From the Balcony in Mashobra

The experience of spending a few days at my in-laws’ hill house in Mashobra was filled with sights, sounds and smells that begged to be recorded. I’ve already written about the smells, and about the monkeys, so this post will focus on other sights and sounds. I jotted things in my pad wherever we went, but many of my most enduring observations were made while I sat on the balcony of the house.

Ersatz Fireflies and Moth-like Butterflies

In the evening, across the valley, cottage lights are strings of giant fireflies, blinking along the ridgelines of the lower mountains. A storm is coming and the wind is blowing unseen branches back and forth in front of the lit windows. Blink. Blink. In the morning after the rain, small white moth-like butterflies flutter through the still-wet trees and past the balcony, like little leaves drifting around and down on wind currents.

Not A Phool, Fool

One moth swings by as though checking me out as a possible landing site. I don’t know why. I’m wearing the black garments from my morning exercise and haven’t even bathed yet. Surely I can’t have been mistaken for a flower. If the insect was looking for a phool (Hindi for flower), he showed himself a fool! His friends are flapping their wings so hard in mockery that they’re turning cartwheels of laughter.

Hara Hara—The World Becomes Green.

As the sun comes up and evaporates the droplets still left from the storm, the distant mountains change color, from deep gray to soft blue-gray to pale celadon green. Soon, the nearest ridges become bright green, mottled with the two-tone triangles of pine trees. The downhill sides are bright green; the uphill ones are deep forest green. Eventually, only the trunks remain dark, where they are visible at all. I find myself softly singing some mash-up tune: “Green, green, my world is green,” then chanting the color in Hindi: “Hara, Hara.”

One area nearby is becoming sun-washed mustard. I wonder if later in the day it, too, will turn green. As the sun hits the mountains in the distance, I realize that what I thought had been clouds on the horizon are actually the most distant peaks. They reveal themselves to be not just snow-capped, but completely snow-covered, even though it’s June and Delhi is in a heat wave far below.

Turning my attention closer to home, I notice that the wash on our house’s concrete is the same celadon as the far away hills were at first light. Likewise for many other houses nearby. I see round metal disks on most balconies and rooftops—telltale signs there is satellite TV and Wi-Fi. At least the dishes are small. And uniform. Thank you, Tata Communications (part of the enormous industrial conglomerate).

Geese or Betas?

Unusual noises are emerging from the farm area below us. At first, I think it’s a flock of geese, still hoarse in the morning air. Then it sounds like regimented groups of children—betas—at the school nearby, exercising the naughtiness demons out of their little bodies. A rooster crows. Now young voices rise in laughter. It may not have been geese; perhaps it was children after all. No matter. After yesterday’s rain, I’m enjoying everything the breeze is bringing my way this fine morning.

Watch How/Where You’re Walking

I can tell it’s going to be a great day for trekking. I’m learning to pay attention to certain walk-about cautions. At this higher altitude, the air is thinner so a gentle walking pace is prudent. Not my crosstown Manhattan commuter's trot. This is also sensible because the footing can be precarious on the uneven pavement and rocky paths. It’s important to pay attention to where you’re walking, even around the neighborhood. Did I mention the monkey scat and bullock plops? (Akin to Manhattan after all.)

On the brighter side, an attentive eye will discover wild berries along the path through the woods. My sister-in-law, Pinki, being younger and more stable on her feet, is our hunter-gatherer. My task is to rinse the harvest with bottled water. We share the joy of eating them on the spot.

Mashobra provided such memorable experiences. So many sights and sounds to be stored, along with the wonderful smells, the exotic botanicals and the charming monkeys, in the mental file of my visit to Himachal Pradesh. And so my blog posts from this trip to India come to a close. Next week, expect to see my usual style of social satire once again. Namaste, my friends.

Credit to sources from whom I purloined the photos, whoever you are.

The Monkeys of Mashobra

One of the most entertaining experiences from my trip to Mashobra involved the monkeys. Or as I came to think of them: the Flying Wallendas Monkey Troupe. Although the balcony of our house was high up (about third level), the nearby trees were even taller. The monkeys would jump horizontally from those trees to the balcony railing, then scramble up the drainpipe to the roof and launch themselves back down into the trees. Jump, climb, fly, repeat—all afternoon, sometimes solo, often chasing one another.

The monkeys were obviously a family, and their squabbles reminded me of the squirrels back in Providence—round and round the oak tree, up and down the trunk. Sometimes the monkeys broke the monotony by running down the drainpipe and across the patio and the yard. They spent most of their time in the trees, though. The fruit provided easy and plentiful food. When they landed on the balcony railing, it rattled violently, sounding like King Kong’s dental bridge if it came loose.

That rattling wasn’t the only noise that I eventually attributed to the simians. The first night in Mashobra, as I was falling asleep, I was startled by the sound of thunder nearby. I quickly realized it was coming from the roof, made of that pervasive tin I wrote about earlier. I was sure the monkeys were having a bowling tournament up there. Then I realized they were doing their “jump, climb, fly, repeat” routine. It just sounded different from inside the bedroom than it did from the balcony.

