Two Tales From The Kumaon

Smoked a great big spliff this morning with an old friend from Holland who resides nearby and regaled her with stories of some of my travels. So I thought I'd share two of these tales with you, both from the Kumaon, the district made famous by Jim Corbett. But these stories below are not from the tiger forests at the foothills; rather, these are from the high mountains further north.

LOHARKHET: I reached Loharkhet after a long uphill trek, pitched my tent beside a babbling brook, and spent a few days - the year was 1995 or thereabouts. It was a pretty large village, with a jumble of houses on the hill, and I guessed the population to be about 1000. No road. There was an old PWD bungalow opposite - dating back to British times. But no road. All the action occurred in the tea shop - where all the locals turned up, smoking beedis laced with hash. I bought a goodly quantity of the stuff.

I noticed a big, ugly, yellow building high up on the hill and inquired of the tea-shop owner as to what it was. He said it was the government school. Just then, a gaggle of school-boys and -girls passed by, dressed in uniform. I inquired as to whether these kids were headed for the government school on the hill. The reply:

No, sir. No one goes to the government school. There, the teachers don't teach and only keep applying for transfers out of here. These children all go to a Baba down the road who has come here from Bengal. He teaches them English for 50 rupees a month. All our kids go to the Baba's school.

No road - but a school that doesn't work.

Second: On another occasion, I inquired of the tea-shop owner if there was any crime here, for I had noticed that the village was without a police station. His reply:

Yes, sir. They had sent the police up here once long ago, but they were bad people, and we shooed them out.

In Loharkhet, en route to the Pindari glacier, the hash was good. Real good.

Next, MUKTESHWAR: Around 2003, I arrived in Mukteshwar by car late in the evening. Horrible drive. It was October, and quite cold. For accommodation, we had booked some tents on a hillside. Upon arrival, the chap looking after the tents told me the meaning of the name of the village. He said mukt means "free" and eeshwar means "god" - so Mukteshwar is "where God comes to be free." Wanting freedom myself, I inquired after the local hash - and was soon in possession of a very large quantity. Great smoke. Lasted me months.

One day, as I was sunning myself on the hillside, a villager approached me. He said he had heard I was a writer for some big English newspaper in the city, and wanted to tell me something about his village in the hope that I would write about it, thereby informing public opinion. I told him to go ahead with his tale, and this is what he said:

Sir, we are a small community in this village, and there has never been any crime here. We live in peace and harmony, and we don't even lock our front doors. All this changed when the government installed a police station here. Now, trouble is regular. Will you please inform the government that we would very much prefer if they took the police away and built a good road here instead.

Yes, I believe in Liberty. And I also believe in good roads. I hate the idea of government schools. And as for the cops... it seems the people think they don't need them. Who am I to disagree?

Natural Order?

Private Law Society?

Think about it.