..the soil over here is red…
The soil here is red? The soil over here has more strength to bear fruits! The soil in our place produces only with the help of arsenic, fertilizers and medicines, but here the soil has the capacity to produce without fertilizers and manures… well, this place would have been beautiful if there was a river flowing by its side. A place by the side of the river looks beautiful. Again, hilly regions can be made very beautiful – in hilly places, the weather becomes a little cold… I have been to a place there, it is called Malabar. There are a lot of things to see over there… the vehicle that we went in brought us around – but there are also the government buses, around 5-6. The fare was 55Rs, it is some 6kms… You know what, the road had been built by cutting the hills! The bus would travel upwards, and going, at the lower levels, it was raining but when we reached above, there was no rain: we went so high up that we saw the clouds below us! The same clouds that I could see from below, I could now see from above. There is a lot to see there, tigers and deers… they made the place beautiful by taking care of it.
With whom did you go?
We went in a team of six-seven and a local person who has a car, an acquaintance of mine… he invited me to come over so that I could see the place. I liked it a lot… and it was so cold! We know that in Kerala it is warm, it is the only climatic condition they have here, but there, it was so cold! We did not carry any warm clothes, so we could not enjoy much – we had to come back after going around for a little while…it was so cold up there… There were a lot of foreigners… You need to buy tickets. They have made it such a place: it is a hilly place, if someone tried to cross the fences and see the place, he couldn’t because one needs tickets for everything: the bus comes and you get on and it drops you at a place from where you need to climb two more kilometres, as the bus could not go so high up. I really liked the place… I kept thinking that if the bus should slip from such a place, nothing of it could be traced.
Are there hills in West Bengal?
No, there are no hills there… I will tell you: hills exist only in colder places, that is why tea and apples are cultivated in those places – Darjeeling, Kashmir… these are all hilly regions.