Book Review | Keedajadi: The Many Myths About The 'Himalayan Viagra'

Several families of the Pindar region of Uttarakhand visit the high-altitude meadows every spring after the melting of the snow to collect the caterpillar fungus called Yartsa Gunbu in Tibetan and keedajadi in Hindi. It sells at a rate higher than gold. After all, it’s the ‘Himalayan Viagra’. 

Keedajadi is the title that Hindi writer Anil Yadav has aptly chosen for his latest travel memoir of Uttarakhand. He has earlier published exceptional short fiction besides an acclaimed memoir of Northeast India. He turns to the northern Himalayan state in his latest book and returns with a sensuous and bracingly perceptive account of life in the remote Pindar region, where the author first goes as a volunteer school master in an NGO-run school.

A fallout with the NGO leaves Yadav a traveller not trying to reach anywhere, free to accompany the locals on keedajadi-collecting expeditions to high Himalayan bugyals (meadows).

We also learn about his life as a school master, trying to teach khadi boli to hill-kids whose lips are tuned to another rhythm. He also learns from the kids, watches stars, walks in moonlight, gets stalked by bhutia dogs, learns how to befriend them, attends local “golu-debta” hill festivities, experiences the liberating effect of absolute solitude, gets transfigured by the daily play of light on the snowy peaks, becomes conscious of his relative unease in female company, and tries “helicopter” and other “substances” including keedajadi that locals offers him. His prose meanders and reflects, digressing and looping back in circles like the river Pindar — powerfully visual, never dull, full of sudden revelations and striking turns of phrase, tactile, pulsing with energy.

Life in Pindar is slow. Even creepers holding on to fences must wait for the Sun every morning, a laggard golden disc, always getting thwarted by tall trees in the mountains. The only things easily available in the area are poverty and conversations. A village girl’s cherished dream is to just be able to go down to Bageshwar town, so she can walk like the residents of plain areas, dragging her feet, instead of having to climb all the time. 

The book opens with a line about little Joti — bald-headed (due to lice), dirt-streaked, and snot-nosed, who walks three miles from Jakuni to Umla everyday to attend the primary school. A creature with a mind of her own, her tone, when she talks to the new master, is of innocent righteous entitlement. 

“If you were to ask me, what kind of place is Pindar valley, I would answer like Joti. She makes a game out of calling me variously, just to generate a desired effect — Mattar, Matar, Motor. As if trying to locate some equilibrium between herself and me,” Yadav writes.  

Reading Yadav, one is transported to higher reaches of Kumaon, awash in cadences of people’s voices, the sound of the flowing Pindar, the din of festive music. He distils experience through observation, conversation, and digression. When a boring political speech is being made at the school, he observes a spider spinning the first thread of its web, rolling forth on its saliva to cartwheel between two points in the pinewood ceiling.

The visual prose poetry is interspersed with journalistic insights —at times blistering, at times comical— on local politics and bumbling officialdom. These emerge not from intellectual analysis or theorising, but from dialogue with the hard wisdom of the locals. Because the lodgekeeper Chamu and others take him as one of them (the master, he is our own; is an oft-repeated phrase among locals); the vantage point is not of a privileged outsider and this explains the force of truth in the prose. 

The veteran trekking guide, Roop Singh, whom the writer jokingly calls “Death’s PRO”, tells as a matter of fact, wrinkled face radiating humility, of countless fatal expeditions he has returned alive from. The writer muses, “Is trekking a power game? Do people risk life and limb, face terrible hardships only to be able to indulge in some proprietary fantasy of having conquered a piece of untouched nature?”

The subject, keedajadi, arrives only halfway through. We understand the Pindar and her people first and then are gently led to the politics at the heart of the fabled fungus. Close to the beguiling enchantment of the snow-capped Maktoli, where life is forever poised on the cusp of death, the locals have —apart from poetry and philosophy (a local calls a roiling stream overflowing after the rains a mischievous child)— relied on a good dose of Bholenath (hand rubbed hashish) or similar “material” to carry on and survive. Despite being called Dev-bhoomi (Abode of the Gods), these areas offer neither livelihood nor material comforts except in the brief tourist season.

But the last two decades have seen an explosion in the semi or demi-official (at least on paper) enterprise of harvesting and selling the Himalayan Viagra, a fabled aphrodisiac and energy-enhancer that sells at a rate higher than 24-carat gold by weight. Harvested only during early spring, keedajadi-collection has emerged as a money-spinning holy grail, attracting a cast of motley foreigners, smugglers, dealers, and bribe coveting babus to the villages.  

The local administration has incentivised the cultivation of cumin and other spices, and has also leased land to grow drug-free hemp (nasha-mukt bhaang), leaving people bewildered. 

“What is implied by giving your land on lease for cultivating something that grows abundantly by itself on every hillside? And even if they want to cultivate Lord Shiva’s medicine, why leach it of its essence?” 

The discovery of the caterpillar fungus in the year 2004-6 impacted the local economy and society, even local aspirations. Temples, generators, Tata Sumos arrived soon, and so did jeep drivers who ferry city folks to Pindar. 

Like everything in the hills, miraculous tales abound about some people having the knack of finding the fungus, while others are cursed by the spirit of keedajadi and always fail. The fungus has acquired its own myths. 

Those who make arduous journeys to collect it, and those who spend mind-boggling sums to acquire it (including a cast of Russian-Ukrainian firangs), must do their transaction while staying clear of the bumbling forest guards and babus, who enforce state-sanctioned rates which are far below the actual market rates. A business which is legitimate thus acquires a cloak and daggers air. 

The many ironies of the business are reflected in the growing popularity of lab-grown keedajadi. The fungal infiltration of the caterpillar’s immune system turns it into an immunity boosting magic potion. The tissue cultured caterpillar fungus are cloned, and obviously cannot replicate the natural keedajadi, yet do roaring business because of demand. 

The biggest irony is that the hardy hill folk who collect keedajadi have no personal desire to either taste or test it. It is simply money to them. Money to survive the monsoons and the long harsh winter when they are cut off from the world. What they really require are simple medicines like Dependal for diarrhea, antibiotics and paracetamols for cough and fever for which they must go all the way to the nearest town Bageshwar. 

Through the device of the money-spinning keedajadi, Yadav manages to bare the socio-economic truth of life in Kumaon hills. Everything that generates a few jobs —whether tourism, trekking or aphrodisiac harvesting— exacts a price in sweat and blood. 

If you are interested in finding aphrodisiacs, the book is not for you. If you get drunk on penetrating prose, pick it up.

(Varsha Tiwary is a Delhi-based writer and translator.)