One monkey in particular had the most expressive face. Wistful, almost sad. One evening, as he was sitting peacefully on the railing in one corner of the balcony, I watched him from inside the house for awhile. Then I got my sister-in-law’s iPhone to take a picture of him from the window. He turned away at first. Then he jumped down and scurried across the balcony, then up and away.

Perhaps some ancient wisdom informed him that when you are photographed, a portion of your soul is captured and lost to you. Had he been photographed before, I wondered, and lost so much of his soul that he had become sad, and wiser? I speak no monkey and very little Hindi, so I’ll never know. I was certain that we had made some special connection, though, and the morning that I left, I was convinced I had been right.

The car was loaded to the max with our belongings and some household items that were being transported from Mashobra back to Delhi. My sister-in-law was attending to some last minute instructions to the hill house staff. Rather than sit waiting in the packed car, I stood at the edge of the front garden. I noticed my wise monkey friend, observing me from the steps of the house next door. He must have sensed I was leaving. He disappeared, apparently having gone around the back of our house.

Suddenly I saw him again, walking slowly along the wall on the opposite side of our patio, not far from a large tree. He stopped and we exchanged knowing glances. This would be our final interaction. He took a few more steps toward me and paused. Softly, I said: “Goodbye my monkey friend. I’ll miss you. Perhaps some day I’ll come back.”

For a moment, I thought he was going to come even closer, and I wasn’t sure what I would do. He was wild, after all, and I would be foolish to try to touch him. Still, rejecting his overture would be too insensitive. Just then, my sister-in-law came out to the car and my monkey friend ran off. Another romantic interlude (in the classic sense of the word ‘romantic’) scuttled before it was culminated.

It’s probably just as well, because I have a feeling that, like the Flamingos (and the lovers they sang about), monkeys “never say goodbye.”

Botanicals of Himachal Pradesh

One of the more memorable aspects of the visit to the family's hill house in Mashobra, Himachal Pradesh was the botanicals of that region. For this post, I’m going to define “visit” and “botanicals” a tad broadly.

En route to the Himalayas, but in a flatter and often barren area, multi-lane highways pass by dozens of buildings that reflect two Indian traditions. One is the large and elaborate wedding venues with architecture like in Bollywood movies. These often masquerade as temples on steroids. Or on ganja (more on that later). The other institution is the roadside stand, or dhaba, where travelers grab quick, but tasty, food.

One Sunday we made an hour plus trip from Delhi to have brunch at the most famous of these—the Amrik Sukhdev Dhaba. This facility is said to hold over 2,000 people and I’d bet more than 1,000 were chowing down that day. Their specialty is the paratha (a pan-fried, layered bread) generously garnished with butter. My favorite was the one stuffed with gobi (cauliflower).

On the drive to the hill house, we left Delhi without a proper breakfast, so we stopped at the smaller Zhilmil Vaishno Dhaba for an early lunch. Not surprisingly, our meal was parathas, but these were stuffed with mooli (radishes). If you read my essay on driving the Himalayan hills, you’ll know this became my new favorite paratha filling.

These roadside stops appear again as one begins the climb into the hills. One stand was precariously perched on the edge of a cliff as we neared Solan, not far from Shimla. It was aptly named Sweet Hot Point, and if they didn’t want to “lose their lunch,” wise diners would have taken in the view first, then taken in the food.

One last tidbit about eating along the route. On the trip home we grabbed some roasted corn from a roadside vendor. “Grabbed” is the operative word here. One of our entourage was standing beside the car, partially eaten ear in hand, carelessly hanging at his side. Before you could say “Grab-N-Go” lunch, a monkey had snatched it up and run off.

Speaking of animals along the route, we took a drive in the mountains above Mashobra. Here and there, families from even further north stood roadside with their yaks. The hairy creatures were decked out in colorful textiles, waiting to be photographed. One enterprising clan had brought clothing from their village so tourists could dress like a local. My sister-in-law snapped me (in my own native dress) between two of these irresistible creatures.

Along the route and near the house, there’s an amazing variety of flowering trees and wild blooms. If they were animals, they’d be feral. From an aroma perspective, my favorite are the wild lilac bushes.

A close second is Rat Ki Rani, or Queen of the Night, aka Night Blooming Jasmine. True to its name, its blossoms come out in the evening. They’re so fragrant that they retained their potency days after we were home in Delhi. At breakfast, you were sure they’d run their course. But by dinner, they were enticing us once again.

My visual favorite is a flower with ten celadon petals and five scrotum-like seed pods on pistil arms. Its purple and white center section has three aubergine antennae and countless “hairs.” The leaves look similar to those of a marijuana plant, but they’re not related.

