… of all that's there to me …

I really wanted to talk about the beauty of it all. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to write it and this is what I ended with instead. This one was going to be about ‘Romanticizing Darjeeling’ and all the “wows!” of the place. But when I sat to pen it down I came up something totally oblique and way off from what I had actually intended.

My way back to the Bagdogra Airport is really what brought it on. In a rush to get in time and save ourselves from missing our flight, we took a “shortcut” that cut through the forest; beautiful tall, thick trees whose names I’m afraid I didn’t get right. It truly felt like bliss, as if civilization had never stepped there. Everything seemed unmarred by what was unnatural, that was what I had been thinking, until I spotted a grey wire and then an orange pipe and finally a stray packet of Lays that really belonged in the trash can. Ok this is not my crazy zeal to keep everything around me clean and in place it really is the bump of fantasy with fiction. All those ‘talks’ and ‘reads’ of ‘Incredible India’ seem to hit low. I am yet to see a place, at least in my own country, that is truly natural. I tried to photograph the clouds swirling over the Great Himalayas and my vision kept being blocked by an electric pole (or shall I say a series of them in line). I tried to capture a flowing stream but the only way I could get it all right was if I stood on a mound that had cups and plastic strewn around it. And then I saw an excited clan decked in their best posing among flowers and ferns. I rolled my eyes in dismay at them, really they seemed to be enjoying it, when the backdrop offered only minimal treat to the eyes, if any at all. Rows of cars parked behind gave the picture its finishing touch. Really, where was the enjoyment in it all?

No denying that Darjeeling is a nice place to be in and I did have a good holiday but the much imagined and anticipated ‘close to nature’ feel didn’t really feel close enough.