1992

Beneath the last pine tree of Hospital Dara, the boy built his first business where people came to confirm what they already feared and paid in coins to delay the thought.

The hospital did not rush anyone. It allowed dread to settle properly. Inside, the corridors smelt of antiseptic layered over something older, while the dental wing carried its thin metallic chorus of drills and rinses and controlled discomfort. Outside, the queue bent without complaint.

Old couples arrived hand in hand, not tenderly but with agreement, fingers interlocked as though they had decided long ago that whatever came would be received together. They leaned close and spoke softly of names and dates that had already been rehearsed. Younger men stood apart with folded slips that did not yet matter, while women adjusted shawls that did not require adjusting.

Below this slow arrangement, where order loosened, the boy sat on a flattened cardboard that had learnt him. One leg bent, the heel turned stubbornly towards heaven, as though drawn upward by something it refused to explain, while the other stretched away in quiet refusal. Between them he held a small territory that did not ask permission.

The coins came mostly from the old. They paused longer, looked once, sometimes twice, and gave as though completing a thought they had begun elsewhere.

Within a week he understood coins not as money but as language. He learnt their weight, their sound, their urgency. At the hospital counter, a card required five rupees, and people arrived with notes too large for the system to accommodate. He had coins. Transactions formed around him without announcement. They gave him more than required, not out of generosity but convenience, and he accepted with the seriousness of someone entering a profession.

He became, within days, a master of coins.

Hospitals did not make people generous. They made them practical.

No one carried a voice with them then. Messages stayed where they were spoken.

Months passed until a traffic constable at Hospital Dara, who had watched him without appearing to, stepped out of his routine and stood before him.

“You have understood business,” the traffic constable said. “Now change location.”

He pointed down the road. “Here, people are worried. They count. There, they forget.”

A pause. “Lal Bazaar. More walking. More seeing. People must see you to give. Sitting here you are useful. Sitting there you will be profitable.”

The boy did not argue. The next morning he carried his cardboard-like inventory and moved towards Lal Bazaar, where money moved faster than thought.

Lal Bazaar was already in motion when he arrived, vegetables spread in uneven colours on damp sheets, vendors calling out prices that shifted with the listener’s face. The air carried coriander, soil, frying oil, and the murmur of negotiation. Near Denjong Cinema Hall stood two neighbouring shops, one turning out samosas in a steady rhythm, each batch vanishing almost as it appeared, the other stacked with cassette players and large sound boxes, their music updated to echo whatever the cinema’s posters announced.

A painted poster flapped loosely against the wall of the cinema, its colours slightly faded but its promise intact. Saajan ran inside to full houses, its story repeating for those who returned to it.

Inside, the man in the film moved with difficulty, his leg failing him, his words doing what his body could not. Women wept for him without hesitation, the suffering arranged carefully enough to be believed.

Inside Lal Bazaar, the road loosened and slipped into trade without announcement, as if walking had simply decided to become buying. Under sagging tarpaulin tents sat villagers, still and unperforming, their goods laid close to the ground. One stall insisted on order. Bottles stood aligned with quiet authority. “Careful, if you break. Then you take.”

The bottles were reused,their labels faded but stubborn. Honey Bee brandy had been replaced by thick village honey that held the light in slow suspension, undecided between liquid and memory.

A single honeybee circled them, restless and faintly offended, a hill-born gatherer drawn by instinct yet checked by glass, by sealing, by this bottled, almost urban arrangement of sweetness. It tapped, retreated, returned again. It could not enter, yet refused to leave.

Customers stepped back. Irritation came first, then a thin, unnecessary fear. The vendor ignored both insect and human alike. Nothing shifted. The honey held its light. The bee persisted.

The boy chose his place and laid down his cardboard with care. His first day rewarded him. Coins came, then notes, then more coins. Lal Bazaar accepted him without inspection. People argued over vegetables and surrendered to snacks, frugality and indulgence kept in separate pockets, while the bee continued its small, determined attempt to reach sweetness that would not open.

Then the Denjong Cinema Hall’s doors opened.

“Khi Khyam! Kusyu Buk! Buttuwa Kukur! Stray Dog!”

“Pagla Rambo!” someone shouted from the doorway, the insult thrown without emphasis, as if it had been used many times before.

The man was shoved forward with a force that suggested prior familiarity, his body pitching into the open like something returned rather than released. He was shabby beyond repair, his shirt stiff with old stains, his trousers marked by drink and neglect, the zip left open without concern. A sour smell travelled with him, thick with cheap alcohol and the stale persistence of urine, settling into the air with quiet authority.

He stumbled once, then corrected himself too quickly, his limbs moving with a jerking urgency that did not belong to balance. His grin remained, though its purpose had been forgotten, laughter breaking apart before it could complete itself.

He moved fast, too fast for his shape, and placed a hand upon a woman at the samosa stall with the misplaced confidence of someone who had stopped recognising consequence. She screamed. The vendor lunged. Oil spat in agreement.

The man fled.

He lurched forward in uneven bursts and dropped beside the boy, dragging cardboard over himself as though it might defend him. The smell arrived fully now, immediate and unavoidable.

His breathing came loud. Then he turned.

“You,” he said. “Which cripple are you?”

The boy said nothing. Rambo narrowed his eyes.

“Go to Naya Bazaar. Sit near Gandhiji. Good sympathy there. Here,” he tapped the ground, “premium property.”

Rambo leaned closer. “I own this area. Shopkeepers, cars, police, dogs. Even the view.”

The boy remained still. Rambo watched, then adjusted.

“Fine. You sing?, Dance? Cry properly? Any begging skill?”

The boy shook his head. Rambo clicked his tongue and leaned back, his gaze drifting briefly towards the cinema poster. 

Then Rambo, Gangtok’s madman with matted hair, a split lip, and shining eyes, swayed over the beggar and nodded with drunken authority.

“Saajan,” he declared. “That’ll be your name.”

Then he sang, voice jagged and triumphant, “O Mere Saajan, Saajan, Saajan, Saajan,” Oh My Beloved, Beloved, Beloved, Beloved, “Ishq Mein Jeena Hai, Ishq Mein Marna Hai,” In Love I Want To Live, And In Love I Want To Die.

~

2005

From below, they saw the name first, the new letters of KANCHENJUNGA SHOPPING COMPLEX cut in metal and fixed into the concrete face, catching what little light the night allowed and holding it, as if the building had learnt how to shine before it had learnt how to open. The spelling sat slightly wrong, stretched heavier than needed, as though even the mountain had been made to fit a shape that did not belong to it.

Rambo stood still a moment; head tilted back, and then let out a breath that turned into a laugh.

“Let’s take you there,” Rambo said, tapping his chest. “I’ve already been. Been everywhere inside.”

He grinned. “Once it opens, you won’t be allowed. Opening ceremony. Big people.”

Rambo pointed at the building, then at himself, then at Saajan.

Saajan shifted beside him, his good leg holding while the other dragged. He said nothing. Behind the structure, beyond scaffolding and cement, Mt. Kangchendzonga stood without effort. Some carried small devices that rang without warning, voices travelling through them detached from place. Rambo spat, wiped his mouth, and turned towards the back lanes where the city loosened, garbage bins leaning into one another, the smell thick but settled.

Rambo searched through discarded cardboard and broken pieces until he found a bamboo basket that once carried vegetables, empty but holding its shape, with two uneven holes cut into its sides.

He turned it once, pressed its weave, then nodded. “This will do.”

“You want to go or not?” Saajan nodded.

“You lazy, frightened stray dog. Come.” Rambo set it down.

Saajan dragged himself forward, palms placing and pulling, the good leg pushing and the other following late. Rambo bent, slipped his arms under his shoulders, lifted, stopped, adjusted, and lifted again.

Saajan rose, slipped, caught his shoulder. They held.

Rambo lowered him into the basket, pressing one leg down, folding it where it resisted, guiding the other through. “Stray Dog…Sit straight.” The basket fixed his shape. From inside it, the world shifted; not higher, but displaced.

Rambo tore strips from his shirt, tied them across Saajan and beneath the basket, tested the knots. “Good.” Rambo slipped his arms through, bent low, and lifted. The first attempt failed but with the second, he began taking short steps.

The strain travelled through him into the basket so that Saajan felt each correction, each imbalance.

The building stood open ahead. “Four floors. One. Two. Three. Four.”

Rambo began to climb. The first flight was slow. By the second, he stopped.

“Wait.” By the third, his breath grew louder, shoulders trembling.

By the fourth, he did not stop. He leaned forward and kept moving until he reached the top, stumbled, caught himself. They reached the terrace with Rambo leaning forward under the weight, his breath loud, the basket shifting against his back.

He stood there a moment before lowering the basket. Saajan slid partially out. Rambo looked up at the thin rods rising from the concrete. He smiled.

Rambo stepped onto them, testing each step, slipped once, caught himself, laughed, then sat and began to urinate. Mt. Kangchendzonga stood vast and silent.

“I’d piss everywhere, but not towards her.” He took out a crumpled packet and held a hundred-rupee note. On it, the mountain stood printed and contained. Behind him, the real one shifted between silver and ash. 

A thin wind crossed. The note trembled. The mountain did not. For a moment, they aligned.

“See,” Rambo said. “To get her, I had to do it.” He tapped his face. “The slaps were worth it.”

The note trembled again. The mountain did not.

Rambo brought him down slowly, stopping once to breathe, then out into the lanes without looking back. They returned to Khandala, the abandoned house where they stayed, walls cracked, windows gone, the smell of stale liquor and damp cloth settled into everything. Rambo lowered the basket and sat against the wall, his legs trembling once before holding. Saajan pulled himself free while the basket remained where it had been placed, and no one asked anything.

~

The next day Rambo sat in the alley where alu chewra was served on torn schoolbook paper, oil soaking into old lessons, people eating with small cardboard spoons.

Rambo carried the bottle loosely. When he drank, the taste did not correct him at once; only after it settled did the difference begin. He coughed once, then again.

“Still here.” His breathing shortened, not suddenly but as if space within him were closing. The alley did not change.

“I piss everywhere,” he said, softer now, “but not towards my mountain.” 

A pause. “Like that orchid…” The sentence did not finish. He tried to laugh. Nothing came. His body folded inward slowly.

