Dead time in Dharchula

I soon forgot about the shortage of rations once I reached the small hill town. Pure rarefied oxygen, the gurgling Kali river and the breathtaking Himalayas dotted with monsoon nullahs was all one needed to live on. The Army cantonment area and the quaint market were the only eyesores.

The town was swarming with interfering politicians, pussyfooting bureaucrats, hysterical relatives and pesky journalists like me. Soon after my arrival, it became a mad scramble for everything from the two STD phones to the last available bed at the JCO mess. As predicted, there were no green vegetable available. And the Army mess had sealed off all its liquor stocks as there had been a massive influx of personnel from all over the state.

It became an endless wait for three days. Relief operations refused to take off because of bad weather. As night approached, thoughts shifted to the 200 buried in silence in the mountains. This Kali river was the very one that had taken on the raudra roop next to the camp on that fateful night. These same majestic mountains had buried unsuspecting people in the dead of the night. Dharchula was the last town that the yatris had called home.

Things came to such a pass that one day, I actually had to eat the food puris and achaar intended for the stranded yatris, the relief team and the injured. After all, it was for the sake of getting good copy from as close to the spot as possible, I told myself.Then one morning, suddenly the clouds cleared for a few hours. The choppers were airborne. The futile sorties of the previous days were just a bad memory. Now, they actually started bringing in the injured, found just when they had been on the point of giving up hope.

The town sprang into action. The administration control room, which had degenerated into a weather-report room, was a hub of activity. Wireless sets crackled with calls for medicines, food packets and doctors. A tally was taken of the injured and the dead as they were brought in. The Army, the Air Force and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police flew in the top brass.

Freshly-inducted officers on their first field posting admitted that it had never been like this. As salutes flew in every direction, they reminisced wistfully about their regular afternoon siestas, now an unthinkable luxury.Every activity would stop as the local DM and the SDM attended calls for phone-ins8217; from the BBC, CNN and Star News. quot;What is happening in Malpa?quot; and, quot;Has Protima8217;s body been found?quot; Queries from thousands of miles away. The global village had come to Dharchula.

Then came the toughest decision I8217;ll ever take. Only seven journalists were to fly to Malpa. I did a quick mental calculation. In my place, a Cheetah could carry 45 kg of rations or a trained engineer who could help clear the track. The net result: no first-person account from Malpa. The Commissioner8217;s plea haunted me as I took the decision: Malpa would have to remain in the realm of my imagination.