We lived on a forest estate a few kilometres from the town of Bhimtal. Visits to the markets were few and far between, mainly because there was nothing much to do there. A dozen shops lined the sleepy street. Teashops were the order of the day and we were not entirely welcome in some of them, for the wood they burnt was smuggled off the estate at odd hours of the day and night.
Since there were no good schools there, we stayed in Nainital for nine months of the year. On weekends and holidays, Mother and we children would hire a taxi in Nainital and cruise down to Bhimtal. The cars were huge Plymouth Savoys, in reasonably good condition. When we got to Bhimtal, we would take a dirt track to reach home. The driver would spin the wheel and stomp on the pedals with all the intensity of a racetrack driver, for guiding the ungainly monster up the narrow, winding track was no mean feat. Father had a 1942 model Ford. One afternoon, while dropping my brothers to the bus station, he drove off the road and into a fortuitously placed tree. Both my brothers gleefully expected that they would return home and not have to attend school. However, much to their dismay, Father gave them their fare and rushed them off to the station. The car eventually ended in the lake when a child decided to learn driving in his absence.
Thereafter, on Sundays and when school holidays ended, Father would either send a ‘man’ up to Nainital to return with a taxi or else we would stroll down to town and sit in the Post Office, until the bus came. The ‘man’ would have been sent earlier to the station a kilometre further down to reserve seats for us. This was considered quite the done thing at the time. It was even considered normal for the Kalbera sisters, two old British spinsters, to have their armchair placed in the aisle of the bus on their infrequent visits to Nainital!
Father’s interest in nature was well known throughout the area. An acquaintance from Calcutta sent a letter addressed to ‘Fred Smetacek, Butterfly Hunter, Kumaon Hills’ and it reached safely within a reasonable time. This meant that, besides receiving mashed butterflies, struggling beetles and decapitated moths at all times of the day and night from shy children or brash adults, he was also considered the correct depository for all manners of creatures that residents of the area could not bring themselves to kill. At one time or another, we had a pair of peacocks, a pair of leopard cubs, a serow, a barking deer, wild cats, piglets, hares, rabbits, chicken, a flying squirrel and so on.
Swimming in the lakes was one of the only means of entertainment. At one end of the estate lay the Sattal lakes, of which three were heavenly during the summer months. A fourth filled up during the rainy season. We discontinued swimming there when the cremation ground at the head of the lake was used, but in years when there were no deaths, swimming in the crystal clear water was the closest one could get to flying!
Slowly the town grew. With the expansion of the economy towards the end of the last century came a flood of investors. The hillsides were divided by high walls, barbed-wire fences, spotlights and other paraphernalia of people who claimed that they wanted to ‘live in nature’. In fact, these properties are merely chips in the investment games being played many miles away, changing hands as often as the owners believed they were making a killing.
Today, the sense of belonging to a community is long gone. Strangers throng the streets and shops erupt like fungus to cater to the needs of the growing population. Hard-eyed businessmen wait for customers, while tradesmen from neighbouring states work overtime for the booming building industry. No doubt they will move on when the boom ends. Perhaps, the silence we knew in childhood will descend again. Perhaps, there will be peace and friendliness again, when the value of property decreases and the predators move off in search of new prey.
Meanwhile, leopards still stalk the streets at night. Deer peer down from the ridges at the unusual goings-on below. Monkeys have learnt how to open water tanks to slake their thirst, while feral cows threaten all agriculture businesses. Bhimtal is greener than it ever was during the past centuries, due in large part to the availability of cooking gas and a new awareness about the benefits of forests. Yet the innocence is gone.
But taking the long view of things, I know all this is but ephemeral and cyclical. As I wrote in the preface of my book, when I pad through the stretches of forest down to Nainital, it feels very much as though I am finding my way through a forest in Central Europe. The firs, pines and oaks are nearly the same. And yet, the mountains of Upper Silesia that my father and his father called home are a long way from the outer ramparts of the Himlaya that fate decided would be home to me.
(In this monthly column, authors chronicle the cities they call home.)
Peter Smetacek is the author of Butterflies on the Roof of the World and runs the Butterfly Research Centre in Bhimtal