Skip to main content

Land of monks and peace




Lingdum Monastery
Of all the places I’ve visited, it’s Gangtok that keeps beckoning me again and again.  My wife and I spent three days there in 2010.  I don’t know if the place is quite the same today.  Back then, it had a pristine beauty.  The streets were narrow and congested but without any filth anywhere.  It was a clean hill station. 

Quite a few monasteries lay around the town itself.  There are other monasteries elsewhere in the state.  In spite of all the hundreds of visitors walking around at any given time, the monasteries look spick and span.  It was the monasteries that really drew me to Gangtok in the first place.  When I mentioned my travel plan to a student from Silchar, he asked me why I wanted to visit Gangtok.  “Nothing to see, Sir,” he said.  “Monasteries,” I grinned. 

Bakthang Falls
Along with my wife I visited every single monastery in and around the town.  There’s something repetitive about the monasteries.  They look similar, sound similar and smell similar.  Even the dusky light in the prayer chambers is the same in every monastery.  The air in that duskiness vibrates with a tang that seeps into your heart and spreads through your being like an intoxicant.  Did I carry a duskiness somewhere in a secret chamber of my soul?  Did I, like a child who had done something wrong, wish to hide myself in a dark corner of one of those prayer chambers with the soothing resonance of a tuning fork enveloping me from the world that waited to pummel me ceaselessly?

Ropeway
My wife and I were celebrating fifteen years of our life together then.  We decided to return to Gangtok to celebrate the silver jubilee of our marriage.  Little did we know that some of our dreams would soon be dashed to the ground by what happened eventually in the Delhi school where we worked.  Many people’s dreams were shattered by the events which were conjured up by the gangsters of a godman who ran a different kind of ashrams in and outside the country. 

Gods are quite funny creatures.  Some of them save while many of them are goddam killers.  I would wish to return to the gods of Gangtok at any time, even to the Ban Jhakri that populate the state’s legends.

 
PS. Written for Indispire Edition 175: #TimeToRevisit




Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniJune 26, 2017 at 10:41 AM

    Gods do kill. Everything kills something eventually but gods do a better job at it.

    Some people think that people in such monasteries live an impractical life, that they won't be able to survive outside in the cruel dog eats dog world. But I would happily live an impractical life than such practical ones!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 26, 2017 at 11:03 AM

      There is something bewitching about the impracticality of monasteries.

      Delete
  2. parwatisingariJune 26, 2017 at 11:57 AM

    It looks beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. rupam sarmaJune 26, 2017 at 2:34 PM

    Beautiful place. Nice pics.
    Greetings

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJune 26, 2017 at 3:59 PM

    Beautiful place and lovely pics. Written with lot of soul in it!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Purba chakrabortyJune 26, 2017 at 9:44 PM

    Gangtok is indeed a beautiful place. It was wonderful reading about your experience in Gangtok, Sir. Lovely pictures :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 27, 2017 at 7:05 AM

      China is eyeing on parts of Sikkim. I hope the dragon stays away from the peaceful state.

      Delete
  6. Jyotirmoy SarkarJune 27, 2017 at 7:16 AM

    Very nice captures,will love to visit.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Rajeev MoothedathJune 27, 2017 at 7:00 PM

    A very nice read...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

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...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more