Friday, November 20, 2009

Full Power with Power Plant-I

Most people in this country haven't heard of a small village called malana, though you would find awesome reviews for the same place in places like amsterdam :)
The malana time is located distant from this day and age. There is no correlation between how and why things happen in this world of ours and how or why they happen up there. so you guessed this is on a hill, the place is 50 km from manali in himachal pradesh, the route encapsulates bhuntar-zarri- and then to the massive hydro power plant put up at the base of the hill which hosts malana. The power plant (malana 1-malana 2-malana 3-in construction) have ruined the base of the hill, the human presence is sheer contempt. The higher up one goes from here, changes ones perception and slows down that city folk definition of time.
Malana is an ancient city on a beautiful altitude- in winters it can be up with more than 10 inches of snow, and in summers it remains perched at a beautiful height facing one of the tributaries to the parbati river.
Parbati flows from this valley and later goes and joins other tributaries (from rasol and near by valleys) - and moves down to manikaran. A beautiful stream indeed.
malana hosts more than 2000 people- which i assure you is a very difficult task in a state where there is nearly not enough land ever to build due to lack of flat ground. The speciality of the folks here is that they do not have normal indian/caucasion-dravidian mix of features, for many years they were supposed to be the left over of alexanders army who settled here (like in coorg), but recently this has been rubbished- they are indian but the cross breeding has led to significant changes in their features as well as their culture-language-customs.
The power in this place is well documented fact, ask anyone who knows of this place and its history and they will tell you of the special aura it has.
The place has the chief deity-power in the form of jamlu devta- who in fact is jamadgini rishi (who has significant similarity in physical characteristics to kapilash rishi -worshipped across many parts of the country). Jamadgini is a powerful source in the start of parvati valley- i do not know why he chose this place as his home, but it sure has made all the difference i say!
Jamadgini baba is the husband of Renuka Devi (who took jal samadhi in nehan - the largest river of HP), and is the father of parushurama, the legend of many goes that jamadgini gets angry with renuka and asks parushurama (as he was very loyal to his fathers intent) to kill his mother, parushurama doesnt hesitate and he beheads his mother with his axe, the father very pleased asks him to wish/choose a boon... parusharama does- he asks jamadgini to revive his dead mother! the indian legend and weird ass lore.
But kid you not, the power of jamadgini still stays there, couple of years back, the commercialization in activities in malana and the absolute lack of confidence of the malana people in their own god/customs and ways of living cost them terribly. A mysterious fire broke out of the main temple for jamlu devta which soon enough engulfed the entire town on the hill- the consequence being that the age old houses of rock and wood- burnt to cinder and the people there had to rebuild the entire mass again (the government did support them to a very large extent). The town is on one side of the valley- the other side leads to the town rasol (which is at even greater height than malana).
Malana has long remained a foreigner dis tasting town, they do not like outsiders-indians or firangs to come to their town, further they dont like to be touched by any such outsiders. their culture prohibits any commercial activities with foreigners. They are a self sustained town and they wish for a long time (until recently) to remain isolated/secluded.
There are a series of temples here, side to the main temple, this land is above (its called upper malana) the rest part of the town (lower malana) - and the residents ofcourse are decided by their caste- the priestly caste and upper castes live in upper while the labourer people live in lower. Most people from here are filthy rich- they have huge pieces of land in this mountain (the entire mountain is mostly split between different people) where people grow crops -mostly cannabis crops which are processed every year before the winters and sold directly abroad for huge profits. The power plant has almost come till their doorsteps-and the illiterate people in this part of india do not see the harm this is going to cause them- the hyrdro power harnessed from the parvati tributary is distributed to everyone but the malana people. As it happens everywhere- and ofcourse the people are less than happy about it. But this is how this world works- this town self sufficient and living in peace- has been brought to the edge of a commercial pathetic existence with each person vying for more land to grow more cannabis for more profits- all for what? they are stuck at some 2500mts above ground and they can never ever leave.
Why does man have such petty material ambitions even when so close to jamlu, to the sky and to the power plant(s) - all the reasons to remain full power all life long. What is this attractive unkind power that money wields over mans soul? that it makes him vomit for ever more and more and more....


No comments:

Ode to Humanity

I am not a big fan of human kind, the version of life that in today’s day seems to be only focused upon itself. The day’s pass and humans ...