I will remember 15th August 2008 for reasons other than the patriotic. While I did hum one of my favorite hymns ‘I vow to thee my country’ reminiscent of the Independence Day service back in school, some of the joy was dampened by an unfortunate incident. As I walked back home on 14th August midnight I was mugged at knife point, quite unsuccessfully though, not far from home. There was a scuffle but I escaped unharmed and by a quirk of fate most of the valuables were recovered.
The incident may not have lasted more than a minute or half but I remember some things vividly: the hurried footsteps behind me (luckily for me, the rainwater on the street gave them away, just in time for me to turn around), the first sight of the knife, the scuffle and the escape. As I recounted this incident to colleagues and friends the account remained consistent except for my sound bytes in those moments. I struggled to recall if I had screamed, whether it were only nervous shrieks or something intelligible. I didn’t remember calling out for help either.
However when I recounted the incident to my mother, she seemed to know what I might have said: ‘Kya kar rahe ho’ (what are you doing) and ‘nahin’ (no). She even seemed to know how I might have said it. As I look back at the incident, I’m quite convinced that these were the few intelligible words in my nervous stupor.
Indeed, mothers know best.
UA1 Travel Notes
I was in Uttaranchal recently. Unlike other occasions, going home wasn’t welcome this time, since it was on a very unfortunate emergency. The extensive hill travel didn’t hold any excitement too, since I was preoccupied with the recent events. Besides we were at the receiving end of the hazards of hill travel. Hills are at their greenest in the monsoons; here green would also symbolize their unforgiving nature. So traveling in the hills in monsoons is tricky business, more so in the night. Land slips are a common occurrence and account for numerous road blocks, even as rainfall wears down the narrow roads. On this visit, we waited anxiously into the wee hours for relatives who were caught in heavy showers on a treacherous hill road that lead to us, in Dharchula.
This is not to suggest that I don’t enjoy traveling in the hills. I do, though it was only after a shaky start. Hill travel was a challenge as a child as motion sickness got the better of me; I lived ‘one moment at a time’ hoping that the next moment will alleviate the sickness. The going was a lot easier at night; good for me since traveling in the Kumaon and Garhwal hills2 is an exciting proposition in the night, you never know what you may see around the bend. I can recall many sightings of tiger and leopard, not to forget glimpses of other wildlife, as part of these night travels. Similarly a journey from Dehradun to Gopeshwar in 2006 was the one time I’ve spotted leopard more than once on a single day. On the first occasion we almost ran over a leopard cub who sat in the middle of the road. Am sure his mother was close by but the cub’s nonchalance wasn’t surprising since traffic on many of the routes dwindles to naught after sunset. The second sighting was that of an adult leopard, very close to one of the towns en route. Of course such wildlife sightings are only one aspect of the sounds and sights of Uttaranchal hills. But such an instance can make an otherwise listless journey, memorable.
As the motion sickness ceased to be a problem with age, I could relish nature in all its amazing glory. It indeed is the most striking feature of travel in Uttaranchal. But more on this sometime later…
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1 UA = Uttaranchal. The state is formally referred to as Uttarakhand
2 Uttaranchal is broadly divided into these two regions: Garhwal and Kumaon
And finally from our performance at the Salsa Congress
Posted by aditya nabial 