~

A scooter passed at the mouth of the alley. Someone stepped aside. The alley continued. From inside, voices rose. “Dead.” “Pagla Rambo is dead.”

“Don’t touch.” “Leave it.” “Call the police.” The words remained.

Saajan turned. He did not move at once. Then he dragged himself forward, palms placing and pulling, until the alley opened before him. People stood around the body, not close, not far. No one touched him.

Saajan moved closer. The smell came first. Rambo lay where he had folded. Saajan waited. Nothing changed.

He reached out, pressed the shoulder once, then again, and as his hand slipped he caught the bottle, lifted it slightly, and the smell that rose was kerosene, sharp and thin, cutting through, and he held it there a moment before letting it rest.

His hand remained. Then withdrew. Saajan lowered himself beside him. The alley did not change.

“Police are coming,” someone said.

Saajan reached into the pocket and drew out the folded note. He looked at it briefly. Then kept it.

For a short while, Gangtokians said Pagla Rambo had died after consuming kerosene. The version held because it was easy to repeat. Some women were relieved. Even in death, he had done it with drama.

~

2011

To forget Rambo, Saajan moved. Not far. Just enough for the city to change its behaviour around him.

He settled near MG Marg, outside a public toilet where the rate had increased without announcement. People paused longer there now, calculating urgency against cost, some stepping away, some returning, their bladders negotiating what the city had begun to charge.

Traffic had thickened by then. Vehicles did not pass so much as accumulate, holding themselves in place until movement returned in short, reluctant bursts. Those caught between signals arrived at the toilet with a confusion that did not belong entirely to the body.

Some paid. Some did not. Relief adjusted accordingly. Saajan remained. The city continued to grow around him.

The day began under a sky that held the last of the monsoon without releasing it, the air damp and faintly metallic, carrying the residue of rain that had already passed. It was the eighteenth of September, late afternoon, and Gangtok wore its newer surfaces carefully, as though aware they had not always been there.

MG Marg had learnt how to behave. Once a road, it had been levelled into a promenade, its stones aligned, its benches placed with intention, its edges kept clean in ways that suggested supervision. Vehicles had been removed, and in their absence movement changed, no longer crossing but circulating, as though walking itself had been reorganised.

Below it, Lal Bazaar continued without instruction, close and functional, unwilling to widen itself for comfort, its goods arranged by use rather than symmetry, vegetables still carrying soil, voices negotiating without pause. If MG Marg presented the city, Lal Bazaar continued it.

Saajan had been moved by then, shifted from the corner near Denjong Cinema to the flyover above Sher-E-Punjab, where movement separated into levels and no longer paused long enough to notice him.

Nearby, alu chewra had changed its manners, now served on thin silver foil plates with plastic spoons that bent less but said more about improvement than taste.

The day assembled itself through small repetitions: prayer flags adjusting to uncertain wind, tea poured into glasses that held heat unevenly, voices overlapping without agreement.

Then the ground intervened.

At first, it felt like hesitation, something that might belong to the body, but it deepened quickly into something larger. The surface moved in uneven waves, sustained rather than sharp, as though the mountain had reconsidered its stillness.

Gangtok shifted.MG Marg held its order, though the buildings around it loosened slightly, lines adjusting without fully giving way. Lal Bazaar answered more directly, goods lifted and reset, continuation taking precedence over stability.

The shaking lasted long enough to remove doubt. Windows rattled, shutters struck against themselves, and utensils collided in uneven rhythm, a sound of breaking travelling without immediately revealing its source.

People moved without agreement; some running, others standing still—as though waiting for the ground to decide. Explanations followed and dissolved just as quickly.

“Earthquake!” “Strong one!” “Angry Gods!” “Kalyug!”

Phones appeared, lifted into the air, searching for signal, for confirmation, for something beyond what could be seen. Many did not connect. When the movement reduced, it withdrew rather than ended, leaving dust in the fading light and dampness returning beneath it.

Information followed in fragments: a strong earthquake, near magnitude seven, somewhere to the north. Names moved through conversation-Mangan, Chungthang, Singtam-each carrying damage that had not yet settled into certainty.

Numbers followed. They did not remain small.

Roads were said to be cut by landslides that followed the shaking, as though the mountain had continued the event on its own terms. Buildings had fallen in places where stability had been assumed, and the count of the dead rose without settling.

Saajan remained where he was. The movement passed through him without displacing him, though the concrete beneath him shifted slightly, enough to register. Coins in his pouch struck each other during the shaking, their sound contained.

By evening, people gathered in open spaces.

Paljor Stadium filled first, offering distance from buildings that had briefly revealed their uncertainty. Families arrived carrying blankets and small bundles, sitting close together while looking upward more often than around.

The first tents appeared there before night settled. They were set by those who measured rather than feared-engineers and contractors who understood how structures held and how they failed-choosing open ground not from panic but from calculation.

Tarpaulin stretched across spaces, lifting and falling in uneven wind, producing a sound that repeated without pattern. People gathered beneath, repeating what they had heard, adjusting details without resolving them.

A child handed Saajan a biscuit. It had absorbed the air. Saajan held it briefly. Then ate it. The ground had shifted. The biscuit had not.

Helicopters moved through the valley later, their sound arriving before their shape.

The ground moved again that night, smaller but enough to unsettle what had begun to settle. Aftershocks followed in irregular intervals, making stillness unreliable.

Saajan lay awake. The city no longer arranged itself in familiar ways. Lines appeared where there were none; not cracks and not roads, but markings that suggested the movement had not finished. There was no one walking them. The memory remained. When Saajan opened his eyes, it was gone.

The ground held. For now.

~

2013-2020

Neon entered Gangtok gradually, not as an arrival but as accumulation, first appearing where it was not required and then remaining long enough to become part of the surface, until the night itself began to depend on it.

Evenings no longer dimmed evenly. Light settled across glass and concrete in colours that did not align but did not cancel one another, holding their place without resolving.

The air changed with it, holding less of the old dampness and more of what lingered between surfaces; heat, fuel, plastic, and food oil used beyond its first intention. After rain, the ground still darkened, but it did not remain so for long, and the smell of wet earth gave way quickly to something sharper.

Glass multiplied across buildings and storefronts, creating surfaces that reflected other surfaces, one window holding another, then another behind it, until depth appeared without resolving into distance. People moved through these reflections and did not always return whole, their shapes breaking slightly before reassembling, their expressions remaining a moment longer than the bodies that produced them.

Saajan remained where he had always been.

Screens settled into hands permanently, and people began to look downward more often than ahead, their attention held by movements that did not belong to the street. What appeared on those screens began to carry more weight than what stood directly before them.

Across the street, plastic orchids appeared in the windows of a building, arranged carefully behind glass, their colours consistent, their petals holding shape without adjustment, unaffected by air and untouched by time. They required nothing and responded to nothing.

People noticed. They did not say so. The real orchids reduced slowly, becoming occasional, then uncertain, then dependent on chance rather than placement.

One afternoon, during a brief return of rain, a real orchid appeared among them, placed within the same window across the street. Its petals were uneven; one edge already thinning as though time had continued through it while everything else had paused. Water gathered along its surface and slipped away without a pattern.

No one moved it. It remained through the day and into the next. Saajan watched from where he was. Then it was gone. The space it left held briefly before being filled again.

Across the street, the plastic orchids remained.

Elections continued, and the pamphlets changed with them, becoming thicker, smoother, more resistant to folding, their print sharper and their surfaces more durable. The faces appeared clearer, though they remained just as temporary.

The gesture did not change. They were still placed into Saajan’s hands in the same way, and Saajan accepted them without looking at the faces, noticing instead the paper-its texture, its stiffness, its use.

Convoys returned with the same pattern, though the vehicles improved, larger, darker, more enclosed, their surfaces reflecting more while revealing less. The siren remained unchanged, arriving before the vehicles and lingering after they passed.

Gangtok learnt to glow. The night no longer deepened but held its brightness in place, and shadows shortened, staying close to the objects that produced them instead of extending outward.

Then, in 2020, the city changed again.

The shift arrived through instruction, repeated across spaces until it became habit, the word COVID-19 circulating widely, spoken often enough to lose sharpness while gaining weight. Shutters closed and remained closed, and the streets emptied in a way that felt arranged rather than gradual, as though absence itself had been organised.

Movement reduced, and then paused, and the usual layering of sound thinned into something quieter that did not settle into silence but hovered just above it.

People appeared differently when they appeared at all, faces covered by masks worn correctly, incorrectly, or not at all, speech softened, distance measured and then forgotten. Circles were drawn outside shops, and people stood within them, moving forward only when the space ahead cleared, repeating the motion without conversation.

Small bottles appeared at entrances, pressed into hands before entry, their sharp alcohol smell cutting briefly through the air, leaving palms cold before drying into nothing. Hands learnt new habits, rubbing quickly and repeatedly, as though cleanliness could be confirmed through friction.

The air cleared for a while, and distant hills appeared more sharply than they had in years, the sky widening without changing, revealing what had been obscured by use.

Neon did not stop. It remained lit, holding its colour against empty streets as though presence had never been required.

Saajan remained.

From inside a closed shop, a song played at a volume that did not travel and did not disappear, repeating without variation as though it had been left on without intention—

“Jaha bagcha Teesta Rangeet, tya Kanchanjunga stit…” - Where the Teesta and Rangeet flow, there stands Mt. Kangchendzonga…

Inside, an old shopkeeper coughed once, then again, listening without adjusting the sound. From across the street, the plastic orchids held their place behind glass.

Later, people stood in new lines for vaccination, sleeves rolled, waiting not for cure but for permission to return to something that had already changed.

Days passed without marking themselves clearly. When movement returned, it did so carefully, shops opening partially before opening fully, voices returning in fragments before becoming continuous again, traffic resuming without its previous density.

The system continued. Saajan did not adjust. Saajan watched.

~

2025

By 2025, Gangtok had aligned itself without asking whether alignment was possible. Surfaces held. Reflections repeated. Nothing required depth.

A new mall rose above everything else. It could be seen from anywhere in the city, appearing between buildings, above roofs, behind turns, as though it had learnt how to enter every line of sight without invitation. It did not wait to be looked at. It imposed itself.

Rambo would have pointed at the mall, laughed and said it looked like a middle finger, not raised in anger but in habit.

