The overloaded bus wheezed it way round the hairpin bend and came to a halt.  We had covered a mere five kilometres on our way to Srinagar (no, not the one in J&K, but the more scenic one) and from the size of the road-block caused by the landslide, we were not going to make it to our destination.  At the site of the other landslide a short distance from Chamba, a road patrol unit had been busy clearing the debris; and we were on our way half an hour later.

“This is what comes of short-sighted top-down, development policies of a government that fails to involve the people”, said the suprisingly clean-cut looking Swiss seated beside me.  Having left Oxford after a year since he did not care for the aloof English he had enrolled at the Sorbonne.  During the journey he had been droning on about the damage to the environment of the Garhwal and Kumaon region, which he had been assigned to study, and clearly now he expected me to respond as a fellow traveller pursing the same path as his.

Yes, I said nodding my head solemnly, the centralised policies of the government….the violation of the environment….and got up as had the rest of the passenger to descend from the bus even as other vehicles began to pile up behind ours.  There was no government road clearing unit here; clearly the landslide was so recent that it had not got wind of it.

A tall, lean man had seized the initiative: he was summoning the passengers to help remove the obstructing slabs and shards of slate, still being used as roofing material for some hill houses making Garhwal as lovely as embedded in my memory.  And people were responding.  As the number of volunteers increased, the depression I had sunk into gradually began to lift.  My mind was not on the development policies that had led to the landslide, but on whether or not I would be in time to keep my appointment with the academics of Garhwal university in Srinagar and perhaps gain an insight into why the hill region remained backward, and voluntary action was not taking root….

Just as the group of 12 Bargi dam evacuees from Madhya Pradesh on pilgrimage to Badrinath joined the brigade of volunteers, a fresh part of the hillside descended. The less brave abandoned the task, but not the Bargi dozen who had been hardened under tougher circumstances: they were travelling with their bori-bistra spread over, under and around the seats; the old lady with a toothless smile, finding no space left, had handed me her potli of what seemed like home-remedies to carry on my lap.

I felt that I should give a hand, but since too many cooks…so I held back.  But when the two foreigners joined the brigade, I too decided to chip in.  Unlike the Swiss, they were in the uniform of the hippie: long scraggly hair, wispy beards, unclean patched up jeans reaching down to unclean feet in chappals.  I was not altogether surprised to find that the reserved English girl in plats was not with them, but the sadhu with matted locks, saffron robes, a rudraksha mala  hanging low over his gleaming brown torso.  Slender though she was, she was more effective than the hippies and the sadhu put together, ferrying heavy loads from the road to the khud.

Too many legs and feet kept getting in my way.  Bent double with the effort of lifting a huge slab, I could not find space to carry it across.  After a few more attempts, I wiped my hands on the grass growing near the bichu booti.  Anyway, the road had been almost cleared of the rubble: it was still uneven and showers of the debris kept raining down on us.  A truck driver decided to give it a shot.  The vehicle heaved over the incline, and for a moment, and a frightening one at that, it appeared that it may well tumble into the valley below.  Then suddenly it was across the landslide.

Hurriedly we piled into our respective buses.  As ours gathered speed, my mind began to forge ahead.  From Srinagar, the next halt I felt should be Deoprayag.  No, not Rudraprayag where Jimmy Corbett had shot the man-eating leopard.  At Deoprayag  the Alaknanda and the Bhagirathi came together to be called the Ganga which along with the Yamuna the Paani Morcha had pledged to preserve….

The potli was back on my lap, the Swiss began to moan about the environment. But noticing the grand green-blue hills, the stately tall pines, the bright white waterfall, I found the world around me to be beautiful place. q

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