Bhopal-Sanchi: 20 Years Later

 

The last time I visited Bhopal was during my JICA days, in the early 2000s. My projects were far fron the city, in Sagar, Damoh and Tikamgarh districts. This meant my usual hotel  - Jehan Numa Palace - was only a stopover for rest and recuperation from the long road journeys. 

During those days I remember visiting the usual touristy places in the city - the newly built Bharat Bhavan, the lovely Van Vihar zoo along the banks of the Upper Lake, and, of course, a drive across the Tropic of Cancer to Sanchi and Vidisha, on my way to the northern districts. It was a nice but sleepy city - not a place one would like to visit often.

This time, two decades later - I saw a city that had been transformed.  More lakes, better infrastructure, and a more happening place. The area around the lakes have been beautifully developed with gardens, boating-clubs, lovely roads snaking along the banks. The old city is of course crowded and dirty as it used to be, but the rest of the city looks cleaner and nicer with its new roads, gardens, flyovers, malls, a new airport, and many lovely museums!

Reaching there was a breeze. Thanks to the uncertainties of air-travel in winters (and the recent Indigo cancellation-fiasco), we took an overnight train  (Dakshin Express) from Nizamuddin to Bhopal. The highlight of this trip was the seemingly miraculous recovery of an iPad which we had forgotten under one of the pillows. We realised the loss about an hour later after we had tucked in lots of poha-jalebi and chana-batura from the famous Manohar Dairy & Restaurant. Through the cries of despair and loss (the tab had four years of BTech notes), we connected with the Indian Railway helpline (139) and the new RailSewa app.

Amazingly there was a follow-up call from the Railway Police within a few minutes and the iPad was found and handed over to officers at the next station, Itarsi, which was about a 100km from Bhopal. By evening the tab and its teary, grateful owner were happily united! :)

Now that a potential kill-joy had been averted, we were able to immerse ourselves in the sights, sounds and wonders of Bhopal and the ancient lands along the Betwa river.

Museums

The new Tribal Museum is no doubt the best thematic museum  have seen in India. The main building itself is beautifully designed around a central amphitheatre, with every wall, hallway, nook and corner lovingly decorated with various  tribal art forms. One of these hallways leads you to a cluster of "tribal houses" that tell you how each of the major tribes in MP designed their living spaces using mostly mud but also in locally available sandstones. As our luck would have it we were visiting on a Sunday when the whole building was live with rhythms and songs of different tribal groups performing in the central amphitheatre.

On weekends the museum canteen (again the prettiest i have seen) serves thali's from each region. I treated myself to a wholesome missi-roti thali which came with a jackfruit (katthal) curry, a kadi, saag and pickles followed by a plate of mahua-jalebis - Delicious!

Sanchi Stupa

Sanchi is on the banks of the Betwa river. As you go downstream and north-eastwards, it meets the Halali river at Vidisha. On the narrow strip of land between these two rivers is the white sandstone hillock of Udaigiri.

Further north-east the Betwa marks the border between Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, and feeds two large reservoirs created by two dams - the Rajghat Dam Reservoir, and the Matiala Dam. From here the river broadens out and flows past the historic cities of Orchha (near Jhansi) for about 300km before it joins the Yamuna river at Merapur Dariya (UP)

Two decades ago, Sanchi was a lonely hill next to a small village with the railway line running in the the distance. There were hardly any hotels to stay and the famous stupa hd just a few disinterested staff at the ticket-counter. There were hardly any signboards and you could walk around wherever you wanted. I remember sitting next to the beautifully carved pillars of Stupa-2 (200m downhill from the main stupa) and watching the trains snake around the hills on the plains below.

Now the whole place was super-crowded. Busloads of schoolchildren, tourists from all over India, and a few foreigners. What a contrast from my visit about two decades ago when this holy site had only a few Indian tourists, some pilgrims from Southeast Asia and lots of visitors from Europe and USA. 

UDAIGIRI CAVE TEMPLES

This first thing I noticed here was a beautifyl white-trunked tree clings to the steep rockface over the main entrance to Udaigiri caves. The guards told me that this was the Kulu Vruksh (Sterculia urens). It is also called Bhutya - the Ghost Tree - because that is exactly what it looks like on moonlit nights!

Udaigiri is home to one of the oldest surviving Hindu temples with the earliest known sculptures of Ganesha and Mahishasura-Mardini. For all its fame this site seemed poorly designed and maintained. You approach Udaigiri from the south on a narrow road separating the hills from the village. The parking lot and ticketing office is at the far end, and from here you need to walk back along the same road (this time inside the fence) on an uneven footpath to see the cave temples and sculptures. 