From certain angles, it resembled a presence that did not withdraw, appearing where it was not required, its glass holding more than it revealed. It stood like an attention that could not turn away, as though the city had developed a habit of returning to the same surface even when nothing changed.

He and Rambo would not have been allowed inside. The thought remained, not because it required confirmation, but because it carried its own certainty. Entrances suggested openness, but the conditions were different now. Cleaner, controlled, measured in ways that did not include people like him.

The MG Marg above held its sharp edges, clean and arranged, where people once crossed freely but now moved in order. And a full-length statue of Mahatma Gandhi stood motionless in mid-step at the entrance.

Saajan remained where he was, the flyover. Below, he overheard a lady standing with her phone pressed between shoulder and ear, her voice moving while the road below did not.

“If the cable car started from Ranipool, I could reach before the attendance register decides otherwise… how long to keep explaining the same delay to the boss.” Her office was not far; she could have walked, but that measure had already been set aside. She glanced at the line of vehicles held in place. “The traffic stands,” she said softly. “Only the excuses arrive on time.” The call ended.

Time had moved through Saajan without announcement. The boy who had once sat on flattened cardboard at Hospital Dara had not disappeared, but he no longer occupied the same form. His hair had thinned and then given way to white, settling into an uneven beard as though it had followed its own logic rather than his. His face appeared narrow and sunken while his hands carried the same motion as before, but slower.

Between two buildings, a narrow gap held. At first, it appeared as brightness. Then it clarified into a line, a fragment of Mt. Kangchendzonga, silver and still, held in place by the space that allowed it to exist.

Looking at it, Saajan reached into his cloth pouch and took out the folded note. The paper had softened over time, its edges worn, its creases holding where they had been pressed and pressed again. The mountain printed upon it stood contained, reduced to ink and boundary. He held it up. The wind moved through the paper first. It trembled lightly between his fingers. He adjusted his hand once. Then again. Until the printed mountain and the distant line held together.

For a moment, they aligned. The paper shook. The mountain did not. He held it there a moment longer than required, the gesture settling into him as it had once belonged to someone else. The hand did not lower at once. When it did, it was careful. The note folded along its old crease, and the line between the buildings had already begun to reduce. He did not follow it.

Somewhere, without direction-

“O mere Saajan, Saajan, Saajan, Saajan…” Oh my beloved, beloved, beloved, beloved…

“Ishq mein jeena hai, ishq mein marna hai…” In love I want to live, in love I want to die.

The sound did not remain, replaced by a new gossip in the town. There was someone new now. A man who carried a stick and struck without warning. They had given him a name already. Aashiqui.

Saajan, on the other end, remained while the buildings in Gangtok continued to rise, not reaching but repeating, as though each new height practised, in glass and concrete, the shape of Mt. Kangchendzonga without ever arriving at it.

~

P.S.

• Gangtok once had a Rambo. Not the one from films. Someone smaller, local, and repeatedly remembered.
• Near Lal Bazaar, there is a place called Khandala. It does not appear on maps. People gather, sleep, disappear, and return. Everyone knows where it is. No one points.
• An earlier hundred-rupee note carried Mt. Kangchendzonga. The design changed. The note remained. The mountain remained.

Through almost 20 years visiting Gangtok, the answer that comes to my mind is ‘dense’. My answer would be very disappointing for the authorities responsible for promoting Gangtok. However for residents, density structures urban life, manifesting in everything from traffic jams to waste disposal. 

Density matters for planners too. Planning documents stress density as the major urban challenge. Across time—from the 1987 document Gangtok Integrated Development Plan- 2000 (Local Self-Government and Housing Department, 1987) to the 2023 document Gangtok 2041 (Urban Development Department, 2023)—the challenge for planners remains how to accommodate accelerating demand for housing and services with a limited supply of land? 

To me density is neither negative or positive, rather it’s the defining characteristic of urbanization in Gangtok and mountain cities more generally. In this article, I explore ways of thinking about urban density that go beyond numerical measurement to the ways density is experienced using the concept of ‘urban atmospheres’.     

Gangtok’s Density

Since 1972 Gangtok has added a lot of people, while the area of the city has grown slowly, especially since 1991. The Gangtok Municipal Corporation lists the city’s total area at 19.28 sq. km. Other studies using multi-temporal satellite images have it higher at 24.87 sq.km. (to 2015, see Diksha and Kumar, 2017: 113). The same satellite data demonstrates a net increase of 7.09km sq. from 1972-2015 with only 2.76% growth in area after 1991 (Diksha and Kumar, 2017: 117-118). The population has grown rapidly in the same period; from 25,024 in 1991 to 100,286 in 2011, to an estimated 191,619 in 2021 and a projected 287,433 to 2031 (Urban Development Department, 2023: 35-36). 

With limits on horizontal sprawl, Gangtok has grown vertically. Floors are added on top of existing buildings, new, taller buildings are built in place of old ones, and multi-floor buildings are built down the steep slopes connecting to lower roads. Some buildings have expanded into ‘air space’; ground level floors may conform to property boundaries, subsequent floors jut out into the air, especially if the building hangs over a ridge or street space. While the Sikkim Government controls building height to between 1.5 to 5.5 floors, buildings routinely reach 6-8 floors. 

Density as calculation of bodies per unit of area resonates poorly with the human experience of the city. As such we can think about density in more diverse ways. McFarlane proposes four potential measures (2023: 1550): 

1. numbers of people living in a defined area (usually ward level in Gangtok); 
2. numbers of people in a room, house or building; 
3. numbers gathering at sites to shop, eat, play, work; 
4. numbers of people moving through space such as streets, transport systems, pedestrian infrastructure etc. 

Crucially, various social, political, and experiential factors determine when this number, the volume of bodies, is too high. These factors fluctuate depending on which bodies are gathered, where, and when. Thus, density can be relational and relative, rather than formulaic. 

To grapple with Gangtok’s density we need to go beyond (but not abandon) calculations of bodies in a certain area and think about experiential factors; how the city feels. 

Urban Atmospheres 

Urban atmospheres helps us explore experiences of Gangtok’s density. The concept of urban atmospheres has gained popularity across the social sciences and humanities as part of the ‘affective turn’ (Thein, 2005). The affective turn concerns the relationships between space and bodily experience. There are many theoretical complexities, and disagreements, as to what constitutes bodily experience. For our purposes we can simply say that bodies feel in ways we can describe, using the language of emotion (fear, joy, stress for example), and in ways that have no obvious or relatable language, often referred to as the ‘pre-personal’ (Anderson 2016: 44). 

Affective atmospheres connect bodies and space as ‘cultural and material constellations that can invoke a spectrum of affective and emotional responses’ (Gandy, 2017: 355). How the city feels varies depending on the space, the subject (the individual, groups of individuals), and other living things and objects. These ‘constellations’ exist in Gangtok at the micro level—the atmosphere inside Orthodox Bar and Restaurant felt by one or two individuals for example, to larger scales—the atmosphere of Paljor Stadium during a football match felt by thousands of people. 

Atmospheres are more than just what’s in the air, yet air –interior and exterior—is a good starting point. Air envelopes the body; it enlivens and dampens the senses. Air carries the smells, sounds, gases, particles, and light that shape bodily experiences of urban space. Recall the English phrase, ‘there is something in the air’ to refer to a shared state, a trans-personal response to a certain cultural and material constellation.

Importantly, urban atmospheres are not simply natural occurrences. They can also be created. Think of the manipulation of air, of light, of sound to evoke certain experiences of space. 

This article focuses on three atmospheres of Gangtok and the questions they raise: light, moisture and exhaust. 

Light 

Gangtok’s density is experienced through fluctuations of natural light. Gangtok sits at 1,650 metres altitude, and at the city’s highpoints, rooftops and upper floors, the sky pours light towards bodies, even in cloudy weather. Yet the mountains themselves and the explosion of vertical construction limits light in different spaces, creating ever-shifting atmospheres of bright and gloom. 

Limited space between buildings deprives light to lower floors. Building into air space above roads and laneways limits light at the street level. The proliferation of multistorey commercial buildings such as hotels and shopping malls, especially on the top of the ridge to maximise views, block light to surrounding buildings. 

Density also makes the duration of time in light, and light of different intensities, unpredictable. With more obstructions, light enters rooms for shorter periods of time than in past years, making rooms colder and damper. At the street level, density blocks light, with seasonal variations, casting shared street space deep in shadow even in daylight.

Less light means more energy. Interior lighting needs to be used for more of the day. Spaces need to be heated in cold weather and ventilated when its hot and wet (see below). Those with access to rooftops can sit in the sun, dry clothes (and chillies), etcetera, but with more buildings being split between more tenants, access to roof space is not guaranteed and may have light blocked by taller buildings in proximity. 

The urban atmospheres of density mean that access to light is uneven and unstable. Thinking about atmospheres of natural light raises the question of who lives in light-filled spaces and who lives in the gloom? How does this change? How fast?  Who needs energy to light up space and who can afford it? And crucially, how does this feel? An experience that likely depends on how close to the sky you are standing. Though the movement from light to gloom is not always negative, sometimes the gloom is familiar, comforting, intimate.  

In recent decades Gangtok has become brightly illuminated, particularly around MG Marg, West Point Shopping Mall, and the various hotels and casinos scattered along the ridge. Seemingly catering for tourists and residents with disposable incomes, the illuminated night atmosphere of central Gangtok seeks to create a sense of wonder, festival, consumption. 

Away from the central area, the atmosphere is dimmer. Moving downwards from the top of town, light shimmers from windows and streetlights. Shops selling liquor or groceries illuminate the night from a naked light bulb, a restaurant sends some dappled light through drawn curtains, and car headlights splice the night with an occasional flare. The mountains facing the city are darker, with smaller settlements and even lone dwellings visible from their illuminated interiors. 

The concentration of illumination around the commercial heart of the city reflects the unevenness of Gangtok’s social and economic geography. The centre is bright, the edges are dark. The centre is for consumption, socialising, tourism and events. The edges are where residents live. While many of the illuminated spaces are exclusive, Gangok’s illumination is very public; it can be experienced by anyone walking through city centre. Illumination is an atmosphere of wonder, yet wonder can wear off with familiarity, and in time the appeal fades for residents while remaining fresh for visitors experiencing the city for the first time. 

