2025

Fauzan Ardhi/Unsplash

It is hard to write anything about a year when you have lost your father. Everything else pales into insignificance. But in keeping with the attitude of that very same father, 2025 was a year where a lot of other thoughts and experiences ought to be recalled.

One such was the parallels between Jim Corbett's village of Choti Haldwani and the Korean tourist destination of Jeju Island. Having visited both within a few weeks of each other, it was soothing to observe rural life continuing as of old only a few hundred feet from tourist frenzy. In the case of Choti Haldwani, there was also the matter of industrial forestry being ordered to a halt almost 200 years ago from today in a realization well before its time.

The series of visits to the Western Ghats in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu were a welcome reminder that the Himalayas are not the only claimants to mountain splendour. Remote, lush and dripping with life, the ancient mountains of the south warrant further attention. The southern part of India as a whole offers a alternative way of looking at India and that alone is reason enough to delve into details.

The multiple groups of foreign trainees and the monumental task of introducing them to India within the space of a few weeks was a task that I took immense joy in. As I told them, I know a lot about India but what I don't know is far far far greater. It was fulfilling to see them slowly grasp the complexities and impossibilities that made our country special and to also learn how our interests - reading, culture and food - often overlapped.

Health deteriorations and demises in the senior generation were difficult to accept but had to be. The sudden departure of a similarly aged colleague was even more so. His enthusiasm for nature and the accidental encounters in our neighbourhood forests were a part of many daily lives, including mine, and the crude cruel stop to his journey made everyone look for reasons and fail.

On a larger front, the casual hate, violence and other forms of stupidity that were provoked with the Pahalgam terror murders and then proceeded to infect society at large with cute neighbourhood uncles calling for 'Gaza'ing Pakistan and the forceful injection of politics into cricket was also a personal inflection point. What we become is largely driven by what we find pleasure in. If violence is our common love, then there might be not too much difference between us and them. In that department, all of us need to do better.