'Queen of the Hills' or Queen of the Kills !

Binod Pradhan

We, the people of Darjeeling are as old as these pines and rhododendrons. Our forefathers have spared their sweat and toil to plant these green tea bushes. They have spent their days and nights to lay the rail tracks for the toy train. They have swelled their palms pulling the iron roller singing, " Dwaang tannu sarara...." while they were laying the first road for motor vehicle. Each heritage building were built at the cost of their physical labour. We are familiar with each tone of Kanchunjanga on every stroke of seasonal sun. We anchor our joys in the festivity of Dassai, Tihaar, Loshar, Sakraati, Eid etc.

We live at an altitude of 6812 feet above the sea level but the living standard of most of the people is very low. Certain primary schools of some rural areas here have dripping roof that often washes away tender letters, words and alphabets from the books of those students. Or does it wash away their life? Tea bushes have become like old woman with knotted skeleton and dry wrinkled skin. Some tea factories have become like a haunted dungeon. Our smile was as perennial as Teesta. Our soul was as clear as Rangeet. But now, it seems that all these has caught a bad sight.

Resources mention that Darjeeling tea gets sold for thousand and thousand of rupees per kilogram at international market but the ordinary tea laborer earns not even hundred rupees per day. Is it fair enough for those hands that crafts and moulds the green gold? This is the reason why once an over touched soul hung himself by the branch of a tree.

Sometimes political dialecticians remark that we need to be thrown at the other side of river Mechi, sometimes they try to split us like a jig-saw puzzle. Our latent hopes have jumped from the Howrah bridge innumerable times. Our echoes have been piled up in dusty files of government offices. Darjeeling has traveled a lot from “Mayel- Lyang” to “Dorjeeling” to “Gundribazar” to the post modern epoched “Darj”. You can see our younger generation dozed with multiple identity disorder. Heaps of beer bottles, morphinised pills and smoke wave of weeds immunitiates their calendar year. We need an ontological political austerity to refrain the situation.

But as the saying goes, “grapes are sour”. We are the ones who wait for drinking water in a queue from 4 am; so we know that our dreams are thirsty. The quinine plant that treats serious disease is now itself seriously diseased. We are carefree, we are humble, we are loyal, we are light-hearten, we merry-make and we booze, we genuflect before nature- but we are as much human as you are.

We still want to see alphabets and words blossom inside the schoolbag of our children. We want our fathers to return with sun and stars on his shoulder. We want our mothers to knit and stitch the designs and patterns of our dream-flower. We want our brothers and sisters to marvel the country roads and bring back the lost song of our hilly streams and waterfalls.

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Today, people are being killed at Darjeeling one after another. When will this bloodshed by the armed forces end? 

Is it a curse to be born in Darjeeling? Why is 'Queen of the Hills' turning into 'Queen of the Kills'?