Field Notes: Okhrey

i.

Tens of cars decorated with flags and stickers of the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha swoosh down the mountainside at Okhrey and disappear at the bend. The woodsy air is streaked with the oily, sooty scent of diesel. The Lok Sabha elections are in four days and even this little hamlet in West Sikkim hasn’t been spared the hullabaloo. Policemen from the plains have been posted here; in the evening, they light a fire in their makeshift accommodation to warm their chilly bones. None of them smiles. They routinely check the vehicles for smuggled goods and carelessly ask about destinations and reasons for visiting. Saying, “I am in love in with the mountains,” isn’t enough. I wonder if the beauty of the landscape escapes their consciousness.

ii.

Climb the steep stairs through the local rhododendron park towards the monastery and a hideous mobile tower will assail you. You can no longer escape the endless stream of WhatsApp forwards, the mindless drama of Facebook, or the flocks of emails that hiss like howlers in your inbox. The radiations are killing the birds, harming the trees, perhaps poisoning the air who knows. We are voting for technology every year. We know it will strangle us. It is a suicide whose laws have not been defined yet but it is a suicide. You may say the locals need it to remain connected but do they, really? Their children return home to smartphones now while the magnanimity of the surroundings chokes with loneliness. But who am I, a city dweller with lungs full of particulate matter, to pass judgements?

iii.

The SKM has shaken hands with the BJP in an attempt to oust the Sikkimese Democratic Front, whose leader, Chief Minister Pawan Chamling is accused of not paying heed to his ministers and taking decisions on personal whims and interests. You’d think this slice of heaven, so far removed from the business of urban India, would be beyond these conversations; that the people here would want to live as their ancestors had: in peace. But we have moved far from being a species that desires peace beyond everything. Our mobile phones are now more precious than communal harmony, our highways are now more precious than our women whose rights and dignity we fail to protect, our Bullet Trains are now more precious than education for our children, our fighter jets are now precious than our farmers who hang themselves daily. For them, survival is a battlefield. Even here, in this cranny of the Himalayas where the rhododendrons bloom with such vengeance they colour the forests red, they want roads and mobile towers. No one talks of critical thinking or constitutional rights. No one talks of the forests, the clean air, or the chemical-free crops that provide them with a livelihood.

iv.

Her face is a map of wrinkles. She sits in a sunny patch outside her little store and gazes at her wild roses and poppies. I look at her and smile. She smiles back before returning to her world. The whole village has emptied to attend a meeting and support the SKM at Jorethang. I wonder if anybody asked her if she wants more tourists hollering at kids and loudly chomping chicken with rice at her dining table or if she wants a more holistic life, a quieter life with her flowers and her furry dog.

Also read: Wondering where to stay in Okhrey? Sherpa Lodge will treat you to lovely views and excellent home-cooked food!

v.

We had come to see the rhododendron flowers in bloom. We had come in search of the local rhododendron wine. Laliguras, guras, what the locals call the rhododendrons and lali, the colour red, is a word that aptly describes the rhododendron wine. We are surprised when Sange hands us a bottle of Sula wine! But this is how laliguras is sold, in recycled liquor bottles. Poured in a glass, it looks like diluted blood that has given up on its aspirations of congealing. As long as you hold it in your hand, you are a vampire in control. I’m told it tastes like rosé; I find it sweet, fragrant, with only a tiny wild sting at the back of your throat. I swirl it in my mouth and the fruity secondary notes come out to play.

The process of making laliguras is laborious and time-consuming. Fallen flowers are collected, washed, processed, fermented, filtered and bottled. It’s a year-long process which mostly involves women. Perhaps in a few years, even this will be streamlined into some sort of a corporate brewery churning out labelled bottles. It might create waves in hipster circles. But till then, I’m happy to take a swig of a bootlegged bottle of flower wine made by the family around the bend.

Also read: Read about our experience of Trekking in the Barsey Rhododendron Sanctuary.

vi.

Three spells of snowfall this year destroyed more than a quarter of the rhododendron buds. The forests that are ablaze with red flowers are a muted, muddy shade of green. Torrential rain and hailstones fall in April, a month known for its pleasant sunshine and wildflowers. Not many trekkers are here; the homestays are mostly empty but neither the SKM nor the SDF, and definitely not the BJP has one thoughtful line to say about climate change but India is going to vote in four days and Indians have chosen their smartphones and Wi-Fis above their right to live a holistic life.

The SKM has won the sole Lok Sabha seat in Sikkim. It remains to be seen what conversations they have on climate and the environment, if any.

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