Like millions who have watched the cataclysmic catastrophe that affected thousands in Uttarakhand on television, I am deeply disturbed. I have a personal reason for feeling so affected: I have toured the region extensively for my forthcoming book Garhwal Himalayas – Chorus of Solitude. From travelling to writing to publishing the book has been a long journey on many levels: spiritual, artistic, intellectual and of course physical. I have a sense of dread that the many places I had visited, the people who I had met and interviewed may not have survived the devastation. Every time I see parts of land virtually dissolve in the unprecedented devastation, it seems like a part of me is swept away with it.
My panditji had another take on it. According to him, chaar dhaams is a voyage usually undertaken at the fag end of one’s life, like an ultimate journey to commune with God. He recounts how the Pandavas too had walked in these very places where we tread now, after the Kurukshetra war, as their last journey. In fact, Sahdev, one of the Pandavs, is believed to have died in Kedarnath during this journey. In the olden times, when people left on a yatra of the dhaams, be it in all the four corners of the country Rameshwaram in the south, Badrinath in the North, Dwarka in the west and Puri in the east or the four dhaams in the Himalayas — Yamunotri, Gangotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath — most of them and their families hardly expected them to return.
With a few and relatively primitive communication systems, if they didn’t return within a reasonable time, it was assumed that they had gone on to their eternal journey. However, sentimentally, it kept alive the hope to see them in flesh and blood again without having to face the stark reality of their death. In the last few years, the chaar dhaam journeys into the difficult terrain were being touted as a holiday or a picnic, open to people of all ages. The fact is they were not meant for all and sundry. Incidentally, the only people one sees in most upper reaches of the Himalayas are more often than not sadhus.
Each time I saw infirm and elderly people, women and children making it to the Himalayan shrines on foot, in palkis or palanquins and renting the air with slogans of Har Har Mahadev or Ganga Maiya ki jai, I would smile at their grit, conviction and most importantly, faith. Having travelled in the region extensively, I never really took it very seriously that young children and young people were part of the yatras, but when I see these situations in hindsight I shudder.
At the spiritual and metaphysical plane, I wonder if it is part of nature reclaiming what is hers and perhaps her voyage to wipe out to create anew. One can’t help but marvel how the shrines have stood steadfast amid all this mayhem. For this we have to also marvel at the traditional temple architecture that is designed to withstand minor seismic upheavals like earthquakes and lighting etc and on a spiritual level maybe the prayers of so many over so many centuries have something to do with it? In addition to the lives lost and places wiped out, there is another subtext running concurrent. The long-term fall out of all this will be that cultural mores of these areas that had become economically dependent on tourism will undergo a complete change. This is not to say that this was the only region that was reliant on religious tourism. Internationally, religious tourism is the biggest reason for travel, and mobilises the largest number of people — be it the Vatican, Mecca, Bethlehem or closer home Vaishno Devi, Tirupati and countless others.
What seems like the sheer fury of nature’s backlash is probably better described as a disaster that was waiting to happen, thanks to diabolic greed. Will the nexus between the politician, bureaucrat and greedy entrepreneur ever end? How about the individual greed of people selling a roti for `80 and a bottle of water for `50 or charging `3500 for a room in a dharamshala? That too in the face of a tragedy of such dimensions? How much more damage has to happen before we wake up?
It is very easy to blame the government, but if one looks at the sheer number of survivors evacuated, one wonders if this could have been possible anywhere else in the world. The army personnel who worked selflessly and tirelessly battling nature’s fury, people’s resentment and anger, hunger and thirst as part of rescue operations can only be saluted by all of us. I had tears in my eyes when I saw the jathas of Sikhs who were willing to volunteer to go to the affected areas to run langars or community kitchens. This truly happens only in India!
For me, these are indications of a spiritual resilience that is intrinsic to us as humans. It renews my faith in our ability to survive against odds and even flourish. My heart goes out to all those surviving local populace that has nowhere to go. I am deeply humbled that my book is perhaps the last serious documentation of the region that once was, and I the mere medium of its revelation.

Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com