Moisture

Moisture plays a complex role in the bodily experience of Gangtok. For many residents, and for thousands of tourists, the ‘crisp’ moist air of Gangtok is a reprieve from the plains. This relative affect works both ways, the bodily shock of the plains hits when leaving Gangtok too, even though immersion is gradual along National Highway 10. Moisture in the air signals freshness to the body, a place unpolluted, unruined, until the moisture gains volume and the quaint morning fog becomes an afternoon deluge. 

In the monsoon, rain hammers the city’s concrete looking for an escape. Clogged drains flood, roads runs like rivers, concrete starts to sink, hills start to slide. The atmosphere attacks the senses with smells of effluent, garbage and sediment. After the rain, the sweet petrichor lingers, but the densely packed buildings wear the downpour on their battered exteriors. Moisture lingers lower to the ground, seeping through soil and rock into walls and pooling at lower floors. 

In the lower reaches of the city, moisture is thicker inside than outside; trapped. Damp and mould creep, settling in walls, on bedding, in human respiratory systems. Clothes don’t dry, dry-cleaners do a roaring trade, and electric fans pulse to dry out interiors. Erratic light exacerbates the moist atmosphere; constellations of damp and gloom. 

In small doses, moisture fills lungs with fresh air and inspires mobility. In heavy doses, mobility slows down. Roads wash away, landslides block routes, and residents experience prolonged nervousness over the condition of the roads out of town. A small few can afford to fly over the debris in helicopter services while everyone else has to wait or navigate disrupted routes with trepidation; a precarious journey for the old, the sick, and the poor. Immobility is exacerbated by the dysfunction of Pakyong airport outside the city, often attributed to weather-related challenges.

Urban atmospheres of moisture contrast the invigorating atmosphere associated with altitude and encultured through colonial and postcolonial affection for mountain atmospheres (especially when compared to the plains) with the nervous atmosphere of dense concrete on soft hills. Who gets to revel in the moist air and who suffers for it? Uneven experiences of moist atmospheres are arranged vertically in the city, experienced differently on higher and lower ground and on higher and lower floors. Furthermore, everyone in Gangtok, regardless of where they live have to contend with the interrupted mobilities from landslides and washed-out roads. 

Exhaust 

Exhaust is a constant atmosphere in Gangtok. Exhaust pours out of vehicles, generators, and kitchen fans. Traffic is heavy and exhaust fumes linger; a sensory counterpoint to the imagination of a pristine mountain city with crisp air. Steep topography prioritises cars over walking, taxis are abundant, the consumer finance boom has proliferated car ownership, the tourism-dependent economy keeps vehicles arriving and departing, and construction brings heavy vehicles hauling materials from the plains in a constant flow. 

Physical limitations limit the expansion of Gangtok’s roads. More people, more buildings, more cars, and only incrementally more road space. Walls of vertical concrete at the road’s edge trap exhaust fumes, fusing with other particles: LPG gas, construction dust, mustard oil, and—in some localities—wastewater and sewage. 

Exhaust permeates ventilation systems and windows of vehicles. It wafts through building windows, especially lower floors. At junctions along main roads clusters of people wait in the fumes for buses and shared taxis. For many residents waiting in the fumes is a daily experience, personal and transpersonal, individual and shared. These gatherings generate encounters among the waiting; classmates, friends, strangers. No doubt leading to conversations about traffic. For others, being stuck in exhaust is part of their livelihood; peddlers selling goods in roadside stalls, guards stationed at gates, traffic police. 

Crucially, roads aren’t just for cars. Historically narrow roads, habitual encroachment of buildings into road space, and (somewhat) limited and damaged footpaths means roads also serve as spaces for walking, hauling, selling, and lurking. Roadways are also spaces for communication; billboards adorn major roads, bringing advertisements and politicians into the constellations of affect. More than visual signals, billboards evoke responses ranging from delight to desire to disgust. 

Exhaust is exhausting. The same density that brings vertical construction brings volumes of vehicles into tight spaces. Mountain topography and walls of concrete trap exhaust fumes, fusing them with other particles in constellations gravid with modernity and its debilitations. As with light and moisture the questions of unevenness abound. Who experiences exhaust and who can opt out? 

Mind and Body

Light, moisture and exhaust are just some of Gangtok’s urban atmospheres. Attention to atmospheres brings senses, emotions, and sensations—both individual and shared—into our ways of knowing the city and its dense fabric. This approach emphasises the contrast between Gangtok of the mind (policy, statistics, representation) and Gangtok of the body (affect, emotion), and the points of convergence between them. This opens alternative starting points for understanding, critiquing, and improving Gangtok as the city heads towards future growth in limited space.  

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Local Self-Government and Housing Department. Gangtok Integrated Development Plan—2000. Government of Sikkim, 1987

McFarlane, Colin. "Critical Commentary: Repopulating density: COVID-19 and the politics of urban value." Urban Studies 60, no. 9 (2023): 1548-1569.

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The article aims to use the method of 'walking ethnography' to examine the streets of Gangtok, specifically Mahatma Gandhi Marg and Tibet Road. This is also my ongoing process of immersive urban ethnographic fieldwork. By placing visual and spatial observations within broader cultural and ecological contexts, this perspective reflects on the interplay between everyday lives and cultural negotiations.

Tracing the Intersections of Street Art and Everyday Life in Tibet Road

Tibet Road in Gangtok is a historically significant urban corridor that once connected Sikkim to the trans-Himalayan trade networks leading into Tibet. Its name echoes these older mobilities and exchanges, situating the street within the histories of commerce, migration, and cultural encounter in the Eastern Himalayas. Today, the road has transformed from its mercantile past into a layered urban landscape, where everyday practices, visual expressions, and memories intersect. Tibet Road comes alive through the sights of shopkeepers, schoolchildren, migrant workers, and passersby who make the street by their everyday functioning routines. Yet its present texture is also shaped by wall art.  They are made up of images of mountains, trekkers, prayer flags, and cyclists, altering the visual landscape and offering alternative perspectives on history, identity, and belonging. They turn the road into a living slate where the past can be reinterpreted and the present visually negotiated.

Once a site of traders on horseback and surrounded by Tibetan settlements decorated with prayer flags, the road embodied a cultural and spiritual landscape. Now, Tibet Road is mostly dominated by hotels, and restaurants. However, trekker shops selling trekking essentials in the street are a window to the past traders’ route and a contemporary trekkers' hub. The wall art depicting Lord Buddha, accompanied by Tibetan inscriptions of Om Mani Padme Hum, reflects the religious sensibilities of the residents of Tibet Road.  As one of the fifty-year-old residents reflects, ‘This makes me still believe in Sikkim as a sacred place, where sacred forces will help us endure the disasters that may come.’ The art, therefore, may be placed at the intersection of the historical and spiritual character of the area. At the same time, it also highlights tensions with contemporary ethnic politics, where the Buddhist narrative of Sikkim is challenged by alternative socio-political imaginaries.

Prayer flags of Tibet Road stand resilient amidst the dense urban transformations, serving as sacred visuals that articulate the road’s cultural identity. From a visual anthropological perspective,  the prayer flags reflect the continuity of spiritual memory. Beyond their religious symbolism, the flags also signal a form of cultural sustainability that preserve intangible heritage, maintain a sense of place, and foster community attachment in an environment shaped by rapid modernization.

The visual depictions of mountains serve as powerful mediators of the sacred mountain and deity relationship. Within local cosmologies, such paintings are not passive representations but active visual practices that embody reverence, protection, and continuity of belief. Even as the imagery of Kanchendzonga is reappropriated within contemporary tourism that market adventure, trekking, and exploration, its sacred aura remains embedded in the cultural imagination of the people. They function as cultural texts, where sacred symbolism and commodification coexist, revealing the layered ways in which communities engage with their surroundings.

Street Art, Statues, and Commercial Signage in Shaping Urban Spaces

Mahatma Gandhi Marg is the main “marketplace” of Gangtok where business communities, some of whom are the “Old Settlers” of  Sikkim, live and work. It is also the public space where people of Gangtok meet for social gatherings, and political demonstrations. It is  the main tourist attraction for shopping and eating. It lies at the center of Gangtok’s urban imagination. Historically, it has functioned as a marketplace where traders met for commerce. Now, it has residents, and visitors. Over time, tourism and enhancement projects by state Mahatma Gandhi Marg transformed into a carefully curated pedestrian zone with tiled walkways, benches, flowerbeds, and controlled traffic producing a regulated version of “public space” that emphasizes both order and spectacle.

Within this regulated environment, street art, murals, and statues have begun to appear as both decorative and discursive elements. These visuals shape Mahatma G andhi Marg’s identity as a tourist-friendly cultural space, while also reflecting the tensions between everyday practices and the state’s commercial vision of the street. The visuals are often a part of the projects of beautification and branding that align with Gangtok’s image as a clean and cosmopolitan capital. At the same time, Mahatma Gandhi Marg retains its character as a marketplace, where local vendors, shops, and cultural practices make the street. Thus, these visuals are not merely a presence but constitute the ongoing negotiation over what counts as public culture in a city balancing tourism, commerce, and everyday life. Comparatively, Gangtok’s visual dynamics resonate with patterns observed in global urban contexts.

Commercial signages in M.G Marg 

Once a theatre hall, is now being converted into a high-rise shopping mall. Malls have become popular in the region, often the main reason for disrupting the “mountain” view. It is a contested development as Gangtok is a fragile terrain and falls into Seismic Zone VI.

The multicultural composition of signboards such as the long-standing ‘Muslim Hotel’ and the historic ‘Star Bar’, is one of Gangtok’s earliest bars, earlier situated below the old Star Cinema.  These establishments on the visual landscape reflect the histories of migration, commerce, and sociability that have shaped the street over decades. The signage further illustrates cultural fusion, as seen in culinary representations like the hybridized ‘Desi Tibetan Laphing,’ an adaptation of the Tibetan snack. Such signboards act as semiotic texts, capturing both continuity and transformation, where community identities, economic practices, and cultural syncretism are negotiated in the everyday life of Mahatma Gandhi Marg.

