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Story: Subhobroto Mazumdar

Spiti Valley Adventure

It was a cold half-moon night with the road ahead masked in a foggy darkness making it
difficult for us to determine whether we were moving in the right direction or not. From
somewhere in that darkness beyond us floated the unbearably rhythm-less whistling of Hai
Apna Dil, which unmistakably signified that MKD was trekking behind us empty handed in
a cheerful mood. For me, however there wasn’t anything to cheer about and neither were
my hands empty. That was basically because I had to carry a whole bagful of rock
specimens which MKD had collected over this week-long field trip in Spiti Valley. MKD was
my thesis guide and the only person in these circumstances who could lead us back to our
camp, and yet there was something in that whistling that filled me with an irrepressible
urge to empty all those rocks in my haversack over his blissfully bald head. The only way to
fight that urge was to think of something nice which, under the circumstances, wasn’t at the
moment coming to my mind, and I was lost in those types of thoughts when Ravi’s voice
rang out from below asking everybody to stop because MKD was missing.

I joined the thesis studies under MKD with the sole purpose of being able to spend more
time with Asha Oberoi, who was also supposed to do her thesis under MKD, and if courage
permitted, to propose to her. However, she chose to do her thesis under someone else and I
got unceremoniously ditched. The ultimate fallout was this geological field trip in Spiti,
where, instead of a moonlight romantic escapade with Asha Oberoi, I had to move about
with almost a tonne of rocks in a cold foggy night with three other lunatics and a super
eccentric teacher. This field trip itself was supposed to have taken place in Udaipur, but
then MKD managed to net a big budget project sponsored by the DS&T which required a
field study of the Spiti Valley near Manali. As a result, my project proposal underwent a
sudden gigantic geological shift, and I landed in this godforsaken terrible depressing place
called Takche in this horribly cold mid-autumn condition. Not a single soul other than
ourselves was visible anywhere nearby and even the hills around were devoid of any sort of
vegetation. Far away in the horizon the glacial peaks of the Chandra Mountain stood across
a sun-less dull grey sky making the ambience more frigid than it actually was.

The very day we arrived in the Spiti Valley and camped in this remote, desolate place,
things started to go horribly wrong. The day of arrival was spent entirely in planning the
field work which by the way was not executed in any such manner during the rest of the
trip. To continue with my miseries I was asked to share a tent with Roy. The whole night he
snored like a steam engine, so loudly that anyone within a radius of five miles couldn’t have
had a single wink of sleep. As if it weren’t enough, the following morning my bottle of
drinking water, which I had saved for the next day’s fieldwork, disappeared. It was only a
little later that I discovered the bottle on the bank of the river, where somebody had
unceremoniously left it after washing himself subsequent to attending the calls of nature.
This was more than I could take and I spent a whole hour charging everybody I came across
of stealing my water bottle and using it for something it wasn’t meant to be. This continued

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for quite some time until I was assured by MKD that I would be provided with a fresh bottle
of water before next morning. The next day after waking up I found my bottle back – filled
with water – beside my bedside, the very same one that was left on the river bank, duly
returned by its user after attaching a thoughtful tag ‘Water fit for drinking’ to it. This time I
chose to keep quiet fearing further disastrous and degrading consequences.

The next few days we had to endure MKD and his tuneless whistling while he explained to
us the different rock types of Spiti Valley, their chemical composition, mineral content and
their assumed genesis, as if he were Raju Guide showing us Chittorgarh fort. Within a few
days it seemed he was repeating the same thing over and over, and Rajnish was even of the
opinion that he was probably showing us the same rock repeatedly and giving it a different
name each time he described it. Whatever be the case, there wasn’t any way out other than
to note down his lectures, follow everything he was uttering, and then when he was out of
earshot, curse him with the choicest invectives under our breath. Yet each time we swore
against him, he seemed to know about it and it appeared to make him more and more
cheerful.