The most beautiful Varaha-Bhudevi sculpture is on a cave wall that is just about two meters from the boundary wall. On top of this space constraint you have a thick wooden barricade that prevents you from taking in the full view of the magnificent panel. As if this were not bad enough ASI has also blocked the view to the oldest Anantashayana sculpture with a wall of plastic venyl that is so dirty that you can barely see the sculpture behind it.

BHIMBETKA

This place is surreal. On the walls of caves carved by the elements millions of years ago you have an entire complex of rock niches and shelters that served as home to people who lived 12,000 years onwards!

BHOJRAJ TEMPLE

A massive, incomplete temple that stands next to what was once the largest lake in central India. What a sight it must have been in those days! 

The present temple is the result of a great renovation effort by the ASI. It seems when the temple was originally found, the roof had collapsed and split the massive Shivalinga. The roof was subsequently reconstructed albeit partially.

Why did Hoshang Shah destroy the Bhojpur dam in the 1400s?

REFERENCES -------------

. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshang_Shah

. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabandha-Chintamani -- Sanskrit-language collection of prabandhas (semi-historical biographical narratives). It was compiled in c. 1304 CE, in the Vaghela kingdom of present-day Gujarat, by Jain scholar Merutunga

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpur,_Madhya_Pradesh

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihira_Bhoja - Mihira Bhoja's epithet was Srimad-Adivaraha (the fortunate primeval boar incarnation of Vishnu) -- adivaraha dramma billon coins

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teli_ka_Mandir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterculia_urens

Fachu Kandi Pass - Notes from a Crossover Trek

This is a note to myself. As the years go by, and as details of our numerous treks in the Himalayas start to get mixed up, I find it necessary to write down at least some highlights and details of each trip. These notes may also be useful for those who discover that much of what see online, especially on website put up by travel companies, are either incomplete or simply inaccurate.

This year our plan was to go for the Bali Pass trek, a high-altitude rote that connect the Har-ki-Dhun valley to Yamunotri. The weather gods however willed otherwise. This year the monsoon season had extended from July and August into September. Three months of heavier-than-usual rains and cloudbursts in this region had washed away some bridges. The forest department had refused to give permission for this route so our guides decided to take up the next best option - to take a diversion from the earlier planned route to cross over to the Yamunotri valley via the Fachu-Kandi pass. 

Crossover treks are fascinating. They could be a metaphor for life itself - especially when you are travelling with a group of friends in their 50s. The lush green forests of youth stretch out behind you, and what lies ahead seems barren, desolate and depressing unless, of course, you are in good company :) 

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Itinerary

• Day 1 - 13/09/2025 (Saturday) - Tempo ride from Dehradun to Sankri -- Juddo waterfall -- Lakhwar bend-fork diversion -- Lakhamandal helipad -- Bernagad -- Kunwa
• Day 2 - 14/09/2025 (Sunday)- Sankri to Kedar Kantha Base-camp
• Day 3 - 15/09/2025 (Monday)- Across- Phulari Ridge -- Bhoj-Garhi Camp (3405 m / 11,170 feet)
• Day 4 - 16/09/2025 (Tuesday) - Bhoj-Garhi -- Pushtara Bughyal
• Day 5 - 17/09/2025 (Wednesday) - Kota-Damin Byepass -- cross tree-line -- Aruka camp (3829m)
•  Day 6 - 18/09/2025 (Thursday)- Past SaruTal -- KandaTal -- cross Fachu Kandi Pass (4356 M / 14,291 feet) -- Kurshil, Dubril Villages to Hanuman Chatti GNMN Lodge -- Evening aarti at hilltop temple
• Day 7 - 19/09/2025 (Friday) - Drive to Janki Chatti -- trek to Yamunotri Dham and back -- drive to Naogaon Shivalik Camp-Lodge
• Day 8 - 20/09/2025 (Saturday)- Drive to Dehradun -- train back to Delhi

Davai, Pustai, Rabota, Skoreye!

 

If there is one word you would catch from the numerous clips from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, it is "Dawai!" Even though it sounds like Hindi for medicine, it simply means "Move!" in Russian. In the videos the soldiers and civilians are urging people to try and get away from the gruesome, drone-dominated warfare that had hits soldiers and civilians in both countries.

This word turned up time and again in a book I just finished reading - "A Woman in Berlin". Written by a then anonymous young lady in Germany, it records the last days of the Third Reich. A time when the tide of war had turned. Hitlers armies that had spread out all over Europe and North Africa have all stalled. In Eastern Europe, a full retreat is in progress with the Russians rolling back the invaders, taking back their lands from the ruins of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), across the vast steppes, all the way to the nerve centre of Germany's war effort - Berlin.

