A contention is often made by scholars and critics that, for a writer, the exterior atmosphere is something that is always present in the ‘self’, and invariably affects the creative thought process. My presentation is about the process of expanding the ‘self’ or adding other ‘selfs’ through a change of the exterior. Moving away to the Himalayas was an effort to explore the layers of the ‘self’. For me, Kinnaur and Spiti valley is not a place or space – it is more like a dear friend.

For almost a decade now, I have been living and working in the North Western border, that is, Kinnaur and Spiti valley. My work, which was initially meant to focus on the traditional theatre and allied forms of the region, spread to reclaiming abandoned Monasteries, organizing dance and theatre workshops and, most importantly for me, documenting the oral traditions. Over the years, I did realize that documenting the oral traditions was in a way taking the life out of them and making them static. While translation from one form to another should preferably provide a movement at the very least and a growth if possible, documenting oral traditions that developed and transformed with each rendering, was putting a stop to the very basic aspect of  the creative in the oral tradition. But the changing lifestyle, the ever growing presence of the mass media, had already made drastic erosions into these forms, even before our work had begun. There was no other way to save these forms but to document then. From the stories and tales that I collected, I developed six full-length plays, perhaps as an apology to keep the forms in movement. More than the documenting and the writing, Kinnaur and Spiti were a process of finding my own self.

Brought up in a Communist family that had originally been Muslim, religionlessness had been systematically ingrained and inculcated in me. My parents didn’t trust me to logically find atheism, it had to be drummed in. It was in Kinnaur that I experimented with Buddhist chants, where I felt the need to make a circle of the Kinnar Kailash, where as an atheist I learnt to appreciate the warmth and vastness of mythology, laugh at, yet love, the antics of the deities. It was here that I realized that in a sari and a bindi, I could successfully pass for a Hindu and walk into any temple, that for all the inner meanings of various religions, it is the superficial that is taken cognisance of. It was in Kinnaur that I learnt of the solace that comes from collective wailing over the destruction of the Baamiyan Buddhas, and again here it was that folk tales transformed into stones and that stones danced to the rhythms of the winds.

Suddenly a tumbledown, ruined monastery would turn inviting, forcing one to go back and discover the beautiful Buddha, a hand missing, probably given up because an incomplete god was not to be worshipped, or a quaint pagoda-style mandir, its peak merging with the sister peaks of the mountains, reminiscent of the times when the urban Hindu had not taken over the job of telling the Pahari Pagan what his temples should look like. The doorway is so intricately carved that one is nervous to open it, lest the idol inside be a letdown.

Upper Kinnaur is perhaps even more exciting and, crossing it, one reaches the Sangla valley. At the very end, is the small village Chhitkul, where, from the top of the northern mountains, one can have a glimpse of Tibet on clear days.

But perhaps the most remarkable attraction of upper Kinnaur is the people. Shockingly good-looking, with high musical voices that merge with the gurgling springs and the drums they play at the slightest provocation – something that had so surprised the early travellers that they had exclaimed, “Kim Narha? Are they human?” giving this place its name, Kinnaur. As interesting as the land and its people, are rituals struggling now to remain alive. One of them being – telling stories through long winter nights. A few decades back, this might have been a way of saving on the wood – the whole village would collect in a room and out would pour a story, keeping out the freezing night, warming the sound to a smooth passage through the hourglass, passing on history, beliefs, traditions to the next generation. I love stories and who doesn’t? It may be a tradition that is revived every winter and this might be the height of summer with everyone pitching in to help in the fields and apple orchards – I knew I had the persuasive powers to bring round the elderly woman who had been pointed out to me as a storehouse of tales and legends of the region. A few concerned questions about arthritis, vague suggestions of cures and any person on the wrong side of seventy would become a soap cake forgotten in the sun.