From a visual anthropological perspective, the shop acts as a counter to homogenized urban aesthetics. By sustaining traditional specialization within a modern business environment, the shop not only negotiates its economic survival but also visually affirms the continuity of Bhutia heritage in an increasingly commodified urban landscape.

Flags as bearers of the changing urban landscape

National flags are a visual proof of allegiance to the state, invoking civic identity and participation in the imagined national community. Their presence in a commercial or domestic landscape signals a negotiation between personal, communal, and national belonging. The street is also not just a public space but also private spaces for the residents. Thus, such visuals re-define the very meaning of spaces. 

Prayer flags and Buddha eyes seen in the community building embody religious and spiritual cosmologies of the Buddhist community, functioning as instruments of auspiciousness, and cultural continuity. These elements accentuate how everyday spaces are sites of ritual and moral inscription, persisting amid urban transformation. Advertising billboards represent the commercial and globalizing forces shaping the urban milieu. Their presence juxtaposes spiritual and civic symbols with market-oriented communication, signaling the capitalist aesthetics into traditional spaces. 

Anthropologically, the layering of these signs indicates a liminal space drawing from Victor Turner's idea of the “in-between”. One that is neither fully sacred nor fully profane, neither strictly communal nor entirely commercial. This layering allows for coexistence of multiple ideas  such as patriotism, spirituality, commercial engagement within the same spatial and temporal frame.

Political flags visually assert a party’s presence, influence, and territorial claim within a community. In urban spaces, where multiple social groups coexist, these flags are not just decorative but they signal the spatial and social reach of political actors. 

In recent decades, many phrases and flags have been appropriated by religious and political ideologies into symbols of assertive identities. Anthropologically, this shift illustrates how material culture can be politicized, where sacred objects are used to assert dominance, territoriality, and ideological power. At the same time, the flag exists in a liminal symbolic space sacred and political, devotional and forceful. Its display can signify godliness for some, yet intimidation or exclusion for others, demonstrating how material symbols mediate power relations, and social hierarchies. This defines how people negotiate these spaces as well.

These elements in such spaces including the presence or decline of prayer flags, limited wall art, and the semiotics of street names and commercial signage are not merely what it directly reflects but reflects the deeper processes of identity formation, and cultural negotiation. In doing so, this endeavour through walking ethnography is just a beginner’s reflection of Gangtok as a site. The main drawback of these reflections is the researcher’s dual role as resident and observer that carries risks of bias, time constraints and restricted observation of seasonal or long-term changes. This is an on-going ethnographic process and the article does not cover every essence in detail but as the work progresses the researcher hopes to explore further. 

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Schacter, R. (2008). An ethnography of iconoclash: An investigation into the production, consumption and destruction of street-art in London. Journal of Material Culture, 13(1), 35–61.

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Kharel, S.(2005). Gangtok : metamorphosis of stereotype-Sikkim-urban conglomerate into a colonial hill-station (1889-1950) : a historical construct. Thesis, University of North Bengal, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/1229

According to meteorological data, in the recent months of 2025–26, Sikkim has been facing an alarming dry spell from December to February, with almost no rainfall recorded in Gangtok and Namchi districts. This severe lack of rain has placed immense pressure on local water sources, raising urgent concerns about drinking water availability as the pre-monsoon season approaches.

As the world marks World Water Day on 22 March 2026, the theme ‘Water and Gender’ helps us understand these challenges more closely.

The prolonged dry conditions have also heightened the risk of forest and bush fires, as vegetation across the state has dried out and become highly vulnerable to ignition. At the same time, natural springs are depleting rapidly, threatening agriculture and drinking water supply, particularly in rural areas.

As the world marks World Water Day on 22 March 2026, the theme ‘Water and Gender’ helps us understand these challenges more closely. It reminds us that when water becomes scarce, the burden often falls on women and girls. Anita Gurung, who lives near the bazar, shares how her mornings are planned around the water supply. ‘We store as much as we can before the flow reduces,’ she says. Since water is available only for a few hours each day, daily life is carefully arranged around that short window of supply.

Existing water supply system and key issues in Rinchenpong
Rinchenpong, perched at about 1,700 metres above sea level, depends heavily on a depression-type spring in the bazar area. Dalum Kuan, locally called ‘Kuwa ko pani’ for generations,has supported more than 120 households. Alongside this spring, surface water from Rishi Khola is supplied by the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED). Despite the presence of both systems, supply remains limited to approximately four hours a day, largely confined to morning hours, indicating a chronic mismatch between availability and demand. Seasonal tourism further amplifies consumption, particularly by hotels and resorts, placing disproportionate pressure on already constrained resources.

Strained springs and rising demand
The town’s population rose from 1,313 in 2001 to 1,458 in 2011, and tourism has grown rapidly in recent years. As an evolving tourism destination, the settlement depends almost entirely on spring-fed and surface water sources to meet both domestic and commercial needs. Despite receiving relatively high rainfall and being situated near perennial water sources, Rinchenpong experiences a condition of ‘scarcity amidst plenty’ marked by unreliable spring flows and inconsistent distribution.
Tika Sharma, who runs a hotel business in the area, notes that peak tourist seasons strain the supply. Hotels and resorts draw water from both PHED pipelines and the spring itself. ‘When visitors come, water use doubles,’ she explains. Tourism supports livelihoods-but it also deepens demand on fragile sources.

Before 2008 spring was open and now it has been cemented for water security.

Supply vulnerabilities and water quality concerns
The pipelines are connected directly at the tip source of the spring and reach the household tap. In many village areas, pipelines are sometimes cut and diverted by others to connect water to their own homes. This often creates disputes within the community. As a result, someone has to physically go inside the spring structure to fix the damaged connection. Such issues often lead to local-level tensions and village politics around water access. Before 2008 spring was open and now it has been cemented for water security. The average household dependency is very high with more than 50 household connections within the bazar area and other villages of Rinchenpong block.

A pipe directs water into a bucket covered with a thin cloth or mesh. This cloth acts as a basic filter, trying to stop leaves, insects, and visible dirt from entering the storage line. It is an affordable and easily available method, managed and maintained by the community themselves. Cheme Bhutia recalls how the water sometimes turns visibly muddy during heavy rains. ‘We let it settle before using’ she says. Yet not all impurities are visible. During the monsoon season, the situation becomes more serious. The survey found that the water often carries heavy sediments, small plant parts, and even leeches. The large amount of mud and debris blocks the pipes, slowing down the water flow and reducing the supply frequency. Because the filtration method is very basic, it cannot remove fine particles or harmful contaminants.

The leaking network
Water loss is another hidden problem. Nearly 20 per cent of supplied water is lost due to leakages. Many pipelines run along or across roads. Vehicles cross over polyethylene and galvanized pipes connected to households. Landslides frequently disturb the network. When pipes crack, dirt mixes with the flow before it reaches homes.

Marmit Lepcha explains their repair method simply: ‘We tie it with strong rubber.’ It is a temporary solution, but often the only immediate option. Officials cannot always reach remote stretches quickly. Over time, improvisation has become part of the system.

The diagram explains how water scarcity develops step by step in a growing town or village. As the population increases, the need for houses, roads, and other infrastructure also rises. This leads to more construction, which often results in deforestation. When trees are cut down, rainwater cannot properly soak into the ground, causing the groundwater level to drop. With less groundwater available, there is greater pressure on existing water resources such as springs and rivers. Over time, this continuous pressure and lack of recharge cause springs and rivers to dry up. The cycle then continues, as growing demand and environmental damage further worsen the water crisis.

Women and the Weight of Water
In most households, fetching water has long been a responsibility carried mostly by women. During dry winters, when water becomes scarce, the burden on women grows even heavier. Every day, they walk up and down steep hillsides carrying heavy buckets just to bring enough water home. Manita Pradhan, for instance, wakes up at 4 a.m. in the quiet, biting cold of the morning to collect a pail of water from a nearby spring before the small supply runs out.

During times of severe shortage, especially in large joint families, water becomes so limited that women sometimes skip bathing for weeks, raising concerns about hygiene and health. In most households, it is women who manage this scarcity-carefully planning how much water will be used for cooking, washing utensils, cleaning, and feeding livestock. When the supply runs low, they ration every drop so the household can get through the day. This burden often goes unnoticed, yet it shapes the rhythm of daily life.

Data from the National Family Health Survey shows that in about 71 percent of rural households, women aged 15 and above are solely responsible for collecting water. Their everyday effort reminds us that water scarcity is not only an environmental challenge but also a social one that places a heavy, often invisible responsibility on women.

Sikkim, however, has also shown that springs can be revived.

Learning from Revival and Rethinking Rinchenpong’s Future
Sikkim, however, has also shown that springs can be revived. Under the leadership of Sandeep Tambe, large-scale spring rejuvenation programmes were introduced across the state. Springs were scientifically mapped, recharge areas protected, native vegetation planted, and recharge trenches constructed. Most importantly, communities were involved in monitoring and maintenance.

Many drying springs showed signs of recovery. The approach demonstrated that Himalayan water systems are interconnected soil, forest, slope, and community stewardship all matter. Rinchenpong’s water stress reflects ageing pipelines, rising tourism demand, limited recharge, and fragmented management. Springs should be treated as shared community resources, with controlled private connections and protective zoning.

Possible solutions are visible: improved filtration at PHED storage tanks, protection of recharge zones, rainwater harvesting for hotels and new constructions, reducing leakages through better pipeline design, early repair systems, and landslide-resistant construction can save significant water. Community monitoring and awareness programmes in schools and neighbourhoods can also improve conservation. Water metering for commercial establishments may help regulate excessive use. But more than infrastructure, what is required is shared responsibility.

The story of Rinchenpong’s spring is not only about scarcity. It is about resilience, adaptation, and quiet labour. In a Himalayan state that appears rich in water, survival depends not on abundance but on care.

The Chettri brothers’ story is a tangle of craft, survival, and stubborn pride. There are four of them Gopal, Lalit, Yuvraj, and Akraj. Each learned Phing and Thukpa-making in a different way. But to understand their story, you have to understand the town that shaped it.

Kalimpong wasn’t always the bustling little town we know today. Long ago, it was just a small hamlet, quiet and remote, until the British and the Bhutanese fought their war. When Bhutan lost the territory east of the Teesta, the British annexed it, linking Kalimpong to the Darjeeling district. What really changed everything, though, were the mountain passes Jelep La and Nathu La, offshoots of the ancient Silk Route. They connected India to Tibet, and Kalimpong sat right along the way. Traders came and went with their caravans of wool, fur, and grains. With them came new languages, new faces, and new flavors.

