27 October 2020

On Exile - Binsar

I am writing this in a mountain lodge in the hills of the Kumaon Valley, the lower range of the Indian Himalayas in Uttarkhand.  As I turn to the left— two thin, green wooden doors open, revealing an unimaginable landscape. A few red wildflowers grow in random spouts atop a rocky ledge, beyond which, as far as the eye can see: rolling, verdant forest hills tumbling into the horizon, one after the other, until all that remains is a blurred magenta hue. Sunset, almost.

I find the story of Binsar to be uniquely Indian. It is a story of contrast, discovery, colonialism, love, abandonment, protection and finally, an example of ironies, and of the tension between forces of modernity against the instinct to preserve nature, soul – something undefinable yet essential.

Back in the times of British rule, this stretch of the Kumaon hills was not a popular destination for summering colonial officers, who packed off en masse to Shimla and other favored locations. Except for local villagers who survived on agriculture and artisanal goods, Binsar was an uninhabited, nameless place – a forested secret that offered an empty and pristine vantage point to see the snow-capped Himalayan peaks, from Yamunotri in Garhwal to Mr Nampa in Nepal. It was one of the most panoramic views of the snowy mountain range. The remoteness of the hills gave Binsar its wild, secluded allure — a place of solitude, and the trance that comes with uninterrupted nature.

Sir Henry Ramsay, erstwhile “King of Kumaon” and commissioner general of the area, first ventured to build an estate on what is now Binsar (“Windsor” as per “Winsor Castle,” then localized to “Binsar”), picking a piece of land with a 360-degree view of the distant Himalayan range. One of his deputies then also built a house nearby — in deference to his boss, he allowed himself only a 270-degree view on a neighboring hilltop. The third and fourth structures were built by enterprising locals, who saw an opportunity to service these two estates — namely, a priest and a bootlegger. The agony and the ecstasy, so to speak.

Four houses, a motley original cast, and the unbelievable isolation of the hills, a sanctuary of sanctuaries that only two offbeat British officials enjoyed — this was Binsar at its genesis.

All four houses passed through various owners after the British left – each with its own tangled and intimate histories. The second house, the one with the 270-degree view, is where I am currently staying. Its original owner, the deferential British commander, had a local lover whom he housed in the cottage along with a gardener, under strict rules that they should present themselves as a couple. The British commander presumably fled before Independence, and years passed in relative isolation. The lover died eventually, and so by the 1960s, only the original gardener was left staying in this small cottage on the Binsar hill. In the following two decades, he set up plywood demarcations that split the house into small rooms, and rented each room separately to hashish-loving hippies for a few bucks a night. The ideal setting to ‘drop out’, ‘turn on’ and prophesize about the coming revolution, with consciousness blurred by mountain hash then sharpened by the brisk mountain air.

Eventually, the gardener seemed to catch wind that properties could be sold for far higher profits than a few bucks a night, put out a call to sell the house, and a young Vikram Mehta, who was then a civil servant in Udaipur (and later one of India’s most prominent executives), came to visit the cottage on behest of his friend, Arun Singh. After a days’ long journey from Delhi, winding up the Binsar hills, stopping every hour to take stock of the ever-expanding valley below, Mehta finally walked the last steps up to the lodge. He knew upon setting eyes on the house that he wanted to buy it - and I don’t blame him — the inhuman silence of it, the morning mist that lifts above the forest like a veil, the view of the green valley and the snow-capped mountains as diametric poles — such contrast evokes a beauty bordering on the unbearable. 

Mehta spends five minutes inspecting the house (“purely pro forma,” he chuckles in remembrance) then goes back to Delhi, sells all his valuable belongings, and buys the house in 1987. Over the decades, it becomes a retreat for him and his family, a recluse from the metropolis and modernity itself. And finally, in the early 2000s, the entire area is declared a forest sanctuary and thereafter a wildlife sanctuary, with no commercial development allowed (thanks to one of the other estate owners’ daughters who settled in the area and became a conservation activist and worked with the local villagers to increase local economic activity). Unfortunately, this did not stop some of the owners from subtly increasing their build area and renting their estates out as resorts, as Binsar became increasingly touristic. Yet the hills are still quieter and more untouched than almost all places I have ever been in my life.

I say “uniquely Indian” because Binsar is a story of ironies, of contrast. The fact that Britishers were the ones who “discovered”, inhabited and enjoyed some of the most beautiful parts of this country. The contrast between the pristine nature and the lack of self-sustainable economic development for people of this state - to the point where there have been cases of Uttarkhand farmers setting fires to the beautiful forests here just to make a visceral point about their desperation. The resultant mass migration to the cities, leaving just the weakest or most committed to continue working the land, where there is no demarcation between land and self. And finally, the sheltered position in which I sit, at the top of this hill, filled with an unbearable guilt I cannot shake or swallow, torn between beauty and knowledge. And hosted by a kind family I met serendipitously, the way I have met so many families in the vast and open-hearted country of India. 

In a strange way, this guilt — inescapable, constant — is one reason I need India. “Sometimes you break your heart the right way,” Karla says to Lin, soon to be christened Shantaram. For some reason, this resonates with me. India is that heartbreak — impossible to fully understand, deeply elusive, but open and forthcoming with need, poverty, irony, pain. And through that “tyranny of need” — there is always an undeniable humanity to India. Such that Shantarm, nestled in a village in Maharashtra, his head resting against the hand of a poor farmer who has given him a bed and a dhoti, is touched by another human with such purity that he finally, for the first time in his life, understands the expanse of his loneliness. 

In Binsar, in a solitude and silence so deep that only a fraction of it can be understood, I am acquainted again with my own loneliness. The loneliness that brought me to India. The land that made me stay.

For an impressionable, fickle girl—India gave such glaring heartbreaks of purpose that I could never stray too far from doing good. The need to solve foundational problems, and the optimism of the true collective, could never be ignored. For an exile— to whom the unending, obscure condition of displacement was all I ever knew: India gave me such strange, inexplicable peace. A place where discovery begins for all of eternity, and where the pure essence of human life is so close, just beyond the light blue silhouette of the mountains in sunset. A place where even a wary nomad like me would feel a sense of home.

It is this peace from exile that only India has given me, and thus it is to India I shall give my life.