It was a difficult time for the civilians in the city - especially for its women. For years they have been hearing the exploits of their own soldiers returning from the conquered lands. Stories of cities and towns bombed into submission, of women raped and children orphaned. Rumours of concentrations camps into which millions of jews, gypsies and PoWs disappeared. Now, in Berlin, the shoe is on the other foot. Russians are all over the city, and they are settling scores.

This book gives us a glimpse of the horrors faced by women in war-zones. The author  - now we know her as Marta Hillers - who was an educated, well travelled young lady whose boyfriend was away on some battlefront. She had been staying alone in a bombed out neighbourhood, scouring around for food and water.

The constant forecasts of death by starvation, of complete physical annihilation by the enemy were so pervasive that we're stunned by every piece of bread, every indication that we will still be provided for. In that respect Goebbels did a great advance job for the conquerers: any crust of bread from their hands seems like a present to us.

Homo homini lupus (Man is a wolf to man)...It's true everywhere and always, these days even among blood relatives...Hunger brings the wolf out in us. 

It's a blessing to be able to pray easily and unabatedly; amid the oppression and torture, in all our despair and fear...

In a city teeming with Soviet soldiers, single woman are easy prey, and they often spell trouble for the neighbours as well.

The most bitter thing in the life of a single woman is that every time she enters some kind of family life, after a while she ends up causing trouble: she's one too many; someone doesn't like her because someone else does, and in the end they kick her out to preserve the precious peace.

Marta gets raped time and again until she figures that be best way to deal with the situation is to get 'protection' from senior officers. These connections not only help her fend off other soldiers but also improve her access to food, books, and work opportunities, first as a translator, and then at a laundry.

The high-level connections also give her the confidence (Nicht haben Angst - Not to be afraid)  to deal with petty thievery, and the mindspace to dwell on larger issues ;) 

It turns out that Russian men, too, are 'only men' - i.e. presumably they're as susceptible as other men to feminine wiles, so it's possible to keep them in check, to distract them, to shake them off...

Recovering a stolen radio by pretending to be well connected as a translator - "However it appears that most of life's mechanisms rely on little tricks like that - marriages, companies, nation-states, armies.

It is at the laundry that we hear the now familiar words - 

'Davai, pustai, rabota, skoreye!' = 'Move, get on with it, work, faster!'...On the way back I was swinging my bucket gaily, in the spirit of 'what doesn't kill me makes me stronger'!.

 Over period 20 April and 22 June 1945, martial law comes into effect. Some semblance of order is restored bringing with it rations, water and electricity supply. 

The memoir ends rather abruptly. The book did not find any takers in Germany and was first published in USA in the mid 1950s. It is only in 2003 that a new generation emerged to look back at the war with a fresh perspective.

This makes you wonder about the condition of women and children in today's war-zones - Sudan, Gaza, Syria, Myanmar, DR Congo, Ukraine and Russia - and the decades it will take for the wounds to heal..

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The Body

 

I have been a fan of Bill Bryson for many years now. Starting with "A Short History of Nearly Everything"(2003), I have tried to keep up with his numerous books on popular science that blend hard facts with a wry sense of humour.

"The Body: A Guide for Occupants" is perhaps one of his fattest books. In over 500 pages (excluding the refs and index) it covers not only many parts of the human body but also what happens when things go wrong due to diseases or cancer. 

What fascinated me the most is the number of times he begins a sentence with the phrase "we still don't know", or "It is still a mystery why...".

Take for instance his description of a patient name Frau Deter who approached a psychiatrist complaining of persistent and worsening forgetfulness. She could feel her personality draining away, like sand from an hourglass. The psychiatrist, Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915) now has the disease named after him. Researchers have since figureed out that the Alzheimer's begins with an accumulation of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid in the sufferer's brain. What do these protein fragments do in the normal course? we don't know. Patients also accumulate tangled fibrils of tau proteins about which, once again, we know hardly anything. What we do know is that as these proteins build up in the brain - 

Alzheimer's first demolishes short-term memories, then moves on to all or most other memories, leading to confusion, shortness of temper, loss of inhibition and loss of bodily functions, including how to breathe and swallow...People with the disease die twice - first in the mind, then in the body.