It was during this time that Tibetan and Chinese families began to settle here, setting up small shops, tea houses, and trading posts. Their presence quietly reshaped the town’s rhythm and taste. Tibetan culture, in particular, seeped deep into our soil, blending effortlessly with Lepcha, Nepali and Bhutanese traditions. Momo, Thukpa, and Phing became part of who we were, humble, hearty, handmade.

When Tibet fell in 1959, everything changed again. Monks, traders, and entire families crossed over, Tibetan and Chinese alike bringing with them monasteries, prayers, crafts, and recipes. Kalimpong became a sanctuary of both loss and new beginnings, where memories of the plateau mingled with the mist of the hills. It was in this mingling of cultures, in this quiet crossroads of histories, that the Chettri brothers found their craft Phing and Thukpa-making. What began as Tibetan tradition slowly became Kalimpong’s shared heritage, carried on by hands that learned through imitation, friendship, and faith.

When I first started writing this piece about the Chettri brothers, the eldest brother, Gopal Chettri still had his Phing manufacturing unit running. There was still a hum of life in that corner of Kalimpong. But as I finish these last lines, even that has gone quiet. The final factory has shut its doors. And with that, a chapter ends, not just for a family, but for an entire tradition.

We chefs often speak of legacy, the slow knowledge passed through burnt fingers, stained aprons, and quiet observation. In Kalimpong, Phing and Thukpa-making isn’t just a livelihood. It is a legacy, craft, a way of life. Something Kalimpong stands out of it.

For decades in the quiet pre-dawn hours of Kalimpong, when most of the town would still be wrapped in sleep, a handful of homes in Chisopani Village would already be alive with motion. The clang of grinding stones, the sift of starch through muslin cloth, and the hush of water settling into silence marked the beginning of another day. By 4 AM, the Phing makers would already be at work. Not because they had to. Because they knew no other way. There were no machines. No shortcuts. Just starch, water, and an instinct honed over generations. Phing, the translucent, glassy noodle, requires patience you don’t learn in culinary school. You don’t make Phing, you become someone who knows when the starch has rested enough, who can read a bowl of paste with your fingers. It’s not work. It’s ritual.

And like many sacred things, it is now slipping away.

Water, the very foundation of Phing and Thukpa making, has become uncertain. Natural springs are drying. Taps cough instead of flowing. What was once freely available now comes with tension and scarcity.

Kalimpong’s crisp mountain weather, cool mornings, dry afternoons, and gentle sunlight, was once ideal for drying Phing. The Phing stretched across Tirpai Hill top, where the Chettri brothers had their drying unit, glistening under the sky like threads of glass. The temperature and air were just right, not too humid, not too harsh. A perfect climate that respected the slow drying process needed for the noodles to achieve their signature chew. Not just Phing, it was also best suitable for incense sticks drying. This unique geography also made Kalimpong a natural trade hub. Its location and craftsmanship turned Phing into a sought-after product, quietly exported to Ladakh and South India, especially to Tibetan refugee camps and monasteries, where familiar food meant comfort. From this small hill town, bundles of carefully packed noodles travelled far crossing state lines and cultural boundaries.

The first time I went to meet Gopal Chettri, the eldest brother, it was early morning. The hills were wrapped in that soft mist that smells of damp wood and sleepy shops. Somewhere up ahead, I could hear it, the slow rhythm of water being stirred.

When I reached the workshop, the air was misty with the running water. A dim bulb hung from a wire, casting long shadows across drums of mung bean pastes water. Gopal's staff at workshop looked up from his basin, his hands white with starch. I watched as he scooped the paste, poured it into a cloth sieve , and let the water drain out the starch water to ferment, cloudy, heavy which he then pooled in another container. 

Gopal shook his head. “Phambi ko Pani,” he said, referring to the cloudy, starch-heavy liquid left behind, “was once as treasured as the noodles themselves. Vendors, hawkers, and home cooks queued up at dawn with jerrycans and bottles walking almost 4.5km from town. By 5  AM, the line would stretch around the block, and only the lucky ones got their share. It was gold in the right hands, the base for Phambi, that beloved spicy jelly laced with Dalle chutney.” 

Gopal says "back in the early 2000s, we sold a packet of Authentic Phing for ₹18. Today, it’s down to ₹15. Meanwhile, the price of mung bean, firewood, kerosene oil, labor and everything else has gone up. Where’s the sense in that?"

And yet, it wasn’t just about selling Phing. It was about feeding a community. Three dishes made from mung bean starch once defined our snacking soul. The most iconic? “Accha ko Lefing”world-famous in Kalimpong, or at least that’s how it felt to us. It wasn’t just a dish. It was a rite of passage. School feast day treat. Saturday outing ritual. I still remember walking down with friends, collecting coins, finding excuses just to sit there and slurp that cold, spicy soup. It was infamous, too, for being a secret hideout where boys and girls snuck off to smoke, flirt, or just feel like rebels away from watchful eyes. No bowls. No forks or spoons. Just a plastic packet, your two fingers, and pure joy. We’d pour the leftover soup straight into our mouths, wiping our faces with sleeves and laughter. Wah, what memory! 

And the irony? The dishes made from the byproducts of Phing-making. Lefing and Phambi sometimes became more beloved than Phing itself. Now, even those are fading. The quality of Phing, Lefing, and Phambi sold at Haat bazaar and small stalls isn’t the same. Lefing has become Laphing, made not with mung bean starch, but refined wheat flour. The texture is wrong. The soul is missing.

Yes, some people are still making Phing in the hills. But the truth is it’s not the same. The ingredients have changed, the process has changed. Once the work of hands and patience, it now hums with the rhythm of electric motors. The taste has changed. People say, “It’s not like before.” Everyone talks about the difference in quality. But no one asks why. No one digs into the reasons. The weather, the humidity, the rising temperatures. Global warming is not just something happening in distant places. It’s here, subtle, quiet, but real. And it’s changing everything. The starch behaves differently. The drying isn’t uniform. The once-perfect Kalimpong sun now feels inconsistent, too strong some days, absent the next. And yet, no one connects the dots. We chalk it up to a bad batch.

Meanwhile, in the plains, factories churn out Thukpa that look the part but lack the soul. They cut corners, cheaper flour, rushed processes and sell shiny packets at throwaway prices. These industrial noodles flood the market, pushing artisans like the Chettri's into a race they never wanted to run. Even when they try to adapt better packaging, wider reach, they lose. Because good packaging costs money. And the market rarely rewards quality. It rewards convenience, volume, shine.

So they are stuck. Modernize and bleed. Stay traditional and disappear.

By the time I met Lalit, the second brother, his unit was already gone. We sat in his kitchen over breakfast, steam curling up from our cups, as he looked back on those years. “It was Phing that paid for my children’s education,” he said softly. But over time, it just wasn’t enough to keep going. Most Thukpa and Phing makers he knew had stopped seeing their craft as a full-time livelihood. What once built homes was now just a side gig. Lalit, the second of the Chettri brothers, had eventually walked away too. “Too much effort. Too little return,” he told me. There was no bitterness in his voice, only exhaustion.

Back in the ’80s, Phing and Thukpa were mostly Tibetan and Bhutanese delicacies, treasured in a few kitchens, rarely made beyond those circles. But Kalimpong was a crossroads. Whispers of tradition often crossed borders and hands.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s brother Late Gyalo Thondup established Thukpa factory in Kalimpong 1966-1967. It was a quiet but influential operation, a sign of how deeply Tibetan food-ways had rooted themselves into this hill town. Gopal and Lalit Chettri first learned the craft of Phing as young workers in a factory run by a Tibetan owner near Sanjay Saw Mill, one of Kalimpong’s oldest units. In 1986, Gopal decided to strike out on his own, opening one of the first Nepali-run Phing factories in town. Lalit chose a different path at first, moving to Sikkim to work, while their brother Yuvraj, inspired by Gopal’s success, learned the craft and opened his own unit.

Yuvraj had picked up noodle-making after befriending a skilled factory worker, bringing that knowledge home. He passed it on to his son, who continues the family tradition today, running a modest unit focused on Thukpa, less temperamental, less workers, less water-dependent, but still handcrafted with care. Yet over time, challenges mounted: water grew scarce, labor costs climbed, and Yuvraj eventually closed his factory after twenty years, turning entirely to Thukpa. 

I’ve stood inside Bijay Chettri’s old workshop, a dim room, barely touched by sunlight. He still rolls and dries his Thukpa the way he was taught by his father Yuvraj Chettri, the third brother. His hands don’t falter, but his voice carries a quiet sadness. “Youngsters don’t want to do this anymore,” he told me. Can we blame them? The work is hard. The hours brutal. Call centers and city jobs promise more money and fewer blisters. And so, what was once taught from father to son now waits in silence for a student who may never come.

Lalit eventually returned from Sikkim in the late 1990s, drawn by the sight of his brothers’ thriving factories. He opened his own unit in 1997 and over time, the brothers’ efforts merged, a family of artisans keeping the tradition alive. Akraj, the quiet fourth brother, never started a factory of his own but became the steady hand behind the scenes, learning from his siblings and helping wherever needed, keeping the units afloat during their heyday.

But dreams, like dough, stretch only so far. Lalit’s unit is long gone, the first in the family to fall to the changing times in 2017. Gopal’s unit, Kalimpong’s last traditional Phing-making factory, has also closed its doors. The next generation has moved on to other paths, leaving behind mung beans, water, and early mornings. The craft that once tied four lives together now exists only in memory.

Three brothers. One quiet helper in the wings. Four lives devoted to tradition. And now, one lost inheritance.

Served at weddings and mourning ceremonies, Phing eventually became a kitchen staple. Its subtle taste made it easy to pair with any vegetable or meat, showcasing its culinary adaptability. Over time, its versatility inspired locals to create a variety of dishes from salads to soups making Phing an integral part of the inter-cultural culinary fabric of Kalimpong-Darjeeling hills and Sikkim. It was and remains a dish cherished by all. I first learned to cook and enjoy Phing from my Tibetan friends, and I suspect most people make it much the same way, with only small variations and personal touches along the way. Just five or ten years ago, Phing was the only glass noodle we knew.

