Word: kalyanu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bravery & Bears. The first and best part of his story tells how a hillman named Kalyanu became the favored servant of Mr. Bennett, deputy commissioner of Garhwal, in 1875. Having killed a marauding bear by an exercise of intelligence and angry bravery, Kalyanu soared to the conclusion that bears were easy ; he failed to use his head on the next bear and got mauled. Mr. Bennett set his leg, healed him, and took him on as an orderly at a critical moment...
...Bennett and his party arrived on the scene just as the fun was about to begin -an ill-timed arrival for Her Majesty's representative. Mr. Bennett faced down the sullen hillmen, stopping the show, and Kalyanu helped to see him through. Later, Mr. Bennett took Kalyanu along on an exploratory ascent of the high Himalayan range. On a glassy snow slope at 15,000 feet the two men were caught in a cloud. They fell, but broke their fall and were not killed. But Mr. Bennett would never have made it back to camp without Kalyanu...
Anger & Ambition. Three generations later, in 1923, the relationship between Kalyanu's grandson, Jodh Singh, and the new deputy commissioner, Hugh Upton, was more complicated. The district of Garhwal remained the same: the peasants tilled their terraced fields of millet on the mountainsides, drove their sheep and goats to the high, flowering pastures in the spring, sent their women out to gather sticks for the winter fires in the smoky stone huts. Jodh Singh, however, enjoyed the privileges won by his grandfather; he had been to Lucknow University, and he felt it his mission in life to fight...