Nobody know why some people get Alzheimer's and others don't. It accounts for 60-70% of all dementia cases, and is thought to affect about 50 million people around the world. Little is known about the remaining 30-40% of dementia cases. We have given some of them unique names and recognise them from typical symptoms but the only thing we know is that is is caused by the "disturbance of neural proteins"! One of them is Lewy Body Dementia which is particularly distressing to loved ones because victims frequently lose inhibitions and the ability to control impulses, so they tend to do embarrassing things - shed clothes in public, steal from supermarkets, etc.,  

BB also has something to say about the limits of "modern medicine". Alzheimer's drugs have a 99.6% failure rate (!), one of the highest in the whole field of pharmacology. At the same time, most  of the money available for research is skewed towards ailments of the rich. There is a whole category of 'neglected tropical diseases' that affect more than a billion people worldwide. One of them, Lymphatic filariasis, affects more than 120 million people. Ditto for leishmaniasis, trachoma and yaws.

Perhaps it takes a kind of mad obsession to tackle diseases of this magnitude, and we owe much of what we know to those who paid with their lives. A German parasitologist, Theodor Bilharz (1825-62) wanted to have a better understanding of a tropical disease called schistosomiasis (akal Bilharzia or Snail Fever), so he bandaged the pupae of cercaria worms to his stomach and took careful notes as they burrowed through this skin en route to invading his liver. He survived this experiment but died at 37 (!) while trying to stop a typhus epidemic in Egypt.

So, as Max Ehrmann says in his Desiderata, "with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world!". For the human body, it is still an extraordinary fact that having good and loving relationships alters your DNA...and conversely, not having such relationships doubles your risk of dying from any cause!

Rainbow Trouts in Bhutan

 

I guess it does not take much of marketing to sell a fish that evokes images of kisses, mountain streams and rainbows. 

The rainbow trout, aka Oncorhynchus mykiss, loves cold, clean, fast-flowing mountain streams. Native to the Americas it has, over the centuries, become a valuable table-fish - thanks to its great taste (it belongs to the salmon family), the fact that it can be reared with relative ease in fish-farms, and because it fetches a good price in the markets. In India it sells for over INR 1200/kg and counts among the 'high-value' fishes sold across the country. Globally, the top three exporters of Trout are Turkey, Chile, and Vietnam. In 2023, the rainbow trout market was valued at US$ 4.2 billion 

Inspired perhaps by the success of Vietnam, many asian countries have been trying their hand at rearing and exporting this fish. Bhutan is one of them. With its pristine Himalayan mountain streams it ought to have a natural advantage in this business but the record so far has been limited. What could be the reasons for this? 

Efforts started way back in 2008, National Research Center for Riverine and Lake Fishes (NRCRLF), at Haa. Personnel trained at trout farms in Kokernag, Kashmir, replicated a raceway at Haa, and this has been been the centre for trout farming efforts in Bhutan for nearly two decades. The Trout Breeding Centre at NRCRLF has been producing and distributing hundreds of thousands of fingerlings to affiliated farms which in turn produce around 35 tonnes of fish every year. Yet, even at the most fancy restaurants in Thimphu, you are unlikely to find rainbow trout on the menu. Why is this the case? Where does all the fish production go?

One logical answer to this could be that all the rainbow trout produced in Bhutan goes across the border to the Indian market. It takes about five hours to cross 167km of mountain roads to reach Phuensoling, the border town. Even across this border, competition is likely to be stiff from Indian trout farms. 

In Sikkim alone, for instance, there are 760 rainbow trout raceways with an annual production of 340 tonnes in 2022–23, up from 95 tonnes in 2014–15. The state also operates nine hatcheries, producing 619,000 fingerlings in 2022–23. Next door in Arunachal Pradesh, trout broodstock and seed production is being done in two main hatcheries situated at Shergaon of west Kameng and Nuranang in Tawang district. Shergaon has ova production capacity of 100,000. 

India's rainbow trout production has increased from 147 tonnes in 2004–05 to over 842 tonnes in 2015–16 (31% annual growth rate!), with a notable rise in private sector involvement. Key states contributing to this growth include Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Arunachal Pradesh . With such competition just across the border, it is not easy for Bhutan. 

Two crucial inputs trout fish farms - eggs/ova and feed - is dependent on expensive imports. Annually about 200,000 one-eyed Ova (fertilised eggs) are imported from Denmark. Specialised fish feed, with a purported high feed conversion ratio (FCR) of 1:1 (!) is imported from BioMar in the Netherlands for around Nu.200/kg. Biomar itself learnt the ropes of the fish-feed business from American companies and is among the dominant players now. Quite amazing to think that fishes being reared in the Himalayan streams need to be fed with something that is imported from a tiny country 7,300 km away!