It was ours. Local. Handcrafted. Deeply woven into our food stories and kitchens.

But today, that’s changed. Supermarket shelves are lined with imported Thai glass noodles, packaged with glossy labels and exotic fonts. Somewhere along the way, we stopped reaching for what was made in our own backyard. We forgot the texture of mung bean noodles dried in the Kalimpong sun. We traded memory for marketing.

This isn’t just about Thukpa and Phing. It’s about people. The ones who rose before dawn, ground mung beans by hand. Who trusted their fingers more than timers. Who passed down knowledge through calloused palms, not cookbooks. It’s about food that carried place, identity, and patience. Food that was never meant to compete with convenience but to stand for something far more nourishing. This isn’t just a change in taste. It’s a slow unraveling of memory. What remains is not a business plan or revival strategy. Just the fading smell of mung bean starch in a sun-warmed room. The echo of water being stirred. The laughter over Lefing eaten from plastic packets. The jerrycans once filled with cloudy water that made Phambi.

Is this the slow death of Phing, much like Kalimpong’s Cheese & Lollipop, a local treasure that once represented and gave Kalimpong a unique identity, proudly celebrated by residents and tourists alike? Will they soon exist only as stories and memories? 

First published as a blog post on cloud9kalimpong.com. 2025. 

On a clear morning in Sittong, an elderly farmer Nima Tshering Lepcha walks down a narrow footpath that cuts through terraced fields clinging to the hillside. Twenty years ago, this land grew finger millet and barley-crops that fed families and shaped food traditions. Today, those same terraces are dotted with betel nut and black pepper plants, symbols of adaptation rather than choice. The farmer pauses, looks up at the sky, and says quietly, ‘The weather doesn’t listen to us anymore.’

This feeling echoes across villages in Sikkim and Darjeeling Himalaya. The data collected through focus group discussions and village-level surveys tell a deeply human story-one of resilience tested by climate uncertainty, knowledge gaps, and shifting livelihoods. Together, these villages form a living map of how climate change is rewriting agriculture in the Eastern Himalaya.

Crops that once defined life are disappearing

Across multiple clusters, traditional crops are steadily declining. In Sittong’s Lepcha Gaon and Mangar Gaon, farmers reported that finger millet, barley, kodo, and jowar no longer perform as they once did. Rising temperatures have reduced work efficiency and yields, while unexpected rainfall damages crops at critical stages. In Yang Makum- Upper Panbu village, paddy yields have fallen dramatically-from around ten quintals to barely three. Such numbers are not just statistics; they translate directly into food insecurity and economic stress.

Rising temperatures have reduced work efficiency and yields, while unexpected rainfall damages crops at critical stages.

In Sarantar village of West Sikkim, snowfall used to act as a natural water reservoir, slowly releasing moisture into the soil. With reduced snowfall today, the soil dries faster, and crops struggle to survive. Farmers such as Amar Tamang, Amrit Chettri and Birta Lepcha continue to cultivate maize, potatoes, and peas, but many fear that even these crops may not be reliable in the coming years.

Rain that comes at the wrong time

Rain is no longer a blessing that can be predicted or planned around. In Dhaki Gaon, a single episode of sudden October rainfall destroyed mustard leaves, radish, carrots, and squash. Red cherry pepper dried up in open fields, while cauliflower failed due to lack of irrigation during winter months. Similar stories emerged from Rimbick, Sepi, and Timbure, where irregular rainfall patterns have led to repeated crop losses.

Most villages still depend heavily on rain-fed agriculture. Irrigation infrastructure is minimal, and when rainfall becomes erratic, farmers have little room to respond.

Most villages still depend heavily on rain-fed agriculture. Irrigation infrastructure is minimal, and when rainfall becomes erratic, farmers have little room to respond. Even where initiatives like rainwater harvesting exist, as seen in Dhaki Gaon, ongoing technical support is missing, limiting long-term benefits.For example, regular visits by trained extension workers could help by checking for leakages and silt accumulation in storage tanks, teaching villagers simple repair techniques such as sealing cracks and cleaning filters, advising on efficient irrigation methods like drip or pitcher irrigation, and guiding farmers on crop planning based on stored water capacity. Such targeted technical assistance would ensure the systems remain functional and farmers can adapt better to changing rainfall patterns.

Soil is tired, but farmers don’t know why

Soil degradation is a silent crisis across the region. Many farmers sense declining fertility but lack the tools to understand or address it. In Limbu Gaon, Thambi, Timbure, and Beech Gaon, soil samples were collected years ago, yet laboratory reports were delayed, unread, or issued in languages farmers could not understand. In some cases, reports were never collected at all.Without clear guidance, farmers rely on guesswork. Some use chemical inputs like insecticides without proper training, while others depend entirely on manure and compost, unsure if it is enough. In landslide-prone villages, farmers suggested reversing soil layers to restore fertility, but admitted they lacked the technical knowledge to do so safely.

...farmers’ indigenous knowledge is rarely integrated into scientific recommendations, creating distrust and disengagement.

This gap between helpful technology and farmer understanding happens for several reasons. First, top-down project implementation dominates: experts collect samples and generate data, but fail to translate results into locally meaningful advice. Second, there is a language and literacy barrier-reports are rarely provided in local languages or simplified formats. Third, weak extension services mean there are few trained personnel to visit villages, explain findings, and demonstrate practical solutions. Fourth, institutional follow-up is poor; once data is collected, projects often end, leaving farmers without continued guidance. Finally, farmers’ indigenous knowledge is rarely integrated into scientific recommendations, creating distrust and disengagement.

Thus, while soil testing technology exists and has the potential to improve farm productivity, its impact remains limited due to failures in communication, training, and institutional support. Bridging this gap requires not just better technology, but better translation of knowledge-through field demonstrations, local-language soil cards, regular extension visits, and participatory learning methods that respect farmers’ experiences. Only then can scientific tools truly serve those who need them most.

Pests are winning the battle 

As warmer temperatures have allowed pests to spread into regions that were previously unaffected. Potato crops in West and North Sikkim are increasingly damaged by red ants (Solenopsis species), which attack tubers underground, create entry points for fungal infections, reduce market quality, and often result in complete crop failure. Traditional crops such as maize and millet are also under threat from the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), a newly invasive pest linked to rising temperatures. Feeding on leaf whorls, it causes ragged leaves, stunted growth, and can devastate entire fields. In villages like Fangtar and Tsong, increasing pest pressure has coincided with changes in cropping patterns, pushing farmers away from long-grown staple crops.

Potato crops in West and North Sikkim are increasingly damaged by red ants (Solenopsis species), which attack tubers underground, create entry points for fungal infections, reduce market quality, and often result in complete crop failure.

Shifting to cash crops and to non-farm work

As food crops fail, cash crops appear more attractive. Betel nut, broomstick, cardamom, ginger, and Indian bay leaf are increasingly common across Sittong, Panbu, and Yang Busty. In some villages, oranges are grown commercially, though early decay and pest infestation have become serious concerns.

At the same time, agriculture is no longer the primary livelihood for many households. In Panbu’s Samthar village, farmers such as Kamal Bhujel, Gopi Bhujel are diversifying into poultry, milk distribution, broomstick cultivation, and eco-tourism.

At the same time, agriculture is no longer the primary livelihood for many households. In Panbu’s Samthar village, farmers such as Kamal Bhujel, Gopi Bhujel are diversifying into poultry, milk distribution, broomstick cultivation, and eco-tourism. In Rammam and Sepi, homestays and trekking-related income have reduced dependence on farming. Migration, both seasonal and permanent, is becoming a survival strategy, particularly among youth.

Remittances now support households where agriculture once did. While this provides short-term relief, it also leaves fields fallow and weakens local food systems.

Knowledge exists-but it doesn’t reach farmers

One of the strongest messages from the data is not a lack of solutions, but a failure of communication. Government departments, research institutions, and NGOs conduct studies and trainings, yet farmers repeatedly describe these efforts as theoretical, inaccessible, or irrelevant. For instance, soil testing data is collected from villages, but results are often delivered months later, written in technical language or English, and never explained through demonstrations.Colour-coded soil cards were distributed, but there was little clarity on what terms like “low nitrogen” or “medium phosphorus” meant in practical terms for crop management. Without follow-up meetings or guidance, the information has largely remained unused.

One of the strongest messages from the data is not a lack of solutions, but a failure of communication. Government departments, research institutions, and NGOs conduct studies and trainings, yet farmers repeatedly describe these efforts as theoretical, inaccessible, or irrelevant.

Training sessions often lack practical demonstrations. Soil reports are issued in technical English. Climate-smart agriculture remains a buzzword rather than a usable toolkit. Farmers in Tingvong village openly expressed frustration with research teams that collect data and leave without offering tangible solutions.After data collection, research teams never returned to share findings. In Tingvong, farmers like Dup Lepcha felt “used” as research subjects rather than partners. He mentioned:“They took soil, photos, and our time – but we never heard back.”

Meanwhile, farmers like Anita Khawas, Deepa Chettri are eager to learn. They ask for simple guidance on soil sampling, drip irrigation, seed preservation, organic pest deterrents, and crop selection suited to changing climates. They want examples from similar villages, not abstract models.

Digital tools: small screens, big potential

Despite connectivity challenges, mobile phones have emerged as powerful tools for agricultural communication. WhatsApp groups, SMS alerts, and Facebook updates are already used informally to share weather forecasts and local information. Farmers repeatedly emphasized the need for timely, localized updates-especially during extreme weather events.

However, digital literacy remains uneven. In some villages, farmers are unfamiliar with agricultural apps or online platforms. Training on how to use digital tools is just as important as the information they deliver.

The missing link: markets and value addition

Even when crops are grown successfully, market access remains a challenge.For example, farmers like Sunita Lepcha in Darjeeling and Dolma Tamang from West Sikkim reported that to sell vegetables like cauliflower and potatoes, they must hire shared jeeps to reach the nearest market. During the monsoon, landslides frequently block roads, forcing farmers to either wait for days or carry produce on foot for several kilometres. By the time they reach the market, a large portion of the produce is already damaged or wilted, reducing its price. Because transport costs are high, farmers often sell to local traders at very low rates, even when urban markets offer better prices. This makes farming less profitable and discourages surplus production. 