However, marijuana also grows wild throughout this part of India. Enterprising folks sneak onto people’s property at night to harvest bhang. It also grows wild along the highway back to Delhi, so we did our harvesting in the daytime. We were stopped in traffic, and collecting some seemed like a good use of time.

A few hundred meters up the road, the police pulled over our car. “Going to the big house in India,” I thought. “Ironic, since I never smoked pot even once back home.” In my mind I prepared a plausible explanation. “We were just picking lovely botanicals as souvenirs of my trip to Himachal Pradesh. See? Wild lilacs, Rak Ni Rani.” All of these were mixed in with the bhang in the area behind our seats. As it turned out, India’s finest were checking papers to be sure our driver was a proper employee, not a gypsy cabbie.

So ended the field trip to Mashobra and my study of botanicals in the Himachal Pradesh. And no, we didn’t smoke the bhang. We put it in a large vase in the dining room, along with the wild lilacs and the Rak Ni Rani. At breakfast, I breathed deep whiffs of the lilacs. At lunch, I judiciously sniffed the wild ganja. At dinner, I inhaled the Queen of the Night. Ah, the stuff dreams are made of!

Driving in the Hills of the Himalayas

The roads of the hill country of the Himalayas look like extreme S-curves when viewed from above. But when you’re driving on them, you feel like you’ve been dropped into a giant bowl of spaghetti, with clumps that are twisted and knotted. You swear that you’ve passed that same overpass or cut-through at least twice before. And maybe you have.

On all but the sharpest of curves, experienced drivers don’t brake; they just ease off the accelerator. If you see brake lights ahead, you can be pretty sure the driver is an inexperienced wuss and that your driver will put him in the rear view soon. The good part of having a veteran at the wheel is that he knows the roads and isn’t afraid to pass. The downside is that he's fearless, perhaps even reckless by U.S. standards. Hang on to that handle over the window and expect to close your eyes more than occasionally.

There’s a technique to passing on those curves. You pull out into the opposite lane as you approach a curve, but don’t begin to pass yet. If someone comes the other way, you quickly pop back into your spot. As you round the curve and get a view up the road, if no one is coming, you accelerate out of the curve, using centrifugal force to propel you like a slingshot past the vehicle (and sometimes vehicles) in front of you.

Clustered along the mountainous slopes are hillside villages for which the phrase “explosion of color” was concocted. It’s not uncommon to see houses painted lilac with purple; red with pink; and varied hues of orange, salmon and bittersweet or citrus/lemon. Shades of teal and red are ubiquitous colors for the tin rooftops.

Considering how narrow and winding the roads are, trucks and tour buses abound. The travel coaches have company names like “Lovely,” “Royal” and “Delightful.” Commercial vehicles are brightly painted. Even the garbage trucks and small tractors, probably from family farms, are decorated. The message on the rear of all these vehicles—Blow Horn—is not just a suggestion. It’s an exhortation to be taken seriously, and most drivers do. Less common is “Use Dipper At Night.” (Not “dimmer,” mind you.)

During the eight-hour drive from Delhi to Shimla you notice the states represented on the license plates you see. You begin with a preponderance of DL for Delhi. That loses popularity to HR (Haryana) and PB (Punjab) as you proceed toward Chandigarh. That city seems to be the joint capital of both states, as well as a territory with its own plate (CH). There’s an occasional UP (Uttar Pradesh). The mountain climb is populated with HP—Himachal Pradesh, where Shimla (formerly Simla) is the capital.

           

Speaking of Chandigarh, it has an airport where those who blanche at a day-long car trip can fly in to have a shorter, three-hour bus ride up to Shimla. That drive is still not for the faint of heart;  there’s simply no escaping the spaghetti bowl.

An hour or so north of Chandigarh, diesel trains from Kalka to Shimla make the journey in about four and a half hours. Not long ago, that trip took eight hours and there was just one train per day in each direction. The train remains a rare enough sight that both locals and tourists run to see it and take photos at village crossings. It says something about the terrain that the train still takes longer than the bus.

Where the ground is relatively flat for a mile or so, small towns and villages have sprung up along the route. Here you’ll find merchants with the necessities of life, which of course means a lot of shops with local produce. We stopped to get some provisions on the way up and on the way down. The older women generally had on sensible shoes, but the young ladies wore sandals or other attractive (read: non-sturdy) footwear. It must have been treacherous walking home.

It was midday on the return trip, so the street (no sidewalks) was a bustling marketplace. We idled in front of the vendors’ stands while my sister-in-law shopped. The Daikon radishes looked superb. They weren’t in season yet back in Delhi, so we brought some home for mooli paratha (bread stuffed with the vegetable), slathered in butter, of course.

Across from the produce stalls, girls who appeared to be tourists were laughing and taking selfies, oblivious to the begging children. Some local lads checked themselves out in our side view mirror as they walked by. They tidied their hair, intent on making the best impression on the young ladies in the sexy shoes. Young people, it seems, are the same all over the world.

Expect to read more about my recent India trip in future posts.