Up in the clouds

If you get past the nationalistic rhetoric, Tawang is a land of fascinating contrasts.

The temptation to pick up that pack of Chinese chewing gum was irresistible, especially since it was priced at Rs 5, cheaper by half than its Indian-manufactured counterpart. But I was well within India, only on my way to Tawang.

This mountainous finger of land nestled among the mountains in Arunachal Pradesh has long been a serious bone of contention between the two most populous nation states on the planet.

Chewing on the gum was a welcome distraction on the road to the territory, which has only two discernible features — it winds either up or down, through countless valleys. With my neck sore and my head resting against the car window, a bunch of ethnic Monpa women toiling away to clear a landslip was a definite attraction.

First encounters didn’t get beyond peals of laughter and shy smiles, which were framed in exquisitely woven wool and chunky stone jewellery. I was impressed with the strength of these women as they hauled massive boulders effortlessly onto dump trucks, and this did play a part in keeping me from getting too friendly. It wouldn’t have taken much for me to be summarily rolled down the steep slopes.

Closer to the main town of Tawang, there is a roadblock composed of a noisy gaggle of teenagers — again, all female. There were no requests, only a demand that they be dropped off in town. Eight piled into the rear seat, and even onto the luggage in the boot.

There were no complaints, and soon I learnt the reason for the rush. The girls had just earned their first pay and couldn’t wait to get to the market. Having finished their Class 10 examinations the previous day, they were eligible to be employed for roadwork and had earned the princely sum of Rs 80 each on their first day.

A spokesperson came forward, and her name was Sibsa. She reeled off a long list of things to buy, predominantly jewellery, but the day she was most looking forward to was two years on, when she would be able to go to Kolkata to study science. “There I can have even more fun,” she laughed.

Travelling around Tawang requires a myriad of paperwork from both the district administration and the Indian army. The district headquarters was a crumbling maze of corridors coupled with an erratic power distribution system.

The spirit of its mandarins, though, deserves commendation. “We work six days a week from nine to nine. We are here to serve,” said a clerk as he stamped my papers by candlelight. My watch read 8.00 pm, and it was a bitterly cold and rainy evening.

I headed up the mountains in an attempt to eyeball the Chinese, only to be thwarted just short of the border by snowdrifts, unseasonal in the month of May. The words of the tourism officer in the town came back to haunt me: “The weather is not the same any more here. Winter shows no sign of ending — it snows or keeps raining.”

The conditions are harsh in the higher elevations for the soldiers manning the border, and this fact was emphasised when I acceded to a request from the army to drop a soldier in town. The visibly upset man was headed home due to a bereavement in his family. It would take him two days to reach the plains, and then a further two days to reach his home in Punjab. He would definitely miss the funeral.

The issue of an invasion by China is passé in the region now. A young Phurpha Tsering, who works in the one-room office of the Monpa Autonomy Demand Committee (MADC), outlines his plans, which are initially pegged to assertions of cultural identity but soon degenerate into all-too-familiar issues to do with the steadily growing non-Monpa population.

I was curious to know the secret behind the scores of women toiling away by the roads. Khunsum Sumoh, a charming woman who was planning her wedding, put it succinctly: “Monpa men only know to drink chang [rice liquor] and shout. I only want to marry a man who is settled in the plains and has a steady job.”

Heading back, there was one last stop. I spotted a yak herdsman’s hut, perched high on a hillside in the snow. Two cups of sweet and warm yak milk, topped with churpi (yak milk cheese) left a pleasant aftertaste on the palate. The Chinese gum, by comparison, gets bitter towards the end.