally internet.

                     

 I wondered, if one has some serious intention of listening to others in a harmless spying mood, even  to those unknown,  at street corners, one will often find talkative individuals superiorly ‘intelligent’ and  knowledgeable. Such knowledge was not available some twenty years or so, before the internet and opening up of the society to everything that is available, good or bad, rational or irrational, sense or nonsense.

                                                        

                      

This flourishing business of ‘Information Technology’ with management spree produce learned humanoid , half hearted, indecent, arrogant, good looking, smart and  handsome population. They exhibit  knowledge about everything  and an empty pocket with a plastic in it. On a Friday evening a distinguished friend of mine and secretary of an updated, upfront, up market club took the risk of inviting me to a sitar recital. There I found so many upwardly mobile men and women discussing Israel conflict to innocent herbals without side effects in weight reducing drinks. So knowledgeable were they, that it would put you to shame. I couldn’t resist inviting one of them to deliver a quarter hour lecture at our university club only to listen that time is too scarce for him. Knowledge here seemed ample, making everyone proud with unputdownable heads and glamorous grin.

                      

 So what is this knowledge about? This age of information technology brings enormous amount of awareness  but only in the form of half-hearted learning, popularized by the present generation to be kings in their own world. A man who had surfed internet in a desultory way comes out from this veritable ‘net world’ remembering little about the pages he had visited. It’s rightly called surfing, I believe. Touching everything but nothing is in vogue and it guarantees social standing.

              

 ‘‘Keep talking’, the golden word for cell phone companies is no more restricted to billboards. It is now part of our life. We keep talking, often ejecting unhealthy unverified data. Smart and convincing are we now, much more than our forefathers .With so much in our head, ready to be displayed like throwaway objects in glorified gatherings funded by billion dollar establishments, is the  trend of this age ,a prestige indeed for the  speaker.

                                                              

  A few decades back when knowledge was not that rampant,  learning was slow  like a fat lazy lady strolling about one winter afternoon. Not many a bright student would care to show off their reference books. A score card never nearly touched the full score. The readers chewed each line like a cud in search of thoughts kept out of sight. Chewing the fat at street corners was common. In modern times this phenomenon will be looked down upon as obsessive compulsive disorder. In countries like India where buying magazines like National Geographic and Life was sheer luxury, bibliophiles would throng around dusty old book shops mining earlier issues for a bargain. Books and magazines would never turn old and obsolete and would rightfully occupy spaces in a voracious reader’s unkempt rooms.

                                                        

  Is it really necessary to slowdown? My honesty murmurs, “ I don’t know.” Speed though measurable, is incorporeal to modern man making it difficult to ascertain its power to push human race to destitution. But there is no harm in pausing, I believe. It may provide a closer look at your heart that occupies your brain. It is the ‘mind’ you had forgotten. It gives you the free chance to breed your good sense and reasoning. It gives you the rich thought of understanding and perception, regaining the power to think rationally. For the time being it may be enough of what the human race had learnt provided it forgets unshackling it’s destructive powers. The nous may be shedding silent tears. Heraclitus had complained “much learning does not teach nous” and this saying still stands upright.

                              

 So where is this four letter word ‘nous’ gone? But the modern man has forgotten this word remembering only one four letter word that kept missing from dictionaries in our childhood days  some fifty years back. Believe me, I won’t lie, the nous is at nadir impatient to reach zenith. If intelligence  is human discovery, nous  is the application or technology we enjoy. So long we don’t appreciate nous, we are all humanoids, heartless engines running after “ Buy one get one free’.