To The Misty Mountains

Mussoorie I had never cared to investigate. Yesterday my friend Manoj Saili, a local lawyer, flagged off a march in sympathetic protest against a police lathi-charge in the Garhwal University town of Srinagar. I didn't join in because I don't yet own property in Garhwal (I hope to soon). I find of all the people I have met on my travels, the Garhwali is the person I like most. Perhaps because he has for millenia hosted visitors from all over India to dev bhumi, he has acquired tolerance and humanity. The current Uttarakhand agitation seems inevitable when the Garhwali (and Kumaoni) is every bit as different from the Uttar Pradesh plains-man as the Darjeeling Gorkha is from the plains Bengali or the Buddhist Lehpas of Ladakh from Muslim Kashmiris.