One who got away

It has been a very long hiatus predominantly due to which this new blog has older posts only. While life has crawled, clawed, threatened to bang my head against a blank dashboard and even after every blow made everything worthwhile every now and then, that is not what I am going to talk about because I would really suck even if I tried.

This is about another life spent in the shadow of the mammoth snow white Singalila spurs and ancient gnarled Rhododendron trees in that great misty forest. Like it happens so often, this life had promised so much but was stopped in his tracks leaving us grasping and gasping to fathom what just happened. Thsi is about the one who got away.

When I was packing for my first field trip in Sikkim with a bagful of unnecessary items and a headful of excited ignorance, I was given one practical advice- reach Barsey Rhododendron Sanctuary and get hold of Lakhpa Tenzing the forest guard who would be my friend, philosopher, guide in this then-alien land. When I eventually reached Barsey and parked myself in that fabulous lodge on the ridgetop, surrounded by partially flowering Rhododendron arboreum forests, I was told that Lakhpa Tenzing could not make it that day and would only arrive the morning after. When the morning was also merging into the afternoon, I was beginning to get irritated thinking for the next ten days, i was to be stuck with an irresponsible moron. Eventually when he did turn up, a rather handsome young man with a guilty smile , my resolve to speak my mind was blown out by his impeccable knowledge of the area and its flora and fauna. Even in the first meeting, I could make out that his knowledge of botany was astounding and I was in for a great entry point into wild Sikkim for the coming these days.

This was not the first time that Lakhpa was accompanying a greenhorn from WWF in Barsey. My illustrious predecessor, a guy named Rudra had given Lakhpa a hard time in their painful surveys together. Lakhpa had remembered Rudra so much that his first serious advice before setting off for the first field trip was "Listen sir, the red panda only lives in the most inaccessible areas, so you can not expect this search to be a routine hike !" I assured him that my plans were also along similar lines and started exploring the great mist-laden oak-rhododendron forests.

For the next five days as we went up and down, barged through bamboo clumps, I created some spectacular falls and slides which must have thoroughly entertained Lakhpa, my respect for him only grew. He was responsible for all of my entry-point knowledge regarding Barsey and most definitely its flora. These initial days were fascinating indeed, when a kind of jungle unseen and unheard of was slowly revealing its magic to me.

Lakhpa left in the middle as the department had left some more urgent official chores for him and re-joined again when I was camping at Hilley, near the sanctuary check post. Then for the last five days we again had some footloose fun which included an intense religious(!!!!!) discussion with an SSB officer camped in the paramilitary camp in Hilley who was looking for some company to have rum with. Evidently I impressed him with my deep knowledge of the purans and the rituals because we were invited for breakfast in the camp next morning!!. Every afternoon the sky would turn deep grey and it would start pouring like  the biblical flood. This was my first brush with North-East monsoon and though it was almost overwhelming , we were not bored. The single electronic gadget that I had carried (For some astonishing reason, I was not issued a camera from the office), a portable radio was keeping us company. As me and Lakhpa watched the rain pound the surrounding earth from the safety of the single room near the forsst check post, we discovered that if the receiver was kept at a certain position with the aerial pointing towards a certain angel, we were getting through to FM-Rainbow(Sikkim's own FM channel days were a long long way away then). Thsoe sometime morose songs were the perfect background score to the rain as we chatted and joked and I found out that Lakhpa Tenzing was a total softioe when it came to his family. Taking a bath for those 12 days were obviously out of the question for me and Lakhpa watched with disbelief everyday as I used water only for the most basic necessities, his image of neat and clean Bengalis getting getting shattered in the process. He had started by requesting me to "bathe" myself in the starting days, which came down to "curing" myself near the tenth day.

The next time Lakhpa and me got together was in the more civilised and comfortable confines of his own hgome in Okhrey, one of the fringe villages of Barsey. Me and PD, the other old friend from Barsey, were going around in the fringe villages and asking all sorts of strange questions abour red pandas and the likes. Okhrey being one of my target areas, where better to stay than in Lakhpa's house! It was then that I discovered Lakhpa Tenzing's equally nice family; a loving family and the cutest little girl I had ever seen. The meeting was the next day, but before that it we had eating, and what an expedition it was trying to find a chicken for dinner! Lakhpa scoured the entire village for a household willing to part with some poultry. Just about when the no hope point of which, magically LT got hold of someone who knew someone and we had a chicken dinner!

After that survey in 2008, my frequent contacts with Lakhpa were frequent no more. As my focus of work also shifted from being a field biologist to someone who tried his hand at almost everything. We were somehow in touch though as Barsey was a place where WWF was involved every now and then with some program or other. Everytime I bumped into him, it seemed like old times and we picked up from where we had left off. Possibly from late 2009, I kept hearing about LT's long term illness which was making it really difficult for him to continue active field duty.  We had a excursion planned for some students in mid 2010 in Barsey, going for which we met LT in a very frail state. Though his smile had not vanished , he looked terribly sick and said had it was possibly hepatitis, going by the doctor's suspicions. I felt terrible looking at him coughing and walking away painfully when our vehicles finally sped past Okhrey.

After that there was a lull as I got busy again in a myriad of things. The monsoons came and went, the skies cleared up and the winter chill at athat altitude was almost killing. It was December and after ages I was back surveying in Barsey, this time accompanied with a new set of colleagues and cutting edge technology in camera traps. LT was supposed to accompany us and I was really looking forward but then his frail health had other ideas. He could not join us and though disappointed, i forgot everything in the comong few days amidst the excitement lived allover again. One day as we were making our way down in the main Hilley-Barsey trail, I saw a mixed bag of people coming up. It was a highly official team of Forest department officials including the ACF, Tourism Department Officials and Lakhpa who looked totally like being dragged from bed. After the pleasantries were exchanged, the team trudged on and Lakhpa waved a thin smile and expressed his sadness at not being able to join us tor this leg of the survey. We assured him to get well first and watched him trek up laboriously in the backdrop of the mist and the ancient oaks of Barsey-his second home.

Identifying occasions which were particularly momentous for either good or bad reasons have always been a problem for us so little did I know that the above meeting was the last one where I would see Lakhpa Tenzing walking in Barsey, or anywhere. The chilling news came in this April which caught my by its severe bluntness and impact. Lakhpa Tenzing never made it past his initial bout with Hepatitis. All the small and otherwise mundane memories flashed in my mind which balked in taking measure of the loss. Eventually, the realisation sunk in that we won't see Lakhpa Tenzing with Barsey or vice versa.

Among all the places you make friends, "jungle" friends are the most treasured kinds. Unbound by false pretensions, showing off  and all the artificial excesses that the more intellectual spheres have, these people bond with you immediately , expect very little in return and share their wealth of knowledge only if you want to learn. Lakhpa Tenzing wa such a store house of knowledge regarding Barsey and wildlife in general. Above and beyond the fact that his demise was an irreparable loss for the forest department, I lost my first jungle friend in Sikkim. I am sure this year the rhododendrons of Barsey bloomed at their best bloom ever.

In honour of the one who got away.