Meanwhile, the weather God did his best to add to our miseries, making the surroundings
as grey and gloomy as was godly possible, without providing any speck of sunlight
throughout the entire day. Added to that was the effect of the fog that made the mornings
look like evenings, thoroughly bleak and dull. Whatever we touched appeared to be in a
perpetual state of wetness and dampness, and noses seemed to be running incessantly like
waterfalls. The outside temperature seemed to fast approach absolute zero; nobody ever
mentioned about taking a bath, and neither did anyone among us bear the courage of
actually going through the ordeal of taking one. Back in Roorkee, we had made a systematic
classification of bathing, where the degree and size of the bath one undertook was directly
proportionate to the temperature prevailing outside. When it was manageably warm, it
warranted a full-bodied Poster-sized bath. A cooler weather got a half-bodied Postcard-
sized one. In still lower temperatures, there were provisions of either a Passport-sized or a
Stamp-sized bath – which involved washing the whole or only parts of one’s face. Then
there was an extreme case, when one did a Dry Wash which essentially meant looking at
the water collecting in the bucket, feeling that one had taken a bath, and eventually coming
out of the bathroom rubbing a towel on a body as dry as an egg shell. There were situations,
however, when one gathered enough emotional strength to bathe, just by thinking about
things more deadly than a morning bath – like a class of MKD and teachers like him – and
finally came out after a sprinkling a drop or two of water on oneself. Here, however, nobody
attempted such a courageous thing and was content to live and stink like a pig in a pig pen
type of ambience. Ravi did once try to be brave and clean something – very unlike him –
and washed his face with the river water. Usually in Roorkee, he tried this feat of washing
himself once in a month, and that auspicious day was also incidentally the same day in
which he chose to brush his teeth; and then, if he decided to be more gracious on his
roommates, he even changed into a fresh set of clothes from the ones he had been wearing
the whole month. However, in this case, his untimely bath – besides making him a bit
cleaner – also kept him quiet for almost the entire day as his face, he confided later, felt like
a block of pine wood incapable of feeling, moving or saying anything.

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MKD was probably the only one who wasn’t affected by the climate and the terrain. He
continued to be as detestable and abominable as he used to be in Roorkee. Each morning
he was the first to wake up and then practiced his laughing club exercises which, he said,
kept him fit, young and energetic. His hideous laughter reverberated against the hills,
increased in intensity, filled up the valley and woke all of us up. Each morning our day
started by cursing MKD silently under our breath, and each time we cursed, the cumulative
impact of our curses seemed to make MKD’s laughter more demoniacal and heartier.
Rajnish was a self-proclaimed lateral thinker and he thought that MKD was probably trying
to rehearse for a role of one of the demons to be cast in Ramanand Sagar’s sequel to the
Ramayana. MKD did have a penchant for copying villains of Bollywood, and my seniors in
Roorkee had often seen him smoke his Capstan cigarettes stylishly like Pran and walk with
separate sized shoes of 8 and 9 like Ajit. Somewhere down the line Dev Anand made an
entry and drove out the ghosts of Ajit and Pran from his life, and MKD started to dress and
move funnily like him. Even in his lectures and meetings, as well as when we came across
him in Civil Lines, he used to behave as if he was under the constant glare of half a dozen
movie cameras. Mohandev Kanailal Dastidar got curtailed into Dev and he started
introducing himself in a James Bond-esque ‘I am Dev, Dev Dusty’ sort of way.

