Geographical Diversions: Tibetan Trade, Global Transactions

CHAPTER THREE: Silk Roads and Wool Routes

84 CHAPTER THREE Silk Roads and Wool Routes What the map cuts up, the story cuts across. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life Tsering’s Map It is a clear weekend afternoon in Kalimpong, a town of about 43,000 mostly Nepali-speaking inhabitants in the mountainous, northernmost tip of West Bengal. The rhododendrons are glaringly bright against the green foliage and the Himalayas hover on the horizon; it is especially pleasant after months of heavy monsoon rain, moldy clothes, and the sporadic landslides that prevented the delivery of provisions to the local shops for weeks on end. I am on my way to meet a man named Tsering, someone whom my friend Prakash insists I must speak with if I am doing research about the Lhasa–Kalimpong trade route. I walk quickly down the hill, past the Mela (festival) ground and the motor stand in the center of town, where shared jeeps are available to other towns in the hill region: to Gangtok, to Kurseong, to Siliguri, to Darjeeling. I decide to pass through the haat bazaar, the twice-weekly market, on my way to meet Tsering . Most stalls feature produce, mostly from local farms—vegetables, potatoes, tofu, spices, spinach, ginger, brinjals (eggplants), tomatoes, and oranges. Then there are the bag stalls. These are piled high with bags from China, bags featuring characters that look more or less like Snoopy but with “pnoosy” written underneath, athletic bags, and school bags with plastic zippers already in need of repair. There are rows of knives, piles of brown sugar, yeast, cheese, churpee (hard yak cheese), spices, and ready-made clothing, the latter all from China. Small household items are carefully laid out and displayed: things like small locks, batteries, nail files, plastic jewelry, bangles dusty with glitter, and posters featuring Jesus, cherubic white babies in frilly dresses, and tropical scenes with inspirational sayings like “You are so special” and “A man who spends too much is a spendthrift.” My field notes soon resemble the lists of commodities that fascinated early travelers in historical accounts about Himalayan markets as well Silk Roads and Wool Routes • 85 as the oral narratives of elderly traders, except that several of the goods now come from significantly different geographical origins or directions of trade. Tsering is a man in his early sixties who comes from a long-standing, elite Sikkimese family that was involved in the Lhasa trade in the 1940s and 1950s. Currently active in the hotel and restaurant industry in Kalimpong, he is part of a loosely defined group of merchants, hoteliers, travel agency representatives , and local officials who are lobbying the Indian government to reopen the Jelep-la mountain pass as a supplement to Nathu-la, the Sino-Indian pass only five kilometers north of Jelep-la, which was reopened for trade in June 2006. The group argues that the trade route passing through Nathu-la heads straight to Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, bypassing the town of Kalimpong, which was one of the major hubs of Tibetan trade at least until the 1960s. As Jelep-la was the route that was historically utilized for regular trade, reopening it, would, in their opinion, provide an impetus to economic activity so that “Kalimpong can regain its lost glory.” When I am first shown into Tsering’s hotel office, I see him busily poring over three different maps while trying to draw the Lhasa–Kalimpong trade FIGURE 17. The Mela (festival) ground in Kalimpong, 2006. Tina Harris. 86 • Chapter Three route on a separate blank sheet of paper, marking the location of both Nathu-la and Jelep-la. I ask him what kind of map he is making. He points to one of the official-looking maps, saying that it is “only a Sikkim map” and that it doesn’t show the rest of North Bengal. He then shows me another map, which depicts all of West Bengal, but only up to the border with Sikkim, and no mountain passes appear to be labeled. Neither of these maps seems suitable for his purpose —namely, showing “the Government of India in Delhi the comparison between both routes, so they can see for themselves which one will be better.” “There are no good maps!” he sighs. Some Context: States, Borderlands, Constructs The relationship between India and China has been featured regularly in the global media throughout the beginning of the twenty-first century...