Gorkhaland Revisited

Crumbling house in Darjeeling town, "Gorkhaland"

Down the bumpy road from Kalimpong bazar we trundle, out of the stink and relative bustle of the town.  Kalimpong: a former "spies' nest" of a hill station still bustling along modestly with its skein of streets crammed with tiny momo restaurants.  Kalimpong.  This is where my engagement with the Nepali-speaking world began 5 1/2 years ago, though it is an Indian town in most of its particulars.  Kalimpong and the rest of Darjeeling District, despite sharing the state designation of West Bengal with Kolkata and Siliguri and all the vast Bengali-speaking plains in between, is populated in the vast majority by Nepali speakers who have been settled in the region for generations.  This is India, though, as anyone here will be quick to tell you if you make the mistake of referring to him or her as a Nepali.  Nepal, from this vantage point, is a curious and rather backward place, and many Kalimpong residents have never crossed the nearby border.  This is India: in their morning assemblies the school children belt our the Indian national anthem and Indian rupees change hands in the bazars, where the shops are run mostly by Marwaris and Biharis. That much identity is clear.  Moving down to the state level, however, the issue is more complicated.  Technically and administratively this is West Bengal, yes, but since 2008 none of the shopfronts display this fact openly.  Where "West Bengal" was once written, hastily-printed letters now declare this "Gorkhaland."  Gorkha is the name not just for the famed Nepali soldiers who fought so fiercely, khukuris in hand, for the British, but for the Nepali-speakers of Darjeeling District (or what is also, confusingly, called North Bengal) who have also adopted the title to distinguish themselves both from the Bengalis to the South and the Nepalis to the West. 

In practice, daily life outside the bazars is much like that in Eastern Nepal.  The striking difference is one of identity politics: whereas in Nepal a shared Nepali identity is so much a given that the differences between caste, tribal, and ethnic groups stand out starkly as markers of community, here the common plight of being under-recognized works to draw the Gorkhas together as a more-or-less cohesive group while blurring the differences between Rai (all 40-plus subgroups), Limbu, Newar (not to mention the dozens of Newar castes), Chhetri, etc.  Of course it's no Shangri-La: Bahuns (Nepali for Brahmins) are still sometimes resented as the most dominant, powerful group, "small castes" and "untouchables" are still tangibly low on the social ladder despite legislation to the contrary, and the pre-Gorkha inhabitants of the region, Tibet and Bhutan-derived Bhotias and indigenous Lepchas, have become minorities struggling to maintain their own distinct identities, languages, and traditions.  In fact the melting pot effect of Gorkhaland tends to discourage other caste or tribe-related languages as well: it's fairly rare to hear any of the Rai or Limbu languages here, for instance, despite the large numbers of those groups in Kalimpong. 