This brings us back to the Vietnamese. How did they make themselves one of the top exporters of rainbow trout? As in the case of cashewnuts they surely have many lessons for those who want to approach agribusiness with a clear head and a hard nose for business!

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REFERNCES & LINKS

• Global Rainbow Trout Market (2023) - https://www.factmr.com/report/2084/rainbow-trout-market
• Bongo Gewog, Chukha, to Launch Rainbow Trout Project 
• https://derafarms.com/products/himlayan-rainbow-trout

Dynamics of the North East

At first glance Sanjoy Hazarika's book may seem rather dated. It gives a snapshot of the North Eastern states up to the early 1990s. 

Much of the turmoil described in the book has died down - insurgencies that roiled the North East for decades after independence has given way to a superlative push for development -  the new longest river bridge in India, 10,000km of new highways, railway links pushing further eastwards,  and ten new airports, a new impetus to the agriculture sector...all this has done much to integrate the region with the rest of the country. And yet, thanks to the recent troubles in Bangladesh, and the breakdown of trust and goodwill bodes ill for the seven sisters. 

This history of the seven sisters is a lot more complex than I expected. It also goes way beyond the unequal Treaty of Yandabo (1826) through which the British grabbed large swathes of Burma into British India.  The vast Brahmaputra valley has seen multiple invasions from the east of whom, perhaps the Ahoms lasted the longest.  Originally from the Shan region bordering Burma and China, the Ahoms conquered the area in the 13th century, adopted Hinduism, married into local communities and ruled for the next 600 years.  Even during this period it seems the tribes inhabiting the hills raided the plains but the rules were sanguine about pursuing them into the hills - 'can an elephant enter the hole of a rat?'

In terms of language and culture, a certain pecking order was imposed on this region. Soon after the British conquest of Assam, Bengali became the language of the courts and remained the official language till 1873. The Assamese in turn tried to impose their language on the hill states much to their resentment.

Partition of British India, tensions between India and Pakistan and  the creation of Bangladesh cut off the North East from its natural trading partners. The most accessible port at Chittagong went to Bangladesh even though it was located in Chakma region dominated by christian tribes. On top of this, power politics in North India forced the NE to subordinate it natural resources to states like Bihar. Petroleum extracted from Assam was sent in pipes all the way to Barauni refinery for processing!

Hazarika's book is a valuable record of the missed opportunities in the North East. It also provides a perspective on how the ongoing transformation of the seven sisters.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

- PIB Press Note on the North East 

- 

Yantras of Jantar Mantar

 

 Jantar Mantar is one of the iconic monuments of Delhi. It figures in almost every representational image of the city skyline alongside the Lal Qila, Qutub Minar, and Lotus Temple. It is supposed to mean "instruments for measuring the harmony of the heavens", and yet there is hardly anybody who is able to explain how these astronomical instruments were used.

 The Jantar Mantar is Delhi is one of the five built by Raja Sawai Jai Singh about 300 years ago. For a city that dates back a few thousand years, this site is relatively new, so it is all the more surprising that there are no oral or written records of the Raja's purpose or intent of building many such sites in North India.

Recently the Hindustan Times seems to have taken some interest in drawing public interest to these monuments. Earlier this year, Aheli Das informed us - "Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory on the road to former glory". More recently, Kabir Firaque wrote a more detailed, engaging piece titled, "Delhi Heritage - The Science of the Observatory - How Jantar Mantar Read the Cosmos" 

Alongside the descriptions of the Samrat Yantra, Misra Yantra, Rama Yantra, Jai Prakash Yantra, it was interesting to know that there are instruments here about which we have absolutely no clue - the Niyat Yantra (the four semi-circles), and the "wall of mystery". The task of deciphering these puzzles has become all the more difficult after earlier attempts at 'restoration' plastered and painted over the graduation markings on many of these instruments.

Despite these constraints, some good people labour on - Dr. Aalok Pandya of IGNTU-Amarkantak, Sheh Kesari, a Ghaziabad based amateur astronomer, and a leading expert, Prof. Virendra Pratap Sharma who is now with the University of Wisconsin. Then there is architect Rachana Sankhalker who has written a graphic novel titled, "The Astronomical Observatories of Sawai Jai Singh" (PDF download available for free!).

Lets hope all these efforts will help us add some meaning what seems to most of us like abstract pieces of art spread out in the middle of a park in New Delhi!

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References & Links

Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory on the road to former glory - https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/delhis-jantar-mantar-observatory-on-the-road-to-former-glory-101736533001106.html