Torsa

At Bhutan’s hillside edge, I stand

Looking back at dusty plains,

While summer’s sluggish water flows

In a thirsty stream that waits for rains

 

Torsa starts herein these hills,

One more of Tibet’s glacial grace,

But she seems wizened, tired too

Slow and steady, there is no race

 

Perhaps she knows, like her sisters here

Jaldhaka, Kalijani on her sides,

They will join the mighty Tsang po south,

Why then the rush for faster strides?

 

Enjoy the hills, the prayer-wheels’ peace

Cherish the peace, perhaps she says

It’s not every day, you get to seep

In the emerald greens, of Druk Yul days

 

I look around, I smell the pines

Indeed - what shame there is in slowing down?

A traveller’s empty pockets of peace

Or the weight of a golden jewelled crown?

 

Come back to this spot, come back in time

Torsa whispers in a sunset flow

When you feel you’ve lost in the race of life

Come back here to these waters slow….

 

31^st May 2025

 

Any road-trip to the Himalayan wonderland of Bhutan needs to begin at the border town of Phuentsholing. Even with eyes closed, you will realise when you have crossed over from India’s Jaigaon to Bhutan’s Phuntsholing – the din and drama effortlessly replaced by a quietude only occasionally punctured by the tinkle of a monastic bell or the chant from a tiny gompa.

Looking back, I consider myself fortunate to have worked for weeks in Phuntsholing, partaking of Bhutanese languor, culture and of course, happiness – so far removed from the non-stop throttle of a consultant’s life in Mumbai. Phuntsholing was a speed-breaker that I have cherished for many a day even after returning back from Bhutan. It was a sleepy, nondescript town with not much activity on – I remember, on a Friday afternoon, with nothing more to do, I decided to take a rather steep hike to the Kharbandi monastery on a precipitous hill at the edge of the town. It was at Kharbandi’s heights that I saw the Torsa river for the first time - sluggish, bereft of heavy volumes of water, but gracefully existent at the foothills of mountains from which Bhutan’s borders began.

I had seen Teesta river on many occasions – the most popular in north Bengal (having crossed it atop the Coronation Bridge to arrive at Bhutan). Compared to Teesta, Torsa was dwarfed, all similarities ending in the phonetics of the names. While Teesta was turgid, turquoise, the thick brush-strokes of a painter’s dream, Torsa seemed empty, sluggish, on the expansive bleached river banks of time. My initial response was disappointment, but as I took a few steps back at the monastery’s edge, I saw a bigger picture – lofty hills, summer’s expansive skies, the soft colours of prayer flags, and in that frame, the golden threads of Torsa’s waters glistening in the sunset. In a single moment, my emotions changed – the picture looked complete, and I realised not all of life comes in preconceived templates. That rivers, like humans, were all different, embodying different emotions, thoughts and characteristics. Just as Buxa was all dried but flowing through a shingled riverbed of beauty, just as Sutlej, incredibly turquoised, would hurtle down through steep ravines; as Gomti was benevolently caring for a parched Sitapur’s outskirts, or Lachen would collect the glacial melts of a cold desert…

Every river was different – and had a story if you could read it. On that Friday evening, Torsa reminded that in the bounty of the Himalaya, the moment is enough, not the measure – in a fabric where every thread is unique, there is no benchmark nor baseline. There was no harm in Torsa containing just enough water, flowing calmly at her own pace, as long as she continued to care and love the foothills. I still remember, at that moment, I smiled and recollected Milton – ‘they also serve who only watch and wait.’

Years later, I cannot help go back to that moment of truth and scribble a few lines – what better way to spend a Saturday morning

(Images: Author's archives)