In one of my innumerable treks on the mountains facing Tibet, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Chinese soldiers, I discovered strange stone figures, more like crosses marking the graves in a Christian burial ground, but possessing something shaped like a head and arms in various movements. In the sunlit afternoon they seemed like oversized version of clay figures made by children who had lost interest midway. In the evening, I rounded up the elders around the open campfire. As the bowls of almonds, pine-nuts and dried apricots were passed round, the turns for storytelling also rotated. Several stories later, one of us ventured to ask about the stone figures, so roughly cut but so carefully placed, on the rim of the highest mountain, clearly visible from the crevice below. Dolma Chering, the old woman, looked up at the question and a vague smile crossed her face, pausing uncertainly at the deeper wrinkles. She sighed and, opening her shawl, wrapped it snugly around herself. “Go there tomorrow before sunrise. See for yourself what happens and then I’ll narrate the story of those stones.”

A group of local boys and girls armed with Chinese torches – nothing Indian is considered dependable here – accompanied us in the predawn climb. The sky was still black when we reached the hilltop and waited. Slowly the predawn milky mist, thickening and thinning with its own movement, descended. As the East turned lighter, a strange magic seemed to work itself on the stone figures. Each stone took a complete human form. Then it was as if these stones forms took a life moving in a slow but definite movement toward the edge of the mountain. A strange phenomenon that seemed to lift up one’s soul from one’s body to the beyond – like Muhammad on earth reaching out to Paradise. It lasted less than a minute and then they turned still as the stones they were.

In the dark night, the old storyteller unwound this story from her maize of Kinnauri designs:

Once upon a time, Chhitkul was the capital of the Sangla Kingdom. It was a well-endowed region of beautiful women, fertile land, exquisite artistry and craftsmanship. So beautiful were the artefacts produced here that it was believed that the goddess of art had personally blessed the land. In Chhitkul lived a girl named Sumera. A talented sculptor, she had learnt the art from her father who had once been the royal sculptor. Sangla, being a border kingdom, was often the target of attacks from the neighbouring Tibetan kingdom. The Tibetan king would raid and plunder at will, and the small kingdom was ill-equipped to counter these sudden attacks. The king of Sangla was old and something of a coward. He signed a treaty with the Tibetan king, promising a fixed amount of nazrana every year, buying peace at the cost of heavy taxes that he levied on the people.

The Tibetan king was quiet for a few years, but how could something as tame as a gift provide the pleasure of looting and plundering, the joys of running after scared, screaming, unarmed civilians, of killing them for the pleasure of seeing blood? He gathered his forces and set out on another attack. The king of Sangla, on hearing of the approaching army, decided to run away with his family and other courtiers. The common people also decided to evacuate and find refuge in the neighbouring Rampur Bushahar till the Tibetan king had had his fill and decided to return home. While everyone was preparing to leave, Sumera was not willing to accept this cowardice. She remembered that whenever she had asked her father about her mother, he had said this earth is your mother. Could she run away to safety and allow her mother to be raped? Surely this was the way of the royalty – not of the common people. When her well-wishers tried to persuade her to accompany them, she remained firm, posting herself near a huge stone that had recently been delivered, and began carving a figure. By the time everyone was ready to leave, it was a roughly cut stone soldier. Sumera then persuaded the people to bring more stones and help the sculptors to carve out as many soldiers as possible and station them on the rim of the mountain under which the Tibetan forces would pass early next morning.

Next morning, when the Tibetan army entered the valley, expecting to fall on a sleeping village, they found that not only was the village awake, it was fully armed, waiting at a strategic position of victory, over the mountains. In the moving mist, the stones seemed alive and ready for battle. The Tibetan army beat a hasty retreat. Till today, the stone soldiers stand guard over Chhitkul; even today, they come alive for a few seconds before the dawn; till today, no one dares to attack Chhitkul from the North.

She was silent. The story had been told. But was it complete? What of Sumera? What happened to her?

The storyteller was surprised, as if this character was no longer important. “Her? Oh she was a Devi. Having accomplished what she had come to do, she vanished and was never seen again. Om mani Padmaye Namah!”

Dismissing us, she walked towards her cottage as a question mark dancing in yellow and blue, and the dark of the flames became vivid. Why? Why do we surrender our miracles to the gods? Why don’t we love achievers as humans? Why is a man’s courage forever a gift of the gods? Why do we negate our strengths, our sacrifices and our accomplishments, calling them gods doing? Why are we so willing to wipe out our own contribution and create a recognition for an unseen, untested and unwitnessed god?