Capacity-building initiatives for agri-entrepreneurs and SHGs should focus on market-oriented product development strategies, consumer-friendly packaging, shelf-life enhancement, presentation standards, and compliance with FSSAI regulations.

Value-added products-orange juice, dried vegetables, pickles are seen as opportunities, but farmers lack knowledge about processing, packaging, and pricing. Targeted value-addition training can help farmers develop market-ready products. Capacity-building initiatives for agri-entrepreneurs and SHGs should focus on market-oriented product development strategies, consumer-friendly packaging, shelf-life enhancement, presentation standards, and compliance with FSSAI regulations.

Without these links, agriculture remains high-risk and low-return, pushing farmers further toward non-farm livelihoods.

Resilience is already here-it needs support

Despite these challenges, the region is not a story of failure. Farmers practice crop rotation, intercropping, agroforestry, mulching, and terrace farming. Indigenous knowledge continues to shape farming decisions. Community farming, shared labour systems, and collective learning are still alive.

Climate-resilient agriculture cannot be imposed from outside, it must grow from within villages, supported by practical training, local language materials, and responsive institutions.

What is missing is sustained, respectful support that builds on these strengths. Climate-resilient agriculture cannot be imposed from outside, it must grow from within villages, supported by practical training, local language materials, and responsive institutions.

The Eastern Himalayas are changing, and agriculture must change with them. But adaptation cannot happen in isolation. Farmers need knowledge they can use, systems they can trust, and policies that recognise their lived realities.

As that farmer in West Sikkim looks at his fields, he is not asking for miracles. He is asking for guidance, timely information, and a future where farming is still worth believing in. The data makes one thing clear: if we listen closely to these voices, the path forward is already visible. 

The idea emerged almost casually. My friend Lekha Rai, the proprietor of Café The Twins, a book café in Salbari, Siliguri, was in the process of starting a publishing house, later named Foothills Publishing, and was sounding out ideas. I was drawn to it not only because of the gap in children’s literature, but also because it was an independent venture led by a woman, rooted in the region. Somewhere in that conversation, I found myself saying that there was an acute shortage of children’s literature grounded in our own geography. Stories children here could recognise as their own. Biographies for children. Local heroes. Lives they would not encounter elsewhere.

A group of friends of the Café, friends in life as well, came together to think this through. Lists were made. Names discussed. And very quickly, Ganju Lama emerged as the inaugural choice. Ganju Lama was a boy from Sikkim who went on to fight in the Second World War, earning the Victoria Cross and the Military Medal for his role in the Burma campaign, as well as Sikkim’s own Pema Dorji Medal. The timing seemed right. His birth centenary fell in 2024.

There was enough material available. And, perhaps most importantly for me, there was access. His son, Pema Leyda, was my former colleague at The Telegraph.

Writing about a war hero is never straightforward, especially when the audience is young. What do you do with war? Do you soften it, sanitise it, or avoid it altogether? Or do you risk normalising violence by narrating it too simply?

I thought about this for a long time. And then it struck me that in Sikkim, Ganju Lama is already a presence, somewhat, in children’s lives. There is Ganju Lama Road. Ganju Lama Gate. His name is known, but the person behind it remains vague.

More importantly, his story is not only a story of war. Yes, he was a soldier. Yes, his courage on the battlefield was extraordinary. But that is not where his story ends. He returned from war and became an advocate for peace. His bravery extended far beyond the battlefields. His qualities of restraint, moral clarity and compassion are as relevant today as they were then, perhaps more so. I felt children deserved a fuller picture of the hero.

Pema Leyda and his mother, Pema Chuki, gave me long, generous interviews. Chuki Madam opened her home to me, showing me artefacts that carried the weight of memory. These included medals, photographs and books that had travelled with the family across time. They were not just objects, but fragments of a life lived across extraordinary historical moments.

Ganju Lama’s sons have built a well-curated museum in Sangmu, the village where the VC Saab, as Ganju Lama is known in Sikkim, was born. The museum proved invaluable to my research. Its display panels carefully chronicle Ganju Lama’s life and service, alongside his uniforms, personal objects, souvenirs, citations, a transistor and medals, each offering a tactile sense of the man behind the history. I also drew on newspaper reports and online resources, including the websites of the Gurkha Museum and the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association. John Percival’s For Valour proved particularly helpful in piecing together the military record.

I consider myself very fortunate to have Pankaj Thapa as the illustrator for the book. He has done a stellar job with the illustrations, rendered in black-and-white sketches full of movement and drama. In fact, the images informed my writing in important ways, as I went back and rewrote sections to better align with what his drawings conveyed. His sketches feel universal, even as they retain a strong sense of local ethos.

Very early in the writing process, I realised something else. Ganju Lama’s life is not a story for very young children. At least, I am not equipped to tell it in that register. It is complicated. It demands nuance. For that reason, the book is intended for readers aged 10 and above, or for anyone, really, with a reading level of 10 plus.

Take something as basic as his name. How and why did Gyamtso Shangderpa become Ganju Lama? This is not a neat anecdote about a misheard name. It is entangled with colonial bureaucracy, military systems, the martial race theory, Gurkha identity, and the ways in which individuals from the margins were recorded, renamed and remembered. These systems also shaped who was considered fit for military service, and who was excluded from it. To reduce that complexity would be to distort it.

What also makes Ganju Lama’s story particularly compelling is that he was a Bhutia, not really a “Gurkha”. Under colonial military policy, only certain Nepali communities, designated as “martial races”, were recruited into the Gurkha regiments. Ganju Lama’s entry into the force, and his eventual recognition for exceptional valour, disrupts that rigid framework. He remains the only Bhutia to have been awarded the Victoria Cross, a fact that adds another layer of complexity to how courage, identity and recognition operated within the colonial military system.

What surprised me was how much thought the writing demanded. I wanted to break things down for young readers, but I also did not want to oversimplify or dumb anything down. Children are intelligent. They are competent readers. I was determined not to produce a “kiddish” book.

I thought about how I speak to my own children. I have never used babyspeak with them, not when they were younger, not now. I speak to them as thinking individuals. That became my guiding principle. I chose a language that is conversational, but never patronising.

Yes, the book may feel dense in places. But that density is intentional. It is an invitation to young readers to work a little harder, to pause, to ask questions. That, after all, is what reading is meant to do. You encounter something unfamiliar. You grapple with it. You grow into it.

If this book challenges children, even slightly, then it has done its job.

The good news is that this is only the beginning. Ganju Lama is the first book in a planned biography series, with more lives to follow—written by various authors, possibly including me. If the series succeeds, it will not only fill a gap in children’s publishing but also help young readers discover that the histories worth knowing are often closer to home than they realise.

A child's drawing of mountains, sun, river and hut - the universal Indian childhood drawing

The Indian poet Javed Akhtar once made an observation that stopped me mid-thought. He noted that children across India, north and south, city and village, when asked to draw something, produce nearly identical images: mountains in the background, a sun with radiating lines peeking from behind, a small hut, an S-shaped river curving around it, trees standing nearby, and line-drawing birds in the sky.

I grew up in India. I drew that picture. I still draw that picture.

The sameness is uncanny. How do millions of children, many of whom have never seen mountains, who live among high-rises and auto-rickshaws and crowded markets, arrive at the same pastoral scene? They could draw their street. Their building. The park where they play cricket. But they don’t.

Because that’s not what they were taught a drawing looks like.

Somewhere along the way, this composition became the template. It appears on blackboards, in notebooks, demonstrated by teachers as this is how you draw a scenery. The S-river is simple. The triangle-on-square house is geometric and achievable. The sun with rays is iconic. It works. It’s reproducible. And so, it reproduces—across decades, across regions, across millions of small hands holding pencils.

The children are not failing. They are succeeding. They are doing exactly what was asked: reproduce the correct answer.

But here is what quietly happens in that moment of reproduction.

A child in Chennai who has only known the sea learns that her actual world is not the subject. A boy in a Delhi apartment learns that observation is irrelevant to the task. What matters is matching the template. The teacher’s version is the truth. Deviation isn’t exploration, it’s an error.

What quietly weakens is the link between I see, I interpret, and I trust my interpretation enough to put it on paper. That chain gets replaced with a simpler one: authority provides, I reproduce.

This is not a failing of children. It’s not even, in any simple way, a failing of teachers who are themselves navigating overcrowded classrooms and standardized expectations. It’s a system optimized for something specific and that something is not the cultivation of individual perception.

I sometimes wonder what it would look like if a child were taken outside first, not to be shown what to draw, but simply to look. To notice how light falls on a particular wall at a particular hour. To observe that the tree outside the window has a shape unlike any template.

What if the drawing that emerged was rougher, stranger, more wrong by any standardized measure but carried something else? The child’s own seeing. Their own small act of saying this is how the world appears to me.

I don’t know if this would be better. I don’t know what we might lose in the trade. But I find myself curious about what such a person might carry into adulthood-someone trained early to observe, to interpret, to trust their interpretation enough to act on it.

I’m not here to condemn a system that has produced brilliant engineers, doctors, and scholars. The template works for many things. Mastery often begins with imitation.

But I find myself wondering about what we might be trading away. When a child learns that the correct river is S-shaped regardless of any river they’ve actually seen, what else do they learn to override? Their curiosity? Their doubt? Their sense that something doesn’t quite match what they’ve been told? I don’t have a tidy conclusion. I’m not sure I want one.

But I notice that the question extends beyond drawing. If this is how I learned to represent a landscape, where else might the same mechanism be at work?

How I think a career should progress. What I believe a good relationship looks like. How I define success, happiness, and a meaningful life. My opinions—are they seen, or received? Even how I think, how I argue, how I structure a thought.

The drawing is innocent. But it reveals a mechanism. And once you see the mechanism in one place, you have to wonder how far it extends. The deeper implication is unsettling: I may not be the author of much of what I assume is “me.”

I’ll leave you with this: the next time you have occasion to draw something-anything-notice what your hand reaches for. Is it the world in front of you? Or is it the template you learned long ago, the one that told you what a drawing is supposed to look like?

And if it’s the template, you might ask yourself, gently, without judgment:

What else am I reproducing without seeing?