I have with me four manuscripts of Mr. J. Swami Nath, Former Director General, Geological Survey of India, who expired a few years ago. Some time back we were thinking of publishing a brochure and sought real-life experiences from veterans of GSI, since by the very nature of their jobs, geologists are put into weird situations that are rather strange and striking to the modern urban mind. Mr. Swami Nath sent us four stories of which I have chosen to publish a few here. If I had to be fair to Mr. Swami Nath, I would have to reproduce the manuscript verbatim, but as I identify this blog as something that is 'mine', I take the liberty of effecting, what to my mind, are some aesthetic and stylistic changes to improve the narration. It is quite possible that such stylistic alterations that I do may render the text less attractive in other people's assessment, but I really hope this does not happen and that I succeed.
Mr. Swami Nath retired as Director General on August 1st 1982 after serving in GSI for over 35 years. He has worked in Himachal Pradesh and Garhwal Himalaya and parts of Western Rajasthan. His later service was in Punjab, Karnataka and Orissa and Kerala.
THE PRATAPNAGAR ENIGMA
Pratapnagar - an old capital of the erstwhile Tehri Garhwal State is situated in the Lesser Himalaya at an altitude of about 7000 feet (2121 m). From the ridge overlooking Pratapnagar, one could get a spectacular panoramic view stretching over the horizon, of the grand Himalayan peaks of Bander Punch, Gangotri Group, Kedarnath, Neelkanth, Chaukamba, Trishul and others. On a saddle of this ridge was located an old and now unused palace with its annexe. At the time of my first visit here in the late forties, there was no electricity or water supply. In fact, even a motorable road from Tehri to Pratapnagar didn't exist then and the only approach was by a 7 feet wide mule path over a distance of over 14 km simultaneously involving a climb of 5000 feet (1515 m). Except for the palace, its annexe, and a few outhouses, there was no habitation in the vicinity. There was a spring about 60 feet below which was the only source of water, and there was no water supply to the annexe and the water had to be manually carried from the spring.
It was to this annexe that we arrived late one evening in the winter of the year 1948 after an exhausting climb from Tehri. Gopindranath Dutt and I were to spend about three days here examining some reported occurrences of copper along this ridge. Mr. Dutt was a newly-wed man and his wife was accompanying him. Being quite spent after the trek, we retired early to bed after a hastily prepared and even more hastily consumed dinner.
The next morning, as always, Dutt and I were ready for breakfast by a quarter past seven so that we could set out for field work by a quarter to eight. It was then that Mr. Dutt recounted to me his strange experience of the previous night. He told me that he distinctly heard western orchestral music across the wall of his room interspersed with the sound of speeches and clapping of hands.
I had been with Dutt for a couple of weeks by then and had got used to his 'smelling of ghosts'. At that time I was somewhat amused and took his strange recountings as his strenuous efforts to impress his newly married wife of his valour. In fact, I don't know if he realised that they were also frightening her. Much later, I was given to understand that many others too narrated similar experiences in some of the other places we had camped before arriving at Pratapnagar. However, that day I was still new to all this and ignored him the first morning. The next morning he had further stories to tell. He introduced a new element of having seen bright lights in the room behind his. I had to remind him that we had no electricity and that we were working with hurricane lanterns and there was no possible way of him seeing bright lights and saying thus, I closed the issue.
The third morning he seemed even more venturesome. He tried to 'bamboozle me' by telling me that he kept hearing the sound of billiard balls as if billiards was being played! I tried to jauntily explain to him that considering the terribly poor infrastructure that existed when Pratapnagar flourished as a capital, it was quite impossible to haul a billiard table across those steep hills from the plains. He just told me nonchalantly, without feeling hurt, that I could either take his words or leave it.
(To be continued...)
It was to this annexe that we arrived late one evening in the winter of the year 1948 after an exhausting climb from Tehri. Gopindranath Dutt and I were to spend about three days here examining some reported occurrences of copper along this ridge. Mr. Dutt was a newly-wed man and his wife was accompanying him. Being quite spent after the trek, we retired early to bed after a hastily prepared and even more hastily consumed dinner.
The next morning, as always, Dutt and I were ready for breakfast by a quarter past seven so that we could set out for field work by a quarter to eight. It was then that Mr. Dutt recounted to me his strange experience of the previous night. He told me that he distinctly heard western orchestral music across the wall of his room interspersed with the sound of speeches and clapping of hands.
I had been with Dutt for a couple of weeks by then and had got used to his 'smelling of ghosts'. At that time I was somewhat amused and took his strange recountings as his strenuous efforts to impress his newly married wife of his valour. In fact, I don't know if he realised that they were also frightening her. Much later, I was given to understand that many others too narrated similar experiences in some of the other places we had camped before arriving at Pratapnagar. However, that day I was still new to all this and ignored him the first morning. The next morning he had further stories to tell. He introduced a new element of having seen bright lights in the room behind his. I had to remind him that we had no electricity and that we were working with hurricane lanterns and there was no possible way of him seeing bright lights and saying thus, I closed the issue.
The third morning he seemed even more venturesome. He tried to 'bamboozle me' by telling me that he kept hearing the sound of billiard balls as if billiards was being played! I tried to jauntily explain to him that considering the terribly poor infrastructure that existed when Pratapnagar flourished as a capital, it was quite impossible to haul a billiard table across those steep hills from the plains. He just told me nonchalantly, without feeling hurt, that I could either take his words or leave it.
(To be continued...)
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