When I interact with the simple Paharis or
mountain-folk of Himachal Pradesh, I am reminded of Dostoyevsky’s writings
about the simple Russian peasants of his time. Like the peasants of Czarist
Russia, the Paharis are a nice, hard-working, beautiful and spiritual lot.
I wonder what makes them as beautiful as
they are...Is it the fresh food, the vegetables and rice grown on the
mountains? The Himalayan Ferns that look, feel and taste like the paparatnik of
Sakhalin? Is it the fresh and pure air? Or maybe the delicious water that they
drink from the clear streams and springs? It could be that spirituality that
brings a glow from inside out.
These Paharis are no uneducated rustics,
mind you. Even in the smallest of villages that I crossed, I met people who
were fluent in English but chose to speak to me endearingly in Hindi. The
handsome young man running a dhaba by the waterfall in Jana wrote his
grandfather’s address for me in a handwriting that is better than the most
sophisticated of my urban friends.
How nice to greet strangers with a
Namaste-ji and a smile! Maybe the real India is preserved in these wonderful
Himalayan villages.
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