The third day of the field trip was one of those days which began badly and showed every
sign of getting worse as the day progressed. Earlier that day we suffered a dose of
medication by Rajnish, who felt that we were being subjected to too much fatigue, and to
boost our energy gave us some sort of watery mixture of unknown composition. This,
however, didn’t have any effect on our energy levels but made its impact leaving us with a
red and puffed up face and a swollen nose – making us really look like pigs as if it weren’t
enough to just feel and smell like one. Rajnish’s father was a doctor and this made Rajnish a
self-appointed health counselor for everyone around him, and most of the times we were at
the receiving end of this phenomenon. Last summer, when there was an outbreak of pox in
our hostel affecting most of us, Rajnish was one of the few to escape from its clutches. This,
however, had nothing to do with his father’s medicinal qualities but was only because of his
natural immunity. Nevertheless, when his father heard about this outburst of pox, he got
worried and immediately faxed him a prescription of medicines to be taken immediately for
preventing pox. These, Rajnish took religiously for two days and the third day came down
with a bout of pox at a time when most of us had recovered. From that instance very few of
us had any confidence left on Rajnish’s medical sense or on his father’s reputation as a
doctor. MKD, however, avoided both Rajnish and his mixtures, and anyhow he didn’t need
the mixture to look like a pig; he resembled one by default and even sounded like one when
he whistled.

Later during that day’s fieldwork, at a place near a ravine MKD stopped showing rocks and
began to point at a set of footprints claiming them to be that of a snow leopard. He was in
the mood for tracking those footprints and finding out the whereabouts of the alleged
leopard, but somehow we managed to thwart his plans and escape from that area. Yet,
throughout the day there was that haunting feeling and a nagging fear of the snow leopard
stalking us, ready to pounce on any one of us while we were busy with the fieldwork. During
the retreat to our camp, while crossing a stream, MKD slipped and lost his footing, and in
an effort to keep him out of water all of us ended up in the stream totally drenched, in a

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condition much worse than a Poster sized bath. To make conditions further worse a
mountain goat appeared from somewhere and crossed the stream immaculately without
ever slipping a foot hold. This made MKD to comment that even a goat was a much more
balanced creature in any sort of sense than any of us. Finally, at the end of the day, at the
camp fire, after MKD had finished showing off his antics with a mouth-organ (which was a
more harrowing experience than suffering his whistling ever was) he started narrating the
experience of one of his past fieldtrips, about how he saw a villager being dragged away and
killed by a snow leopard very much near the place where we had camped. The dead body of
the villager, he told, wasn’t even cremated by the villagers, but was cut into pieces by the
local Lama and left for eagles and carnivorous birds to feed on. This was quite a disturbing
story, and even after MKD had finished telling it, it continued to haunt and made me edgy.
The recurring thought of the snow leopard attacking me and MKD waiting to slice me with
his knife came to my mind and didn’t allow me to sleep for quite some time.

Just when I had managed to fall asleep, there was a shrill sharp cry from outside that woke
both Roy and me. It was the voice of Ravi, and the obvious thought of the snow leopard
attacking him struck both of us as we rushed out to help him. The snow leopard, however,
wasn’t anywhere in sight, but the entire tent that housed Ravi and Rajnish had collapsed
and lay in a heap with the sounds coming from somewhere inside it. It took quite some time
for us to recover the inmates of the tent, of which Ravi was found hiding under his bed still
crying for help and Rajnish lay on the ground totally confused at the turn of the events. It
was only later that we found out what actually happened, and there was no snow leopard
involved in it in person. MKD’s story actually gave Rajnish a nightmare of being attacked by
a snow leopard and for that he had cried out in his sleep. That had woken up his campmate
Ravi and given him the impression of the sound of a snow leopard attacking him, for which
he shouted for help and tried to hide himself under Rajnish’s bed. However, in that attempt
to get his buffalo sized body frame underneath the small bed, he had overturned the entire
bed along with Rajnish, and the weight of Rajnish pulled the entire tent down. The
combined weight of the tent, Rajnish and his bed upon him gave Ravi the impression that
the snow leopard was sitting just above him, and he continued shouting for help until we
explained to him what had actually occurred. Throughout the entire fiasco, MKD was out of
the scene and appeared only after everything got settled, brandishing a thin piece of wood,
and then got very much disappointed on finding nothing of importance left for him to do.

