Reclaiming Roots

In 2010, I moved to the cities to study on a scholarship granted by Pestalozzi Children’s Village Society. Leaving my rural mountain life behind. I still remember how we were sitting around the fireplace that day, my family and I, looking at the letter of acceptance. My parents’ faces were glowing with unadulterated affection and joy. Apa smiled intensely, looking at me, and I saw little crow’s feet etched around the corner of his eyes. I was happy but nervous. They were happy but sad that I would be gone far away. And together we were brimming with a paradox of feelings. I did not realize the gravity of the opportunity then. I was just a tiny 10 year old mountain girl ready to conquer the world under my reha. I remember being excited about wearing uniform from head to toe; ribbons, blue tie, white shirt, blue skirt, white socks, black shoes and a colorful bottle around my head. My little head danced around these colors and imaginations.

My father travelled with me to the new place I would call my own in a few days. That was my first time travelling out of spiti, observing completely different landscapes, different architecture, different ways of living. I was awed, wonderstruck; my little eyes were impressed. Finally I was seeing something beyond mountains, hearing something beyond the bleating of goats. In the cities or in my new abode, people bathed everyday or every alternate day. It was so hot you had to unless you wished to smell like a rotten turnip. When I went to the roof I could not see the Himalayas. I could only see the vast sky with nothing but tall buildings below it as far as my eyes could see. I had a room which I shared with five other girls. It was called the Cherries Room. I learnt that Cherry is a fruit. I still remember how I wondered what cherries taste like. Back in my hometown Spiti, cherries are never talked about, leave alone growing them and seeing them in the vegetable markets. The cold and dry climate is very partial. It only allows green peas, barley and black peas to thrive.

In my new abode, we had pour-flush toilets, so different from the traditional toilets back home. I wondered where my shit went. It just got flushed and disappeared. It must go down the sewers and then where. I didn’t know how the septic tanks got cleaned, where the wastes finally went. Nobody knew. But you have no idea how much I was awed by this city life, marked by shiny marble floors, different sanitation systems and tall buildings. I had already decided in my mind that this way of life was definitely better than my village life back at home. I could not think for myself because like everyone else, I was devoured by ideas of progress and development. I was already in the chains of a society that viewed a big house, a nice toilet and abandonment of the grip of village life as benchmarks of a successful life. I could not think for myself. I was just a ten year old kid who was incapable of thinking beyond these social constructions of success and progress.

Every time I looked at the tall buildings, it killed a little bit of village life inside me. I was ashamed to say that I belonged to a very rural village in the Himalayas with no network connection at all. I was ashamed to say that my parents had to walk four kilometers to call me every Sunday through a landline phone. And in winters they had to walk through snow blizzards and two feet of snow! Just to hear my voice and know how I felt in the new modern abode. I would never dare to tell them that all my mother did in summers was work in the fields, picking weeds and irrigating fields besides collecting cow dung for winters. My dad worked in the fields too during the harvesting season of green peas. I would never speak about how the toilet in my house was because it was nowhere close and comparable to the shiny pour-flush toilets. Because it wasn’t modern! I realize now how this mere word ‘modern’ weighed me down, made me feel little, downplayed the richness of my Spitian life. It just blinded me to all the beauty and sustainability and peace my Spitian life had to offer. It made me feel like that village life was the life I was supposed to leave behind or come out of.

Now I realize what a distorted and one dimensional notion of progress, success and modernity I had inhabited in my mind. Living in Spiti has always been so fulfilling, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Life is so simple, so sustainable and so environmentally friendly. The toilet sanitation system I was ashamed of is so in sync with nature. We shit. Our shit goes down and decomposes in the thriving presence of other natural wastes and microorganisms. It becomes manure which is then used for our fields. In Spiti, most of the households have domesticated animals who live in the same house as the owners. At the back part of the house called ra. All the food leftovers of the house are given to the reared animals. Spiti has such a rich culture, a sustainable livelihood and generous people. I think coming to the cities has brought me closer to what I call my home. It has enlightened me on the paradox of progress that the current government clothes around everyone. It has made me realize how I would wake up to goats bleating and horse neighing rather than cars honking. I think I was never made for city life. I was never made for a very busy noisy city life. I like to take everything slow, work at my own pace, watch the clouds move through the sky or notice the stream gleaming in the light of afternoon sunlight. I like to breathe deep and nurture little seeds of Spitian life in me. Slow, simple and a grounded feeling of coexistence with nature. I think I was meant to wake up, watch the sun peaking out of the Himalayas, hear the village shepherd’s call to the domesticated cows and goats; “Raluk bhalang toen”, have thukpa with my family and set out on my day routine. But if everything in the world danced to the tunes of your thoughts, what a boring and disappointing place the world would be to live in.

Spiti gives me the peace of mind I would never get anywhere. It makes me feel dynamic. It brings me closer to the vastness of nature. It teaches me that progress should be measured on love , relationships, health and education rather than architectures, sanitation systems or agricultural practices that are completely detached from nature. Spiti is my one mere chance at escaping the draconian hands of capitalism, modernity and technology. It’s about going back in time beyond the virtual world, beyond highways to narrow trails and mud roads where you are present with all of your being and feeling everything. The wind. The sun. The mountains. And the dust. And I love it for that. Because once in a while, you crave all parts of you. You crave your roots. You crave the dust in which you grew.