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Shriniwas Joshi
SAGES (Shimla Amateur Garden and Environment Society) conducts two nature walks in a year – the one in summer covers upper hills and the other in autumn, the down hills. Both have great attraction. When Facebook friends exchange the photographs of the ‘walk’, those friends repent who could not make it due to lethargy and lassitude. Their common expressions are: ‘Feeling bad. We wish we were there.’ They say that they will gird up their loins for the next such event but then, at the ripe time, they get enveloped in the words of Wordsworth “The world is too much with us; late and soon/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; / Little we see in Nature that is ours.”
SAGES always invite children of schools for the nature walk and acquaint them with the flora and fauna of the area and tell them about the folkways associated with the area. The students of a public and a government school assembled at Mundaghat (see photo) from where we started our foot journey. Why is it called Mundaghat? It was pestering me since we had done a recce of the area. I enquired from many, including those who live there, about the etymology of Mundaghat. Nobody knew it; even the ‘History of Himachal’ by Mian Goverdhan Singh is silent over it.
It says that Sirmaur and Hindoor states frequently attacked Keonthal state where Mundaghat then fell. The origin of the name came from the book on ‘Himachali Names’ by etymologist Dr Vidya Chand Thakur. He says that Raja Bhupendra Sen, also called Mahindra Sen, ruled over Keonthal from 1862 to 1882. When he died in 1882, his son Balbir Sen was a kid. He was coronated but the running of the kingdom was being done by the widow of the Raja. Thinking that this is the opportune time to beleaguer Keonthal, Sirmaur attacked. The Rani and her brave soldiers fought the battle so violently that they defeated the army of Sirmaur, captured two of its warriors, beheaded them and buried their heads (called mund in Pahari) at Mundaghat.
Anyway, the kachha path chosen for this year’s walk was carpeted with dry leaves amid a verdurous surroundings (See photo). True, some beautiful paths do exist but these remain unknown to us because we have not gone there. I believe that the path, in its narrower version, existed about 80 years ago because on the way we saw a flowing water tank (bawri) made of very old chiseled stones in which there was a plaque saying that this water tank was built by Raja Hemendra Sen CSI in Vikrami Samvat 1993 which is akin to CE 1936. CSI meant Companionship of the most exalted Star of India or ‘Sitara-e- Hind’. The bawri is a neglected place today though the water is still flowing in it.
We, 71 of us, started from Mundaghat and walked a levelled path of about three kilometres to a village Moi Jubbar. Jubbar is a word in Pahari language. It means a flat place where there is doob (grass). Doob is also called joob, so Jubbar means an even green patch. Moi is used to level the field after it had been ploughed. At this village, the lands are plain as if God has used Moi, so ‘Moi Jubbar’.
It presents a 360 degree view of the hills which may not raise your bank balance but make you rich from inside. Those who had strong muscles in their legs climbed up a footpath about two kilometres to the temple of Manoon, the deity of the area and believed to be the avatar of Lord Shiva. The deity does not accept the lamp lighted by the ghee made of the milk of the buffaloes or that of the exotic cows, so each household here keeps a local cow and offers ghee made out of that milk to the deity. The green glades that one sees around the temple of Manoon surrounded by shining forest green trees of ‘Moru’ (Quercus dilatata) are poetry on the Earth. Reaching here and seeing the breathtaking view, one feels that one is soothed and healed and one’s spirits have washed clean.
The writer is a retired bureaucrat
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