Skip to main content

Sunrise in Darjeeling

In a park in Darjeeling


Maggie and I were two among scores of people who got up at 3.30 am to go and watch sunrise when the rain was lashing the windowpanes of our room in a hotel in Darjeeling. It was the summer of 2010. We had spent three days in Gangtok already. Gangtok was a cheerful sunrise while Darjeeling was like a gloomy sunset, Maggie would say poetically later as we sat in the leisurely toy train that moved from Darjeeling to Kurseong.  

Our tour of Darjeeling was to start with the sunrise seen from Tiger Hill and our hotel had arranged a taxi to take us to Tiger Hill at 4 am. The sunrise would be at 4.45, we were told. But it started pouring right after midnight, a kind of rain that didn’t sound quite characteristic of a hill station. When the reception rang us at 3.30, I asked how anyone would see a sunrise in that weather. “Your taxi will be ready at 4.” The answer was terse and the call was over. Most people of Darjeeling were equally terse and morose, as we would learn soon.

Darjeeling was a town of shutdowns and hartals in those days. The Gorkhas were demanding a separate state for themselves: Gorkhaland. The agitation had gone on for decades and had sucked out the vitality of the people. You would see sullen faces all over, on the streets, in the shops, at the museum.

Since the entire amount for the Tiger Hill trip had been taken in advance by our hotel, Maggie and I had little choice but roll off the quilt and pull up the pants. The rain subsided as we set off to Tiger Hill. The drizzle never stopped, however. And the sun did not rise for us though we waited on the watch tower till 5.30 or so.

A Jupiter year has passed since then. I wonder whether Darjeeling is a happier place now. Have smiles returned to those weary and sullen faces of 2010? Does the sun rise cheerfully beyond Tiger Hill in the mornings now?

I still remember how Maggie and I had decided back then that we wouldn’t return to Darjeeling. We would return to Gangtok again and again, we agreed. Now, 12 years later, I wouldn’t mind returning to Darjeeling again. Even if the sunrise gets drowned in a drizzle again. Both West Bengal and India have undergone many political changes since 2010. How have these changes affected the people of Darjeeling? I am interested in seeing personally.

Signboards had already declared it Gorkhaland in 2010

xZx

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanFebruary 22, 2022 at 12:20 AM

    Hari OM
    ...this begs the question as to when you are booking your tickets?!! It is a small regret of mine that I never managed to get to the eastern side of India during my time there. Now, I wonder if I will even leave Scotland again... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 22, 2022 at 6:24 AM

      The pandemic has altered life drastically, especially travel plans. We restrict ourselves to nearby places now. Let's hope for better.

      Delete
  2. ARTHFebruary 22, 2022 at 10:48 AM

    Matheikal sir, Maggie mam
    Your English classes in sawan
    And now your blogspot
    Are still as intriguing as were in those days .. fortunate enough to be around you and Maggie mam in sawan, Maggie mam was our mentor in Eklavya house hope she remember's us from
    2010 -2014

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 22, 2022 at 8:09 PM

      Thank you, Siddharth, for refreshing certain memories. Maggie ma'am conveys her fond regards to you. Sawan had a unique knack for creating extraordinary bonds between teachers and students.

      Delete
  3. Pandian RamaiahFebruary 26, 2022 at 9:22 AM

    You have written a moisture sprayed post, sir. I could feel the breeze blowing there. I never visited north east. Hope I'll go once.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 26, 2022 at 10:18 AM

      Worth going at least once. Quite a different world it is.

      Delete
  4. Anupama JoshyMarch 12, 2022 at 2:12 PM

    Added to my bucket list ✅

    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
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more