The final night of the trip was the coldest and the harshest of all, but it had the associated
comforting and motivating factor that the trip would be over the next day and soon we
would be able to return to the comparative warmth of Roorkee. Somehow, somewhere at a
corner of the heart there was a longing to be in the comfortable, gentle and sunny winters of
Durgapur which at any time was far more enjoyable than this brutal and bleak climate
prevailing at Spiti, with or without the company of Asha Oberoi. The field-work was finally
over in the evening with all the geological formations duly mapped and analyzed with as
much sincerity as could be mustered in such a climate. MKD, however, didn’t appreciate
our efforts and kept on whining that things were more difficult during his days and he had
been far too lenient compared to his thesis guides. Ravi probably wasn’t too much
convinced about it and enquired if MKD’s guides were somehow related to Stalin, Hitler or
Khrushchev. This uninvited curiosity made MKD mad and earned us a punishment in form

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of a six-mile long nighttime trek back to our camp. I tried to escape the ordeal pointing out
that the difficulties of carrying such a burden of a bagful of rock samples while walking in
such a terrain. For that MKD considerately and compassionately reduced the load of the
lunchbox from my bag, leaving me to carry the remainder of the bag’s contents. From then
onwards MKD had been walking somewhere in the darkness behind us in a Dev Anand like
swaggering style whistling Hai Apna Dil in his patented tuneless rhythm. It was only near
the ravine where the tracks of the snow leopard were spotted a day before when we realized
that the whistling had stopped and Ravi pointed out that MKD was missing.

The realization that MKD was missing was accompanied by another uncomfortable insight
that we, too, were lost, since MKD was the only one who knew the way back to the camp.
Suddenly, for the first time in the entire trip, a genuine sensation of fear gripped me. The
creepy feeling of being lost forever in these awkwardly deserted and cold mountains made
me feel like crying. Ravi seemed to be more anxious about MKD than himself and that
wasn’t because he cared for him but for the reason that MKD had our lunch boxes and our
dinner in them. He had this supernatural ability of getting simultaneously hungry and
afraid at the same time; the more he was afraid, the more he felt hungry, and the more he
felt hungry the more desperately he worried about MKD. Roy wondered whether there was
any chance of the snow leopard carrying away MKD for its own dinner, and this left Ravi in
further doubts as to whether the leopard would also eat our dinner after finishing with
MKD. Rajnish never thought like someone normal and was more concerned about the
condition of the snow leopard and the extreme agony it would suffer if it unfortunately
came in contact with MKD. It took quite some time to register and resolve our doubts and
concerns, and finally it was decided that for the best interest of all of us we should turn back
and search for MKD.

The search for MKD began desperately with all of us yelling his name hoping to get a reply
from somewhere and using our flashlights to spot any traces that he might have left. Our
cries for MKD echoed against the high walls of the naked mountains and returned to us
without carrying any message of MKD’s whereabouts. At that time there weren’t any mobile
phones and even if there had been, it is very much doubtful that a network would have
existed in such a place. There wasn’t any light visible anywhere except the thin faint
moonlight filtering out of a veneer of clouds and fog. Far below us, on the other side of the
narrow foot track the river Spiti flowed noisily in the darkness giving a lot of dangerous
implications to my troubled mind. In a few days, it would start snowing and the Kunjum La
Pass that acted as the entry point to Spiti Valley would be choked by snow. If we didn’t find
our way back to the camp, there seemed to be a lot chances that we would be wondering
around helplessly and hopelessly in this wilderness for eternity or may be turned into food
by some hungry snow leopard. Ravi was a vegetarian but had huge front teeth and I tried to
gauge in my mind how much hunger he could bear before he turned carnivorous and
cannibalistic. I am not a brave person; in fact, people do call me a chickenhearted
sometimes and the idea of praying to God comes to me only when I am in danger. This
seemed a situation where I felt that I should send an urgent SOS type of prayer to God to
rescue us all inclusive of MKD.