We were bumping along the road from the bazar.  Bumping along towards Bung Busty, one of several villages within an hour's walk from the Bazar.  From here, where the paved road peters out, I look back to see the town crowded along the ridge between two hills, the gleaming roof of the big Hindu temple, the flattened quadrilateral of the fair ground.  The town's momo stalls and weekly market are a world away here, I think, as I catch a whiff of cow manure and wood smoke and watch the dogs tussling in the dust.  It's quiet and sunny, and all around me are newly-flooded rice paddies and the enormous, lazy leaves of banana trees.  I'm back, and I'm not sure how to feel.  5 years ago, on the Pitzer in Darjeeling program, I was plonked down with a host family in this village after a 2 week crash course in Nepali.  My now-partner and traveling companion, Thandiwe, lived with another family a short walk away, and though we were friendly at the time we didn't see much of each other outside of school hours.  I found my host family nice enough but never really clicked with them in the way I later found was possible.  There was old Aapa, the patriach, an old Lepcha man and a joker who never took me too seriously.  He found my initial stumblings in Nepali hilarious.  (What's that you say?  bhudi dukhyo ki budhi dukhyo? Your stomach hurts or your old lady hurts?  Ha ha ha).  His wife, my first Nepali Aama, was a proud Chhetri (or Ksatriya, a high Hindu caste) woman who had married Aapa in what must have been a passionate and scandalous move in its day.  I found her intimidating, as I could understand hardly one word in ten that she uttered, and many of her utterances sounded like commands.  Their youngest son, Lha Daju, and his wife, my Bhauju (sister-in-law), were closest to me in age, but with a seven-year old daughter they were hardly peers.  As much as with anyone, I connected with the 12-year old Ruben, a madhesi (i.e. someone from the Bengali plains) who stayed with the family and went to school in Kalimpong in exchange for doing odd jobs around the house.  We'd sometimes walk together after dinner with flashlight over the terraced fields to find and fix a blockage in the water pipe, or sit by the fire and do our best to communicate.  It was a memorable time of expanding my horizons and generally everything that a good immersive study abroad experience ought to be, but it was also often a trying one.  I remember waking up in the middle of my first night with my host family, in my too-short bed in my too-short room, opening the window, and puking into the potted plants lined up outside.  There was a lot of puking that semester, and a lot of stumbling communication.
Five years later, I haven't called, my one letter probably didn't even arrive, and here I am showing up at the house again.  I've heard through the Pitzer program staff that Aapa and Bhaauju have both died in the meantime, and have no idea what to expect.  From the outside, though, the place looks much the same as ever: the old building (now the kitchen and dining room) and the newer concrete house with their tidy dirt yard in between; the mango tree and potted plants, the home-made beehive and the kitchen garden below.  With a deep breath and a nervous smile I step into the yard.  Not exactly the bustle of activity I remember; the place is deathly quiet.  I call out a namaste and there emerges from the house a young woman I don't recognize with a baby in her arms.  She greets me with a friendly but slightly quizzical look.

Soon she, Thandiwe, and I are sitting in the little-used formal living room (in my nearly 4 months here I remember sitting here twice) and chatting.  She is Lha Daju's second wife, a Limbu; his second daughter is thus a Limbu-Lepcha-Chhetri mix and almost 7 months old.  The three of them are alone in the house these days, Aama having moved closer to the Bazar to live with a daughter after her husband died almost 2 years ago.  Ruben has grown up and lives in the plains with his family.  The two dogs I remember have died and are replaced by two more, and instead of the broiler chickens I remember, there's a small fish pond.  Life goes on, evidently.  And the timing of my visit is good: Ama, Lha's first daughter, and some other relatives and friends are all due to arrive this evening for the weekend.  I am invited back the next day to meet them all.  The next morning, we arrive to find the place full, with the various generations present forming a pyramid: a solid base of 6 or 7 kids, 3 young-to-middle-aged adults in the middle, and Aama by herself at top.  Upon catching sight of me she takes of her glasses and wipes a tear from her face in one motion.  Seated next to her, we hear in excruciating detail, through Aama's intermittent tears, the story of Aapa's last day.  Of what everyone was watching on TV when he fell down complaining of chest pain, of how the doctors in the Bazar were unavailable and how he was taken in a hurry down to Siliguri in the plains, not to return.  Aama was left behind at the house, waiting to hear the worst.  Here one day, gone the next, and Aama left alone after their decades together no longer wants to live in the house.  It is unclear how interested she is in living at all, although later at dinner she is all coos and smiles playing with her newest granddaughter.

Lha is much the same as I remember, still working on odd construction and other local projects in the neighborhood, though more and more of his peers are shipping out to Qatar or Malaysia to find work.  He is as cheerful and energetic as ever; we don't ask about his first wife's death after long illness from kidney failure, and he doesn't bring it up.  Little Anushka, his older daughter, now twelve, is bigger and no less bold, and seems to enjoy her baby half-sister.  One of Lha's own sisters feeds us lavishly (with us ignoring grumbles that we aren't eating enough) and we are enjoying playing with the happy, bouncy baby ourselves when the back-up power cuts out.  It's getting late, time to go.  We say our goodbyes, making no promises to return again but glad to have visited now.  Aama, proud and beautiful to the last, says she'll meet us in her dreams, in heaven. 

R.I.P.  Nima Tshering Lepcha
           Namkomit Lepcha