In the story Madhestira (“towards the plains”) by Bisheshwar Prasad Koirala, a group of down-and-out mountain dwellers trek to the plains in search of a better life.
The story can be read at many levels, but the reality that forms its background cannot be escaped. For years people have moved down from the mountains to the plains to better themselves. Whether for jobs or higher education, the exodus has been inevitable. Contrast this with Ray’s Kanchenjunga, where a genteel Bengali family moves up to the mountains to ease tensions within.
In these two fictionalised instances we see a dichotomy of purposes. People move from the mountains to the plains for economic reasons, for higher studies, jobs, or to “see the world” in general. They do so because they perceive an inadequacy within themselves that only exposure to the ways and workings of the plains can compensate. The reverse movement—from the plains to the mountains—happens for entirely different reasons. The Bengali “seasoner” who makes that uphill journey to ogle at the mountains with his family seeks fulfilments that are not immediately material. The mountain is for the soul; the plains are for the body.
While the plains provide the mountain man with the wherewithal to survive in an economic sense, the mountains have—at least for a few plainsmen—imparted a salubriousness of climate essential for their sanity.
There is another aspect to these journeys. The hill-dweller’s move to the plains throws him into contact with individuals and institutions with whom he must interact at many levels—be it the conductor of a bus or a colleague at the university. These interactions are coloured by prejudices and perceptions, both negative and positive, that each holds of the other. The hill person newly arrived in the plains is often an insecure individual, forever imputing motives to even the most innocent gestures of the plains person. It is not uncommon to find parents sending their children for the first time to the plains with cautions about how to build friendships and trust.
I remember a friend who had just moved into college at Delhi University being told by his grandparents to trust only the Sardarji auto-drivers, who were thought to be the most sympathetic to the Gorkhas—the apparent reason being that each respected the martial background of the other. Such presumptions take years to overcome and, in many cases, the experiences one goes through only further entrench them.
The mountains and the climate for which the plainsman makes his sojourn are, on the other hand, gifts of nature; the tourist, at a certain level, is not beholden to any human for them. It is possible for the tourist to complete his circuit of the hills with minimal interaction with locals. If he can afford it, he could insulate himself from everything local and, having had his fill of natural beauty, retreat with as little knowledge of the hill folk as when he first arrived. For the middle class, for whom money is a factor, dealings with locals sometimes verge on the unpleasant—particularly when touts and brokers prey on them the moment they land at the bus stands. Most of the time such contacts must be seen as irritants to be suffered like bumpy roads, travel sickness, and bad food. Thus, to most tourists, the hill folk are an incidental occurrence—inescapable only because they are there. Their feelings toward the topography, however, are different.
Mountains have always had a quality of mystery. Compared to the plains—an open book of geography, so to speak—the hills and mountains do not yield easily to interpretation. Mysterious and transcendental notions have long sprung from them. Almost all gods—be they of the Greeks, Japanese, Lepchas, Incas or Hindus—have resided in the mountains. Holy men of many religions have found enlightenment during their sojourns into them. Mountains are often used in religious literature as metaphors for spiritual and moral elevation.
There have been myths about mountain folk too. In a certain exotic sense they have fascinated the plainsman: the lungs of the Sherpa, the bravery of the Gorkha, the fabled beauty of the Yolmo women, and the Yeti (a man if not human), to name a few, have been ascribed qualities that seem almost fantastic to the plains dweller. Even the Nazis are said to have sent expeditions to the plateau of Tibet (a mountain nonetheless for our purpose) to find out for themselves how the Tibetans could survive in such harsh climes of their homeland. In their warped worldview these hardy men could perhaps qualify as geographically distant cousins of the Superman who would one day rule the world with them.
But remove the extraordinary—the Shangri-La and the Everest—from the scheme of things and come down to the ordinary reality of the hill folk, and you will see that the appellation “hill” has always carried a pejorative air. The term hillbilly, for example, is defined by one dictionary as “often disparaging, a person from the backwoods or other remote area, esp. from the mountains of the…”. The word pahadey also evokes a sense of rusticity, a lack of refinement, grace, and intellect. For those in the Darjeeling hills, the complex about being pahadey is inherently one of inferiority. And they too, in a sense, have “mythologised” the plains. The Bengali brain, for example, is that fabled entity endowed with a superlative faculty to solve problems in maths. The pahadey, on the other hand, is thought to be intrinsically limited by the constraints imposed on him by his pahadey brain.
Such misconceptions abound, and the cumulative stresses they create are at times vented in gestures that are overt (as in the Gorkhaland movement) and subliminal (as in the penchant for a superficial westernisation). In the context of fashion and living at least, the hill folk—let’s limit ourselves to Darjeeling—assume a certain superiority over the plainsmen. It is not uncommon to hear unkind remarks about the dress sense of Bengalis.
The plainsmen, on the other hand, are known to treat the musical sense of the hill folk with great deference. It is not unusual to find, in universities and colleges, a certain type of student from the plains who gravitates towards counterparts from the hills. Although elitist in outlook and upbringing, they often have a great deal of empathy for the things the hill student holds dear (fashion, music).
But for the majority of plainsmen, the hill person remains a loutish individual, thoroughly deserving of being stereotyped for his supposed lack of capability—and for that one professional competency (read chowkidar).
It is a rather sad fact that such notions persist, fuelled by the images of hill folk one encounters in the media and the movies. It is often repeated—but revealing nonetheless—that a company of Maruti’s stature could, in a television advertisement, have a couple of city slickers encounter a cute young “kancha” in Ladakh. Not only does this reveal a profound lack of knowledge about the ethnic make-up of a prominent mountainous region of the country, it also perpetuates the myth, long sustained by countless movies, that the hills are still peopled by a certain type of creature called the “kancha” and the “kanchi”.
The same figures could perhaps have sprung from the fiction of BP mentioned earlier, to serve countless Indian city households in their cute, useful capacities as ubiquitous “kanchas” and “kanchis”.
[The above article was first published in the NOW! Friday supplement dated 12 August, 2005]