Turning back the clock of Singtam-1

Singtam from Google Earth

 This is the updated version of the earlier article I wrote about the early days of Singtam...

When I first read a short biography of Danny Denzongpa in one of the national Bollywood magazines a decade ago, where he mentioned he saw a bus for the very first time in Singtam Town, I was very glad to read the name of my hometown. I never found anyone writing about this place that gave Sikkim its first Nepali novelist in Late Ganga Kaptan. Singtam was once a popular centre for oranges and equally for its weekly Friday haat, but today it is limited to one of the hottest places in Sikkim. Being brought up in the small town of Singtam, it was understandable that I would come across its early history someday.

I had heard old folks talk about those pre-merger days in the early 70s when the gathered crowd in Singtam blocked the road near Bhanu Park and stopped the on-the-run Crown Prince in his motor vehicle, forcing him back to Gangtok. During that instant, the pro-merger activists were caught, made captive, and kept at Thakurbari Mandir! The town of Singtam is also mentioned in world postal airmail history when, in 1935, a series of eight rocket mail firings were conducted over the Singtam River.

To its geographical reach, the town of Singtam is located at 27.15° N, 88.38° E, and has an average elevation of 1396 metres (4580 feet). I still have fresh memories of bullock carts visiting this town in the late 1980s, before I had stepped into my teens. Late in the evening, there used to be rows of bullock carts in front of today’s Om Himalayan Medical Shop. The playgrounds where I have enjoyed playing cricket are now shopping complexes. Well, to some extent, we can read that Singapore too is following the growing demands of socio-economic changes.

From a small inn bazaar to a business town, the few things that remain frozen in time in Singtam are the old British period Iron Bridge, built in 1929 by Burn and Company Limited, Bridge Builders, Howrah, as it is clearly written in its nameplate hanging atop the front and back sides of the bridge, and the only motorable tunnel of Sikkim at Toppakhani. When I look at the age-old mango trees grown along the roadside leading to Singtam Bazaar from the old Iron Bridge, it makes me feel nostalgic. I could feel the thoughts of the people who had planted it. We were taught in schools that if you want to be remembered for a long time, sow a tree.

True to its word, those people who first sowed the mango seed were the first to have thought to beautify this then-small-time riverside community. These trees are, no doubt, heritage trees. The reason for giving added emphasis to these trees in this topic is to bring forth my personal views that there are or were talks that all those trees around Singtam Bazaar would be cut down to spread out the size of the town and help beautify the town. These heritage trees are part of Singtam's history and have gone through many ups and downs to reach their present existence. Destroying those trees means juddering up the past existence of the most happening town in the state. I had read in the pages of old Kanchenjunga magazine that in the early 1960s when there was political unrest between India and China on the Nathula frontier, every Indian Army entering and leaving Singtam was given free orange juice at this very particular old bridge.

Even the construction of the Toppakhani tunnel was carried out around the same time as this iron bridge was put up. I have an interesting account of the Toppakhani tunnel, though it was never recorded in the pages of history but followed from one generation to the next. During the first day of the construction of the Toppakhani tunnel in the late 1920s, the labourers working at the site killed a snake, most probably a cobra. Call it a mere coincidence that from the very next day on, the small inn bazaar of Singtam was surrounded by the mysterious disease still remembered by the old folks as "kalo zoro". Even to this day, when those old folks recall that period, they say Singtam was a desolate town, and a popular phrase related to that endemic was the talk of the state: "Even the crows would not stay at Singtam". The first contractor of the Toppakhani was a Bihari by caste who fled Sikkim after the incident, while the latter construction was completed under Palaram Sardar in the 1930s. I was told there used to be a song written on Palaram Sardar, which I hope someday I will collect.

I was brushing up on the old records of the Annual Administration Report for the years 1923–24. I was surprised to find the name of one accused, Chimi Bhutia, from Singtam, who had gone into hiding after committing theft in Sikkim. In those days, the cases were under extraction between British India and Sikkim, and Chimi Bhutia was caught and handed over to the Sikkim Durbar for trial. The accused was sentenced to six months of rigorous imprisonment, thus making him on record as the first culprit from Singtam.