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It might have been the prayer but almost after an hour of frantic search in the darkness a
faint whimper-like sound could be heard from somewhere downhill. Roy who also had
heard the sound thought that it might be the snow leopard whimpering at the shock of
meeting MKD. Nevertheless, as we moved in the direction of the sound, we found it to be
coming from a gap in between two rocks. A further venture inside discovered the source of
the sound to be MKD, who was stuck between the two rocks in such a way as if he was
meant to fill up the gap between them. MKD in all his vital statistics and body dimensions
resembled a big fat pig and it really was surprising how he managed to get inside such a
gap. He had been stuck there for almost half an hour and he was totally exhausted and
despaired when all his efforts to free himself had failed. He had tried to shout to get our
attention but we were out of reach. This time he saw the lights we were carrying and tried to
shout again but managed to get only a whimper and he was lucky enough to get our notice.
Apparently MKD had lagged behind us in the trek but then he tried to be smart and wanted
to overtake us along a short cut that passed in between these two rocks. He had done that a
lot of times in his earlier trips and was confident of doing it this time too, but what he had
failed to take into account was his own volumetric increase from the last time he did it and
that was what got him stuck.

We tried to drag him, push him and pull him out, applying all the principles of mechanics
that were force-fed to us but none of that came of any help. The more we tried, more firmly
did MKD seem to get stuck in the gap than before. Roy began to use his geological ideas and
told us to wait until the rock underwent some amount of chemical weathering and became a
bit loose, so that it would be easy to haul MKD out. Rajnish proposed to keep giving MKD
doses of Milk of Magnesia until it caused a good amount of dehydration and loose motion
and thus help him shed some of his volume. MKD listened hopelessly to our plans, initially
ordering us to get him out, then pleading us to help him and ultimately just silently and
helplessly listening to our mindless insane ideas. It was almost an hour that we had been
trying physically and mentally to dislodge MKD but still he hadn’t moved an inch. The night
was becoming darker and cooler and our energy and patience levels started to dip lower
and lower. Ravi was probably the first to run out of patience and declared that there was no
other way to save MKD than to carve him out of the rock. MKD was advised to stay calm as
Ravi brought out his knife in an attempt to slice of some amount of MKD’s stomach that
was the most prominent part of his body. MKD held his breath as Ravi raised his knife to
slice and as he brought it down MKD came loose from the rocks and dropped unconscious
to the ground with a resounding thud.

The next day was a sunny one, with the clouds parting and showing that the sun hadn’t
forgotten to shine on this part of the world. It shone brilliantly and dazzled against the
snow topped mountains across the horizon. It was the end of the camp and we were to
move to Roorkee where the sun shone far more brightly and generously. The earlier night it
took more than two hours to trudge back to our camp and for the entire duration MKD
walked silently before us, without any swagger or any whistle. He regained his
consciousness and his composure after we emptied a whole bottle of water on his bald
head, thanked us in an inaudible voice and then clamped up, falling silent for the rest of the
trip. The next day there wasn’t any laughing exercises and he left early and alone leaving us
a note to return to Roorkee as per our convenience and a request not to discuss the incident

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with anybody else. We didn’t, but he never took anybody else to field-work at any place
after that and only attended proposals that involved laboratory work. Nobody from our
junior batches heard him whistle or move about like Dev Anand or anybody else from
Bollywood or Hollywood. We, however, did ask our seniors about the snow leopard and
learnt that they dwell in further higher reaches of the Himalayas and nobody had seen them
in Spiti for the past ten to twenty years.

Subhobroto is a geologist by profession but has a passion of

writing stories, especially with a line of subtle humor in them.
Inspired by the works of Jerome K Jerome, Joseph Heller, and
Ruskin Bond, he tries to write in the same vein. Conceived, born
and brought up in Durgapur, he presently lives in Dehradun and
dreams of seeing his works in the print media like those of his
gurus.

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