Skip to main content

Gomukh and all


When I took up my present job in Delhi at the age of 41, leaving my previous job in a romantic place like Shillong, what I really wanted was a nice place to live and enough money too.  It didn’t take me much time to find the present place and job which fulfilled both conditions.  An excellent campus (a school) with more greenery than most schools in Delhi can afford. 
What Providence (I am an agnostic, please) gave me was better than what I had expected.  A green campus, enough place to move around even in the kitchen of the accommodation that was provided, and – best of all – a cool environment all along the scooter ride from where the city ends (Chattarpur).  I used to love those scooter rides.  Even my wife did!
That was 11 years ago.  Today, I wouldn’t like to go out of the campus.  The moment I step out it’s the devil of a dust that greets me anywhere.  Gone are the days of a nice environment.  The environment has been killed.  The marble industry took over the road from Chattarpur to Fatehpur Beri.  Industrialists of other hues too grew in stature – by-products.  Too many cars ply on the road now.  For the sake of those cars the roads are constantly under repair.  Dust is a by-product and it does not affect those who sit in air-conditioned cars.
The area is becoming DEVELOPED. That’s important.  Development is important.  Otherwise the government will fall.
Where do I go from development?
I am going to the Himalayas.  No, I’m not going to ascend Mount Everest at this age.  Nor am I going to become some Nirmal Swami. 
I am going to Gomukh (13,200 ft).  For a trek with a few of my students.  Granted by my school.  As a gift for my services.
The next blog will be after I return (rejuvenated) from Gomukh.

Comments

  1. I have been to Gomukh . Thats because its enroute to the Shivalinga peak. The best part is that even if you manage to get a dip in the bone-chilling glacier at Gomukh, you wont fall sick probably because the microorganisms cant live at such high altitudes. But the locals have even attached some story with it.
    I am happy for you. The trek especially from Bhojbasa to Gomukh is very scenic. Though sir, I should warn you that rain might play spoil sport and make the way slippery.

    Enjoy sir!

    ReplyDelete
  2. All the best, Matheikal. I am sure that you will enjoy the trek,though I understand that Gomukh itself has become a disappointment and it is hard to believe that it could be the source of Ganga.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bon Voyage Matheikal! I second Aditi as a good number of my friends have been to Gomukh and I hear it from them too. Nevertheless, compared to dusty hot plains it sure will be a heaven! Enjoy the divine mother nature:)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Have a great trip. I look forward to hearing about the trek.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Now, I am sure to get a poetic description of the last 18 or so kilometers. I, along with my wife, went up to Gangotri but could not muster up the courage to go up to Gomukh though we had planned for it.

    Now I will know what I missed.

    RE

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

I’m Alive

Illustration by Copilot Designer How do you prove to anyone that you’re alive? Go and stand in front of the person and declare, “I’m Tom, Shyam or Hari”? No, that won’t work in India. Let me share my personal experience. It’s as absurd as the plight of Kafka’s protagonist in The Castle. A land surveyor is summoned for duty, only to be told that the mere fact a land surveyor was summoned does not prove he is that land surveyor though he has the appointment letter with him. I received a mail from the Life Insurance Corporation of India [LIC] that I should prove my existence in order to continue receiving my annuity on the sum I had invested with them five years ago. They’re only paying the interest on the sum I have given them. They’re not doing me any charity. Yet they want me to prove to them that I am still alive in order to continue getting the annual amount they are obligated to pay me. This is India. LIC is a government undertaking. If I don’t follow their injunction, I wil...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Hindutva’s Contradictions

The book I’m reading now is Whose Rama? [in Malayalam] by Sanskrit scholar and professor T S Syamkumar. I had mentioned this book in an earlier post . The basic premise of the book, as I understand from the initial pages, is that Hindutva is a Brahminical ideology that keeps the lower caste people outside its terrain. Non-Aryans are portrayed as monsters in ancient Hindu literature. The Shudras, the lowest caste, and the casteless others, are not even granted the status of humans.  Whose Rama? The August issue of The Caravan carries an article related to the inhuman treatment that the Brahmins of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh meted out to a Yadav “preacher” in the last week of June 2025. “Yadavs are traditionally ranked as a Shudra community,” says the article. They are not supposed to recite the holy texts. Mukut Mani Singh Yadav was reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita. That was his crime. The Brahmins of the locality got the man’s head tonsured, forced him to rub his nose at t...