Pasting busty and its two strange legends

Discovering Sikkim that has its own rich heritage, culture, its legend and many mystical phenomenons had always been my passion and to learn that was something unknown to most people makes me a happy man. Some time back I was to a place called Pasting, a small village with 45 houses in the forest region when at that time the white chaamp flower was at its full bloom.

 Footmarks like spot found at Pasting Busty

I was born in Rongli three decades back but never could have gone beyond the place of Lingtam which is just a half an hour drive. I was then at Rongli along with my father to visit my grandfather’s cardamom field at Pasting. Since grandfather was staying at Pasting for a couple of weeks so we were four to visit him, kaka, nini, father, and myself.

There was a drive till the small bridge near Lingtam. Thereafter there was the walk of my life making my way across the deep forest with leeches hanging around my shoes. While I could see Nini screaming out when one of the leeches entered into her shoe that did make a smile on the rest of us. In an hour we reached a small hut made by aja in the middle of the jungle for his few days staying during the cardamom seasons a few years back.  After taking a rest, aja (grandfather) took four of us to show the cardamom field. 

It was strange till that day no one had ever visited the whole cardamom field apart from grandfather. The field was really big. The flowering buds of the cardamom plant were starting to bloom. He showed the varieties of disease that affects a cardamom plant. He narrated there was a time when the very field would yield 14 to 16 maund of cardamom but this time around one has to satisfy with two to three bora. All we did was look at his face. 

We were moving across the jungle path with lovely wild floras bringing me joy and beautiful birds singing as if they were welcoming us. Aja showed us a huge rock split into two on the way we were moving and told us that once that rock was a single piece but a couple of decades back at noontime a huge bang was heard came and something flew into the air from the middle of the rock that split the rocks into two pieces. Later on, the people nearby told that the thing looked like a Sankha. It was a fascinating one; I have heard several stories of flying sankha that burst from the rocks in other parts of Sikkim and nearby regions. One legend even says a few centuries back, one of the army generals from Nepal was flown in a flying sankha couch to Kathmandu from the Darjeeling regions. 

After some climbing to the hills, he showed a big stone and told that he would let us have a surprise. As he went near the stone, I hurriedly followed him; I finally thought I had something to cheer for. He cleared the spider webs and weeds from small holes and pointed to them and said this is our Devithan (worshiping place). He then pointed to a small mark at the stone above the hole and said this is a footprint of Shivji. I asked Lord Shiva! He looked at me and said yes. For centuries people had been worshiping this “foot mark” during purnay and aaushi. He went on to say time immemorial there was a fight between Shivaji and a demon. Lord Shiva had stepped at the stone and leaped, so this is his footmark. I looked with curiosity and asked how you knew it. He told me he had heard from his father.

Aja showing the footmark

We made it to the house of grandfather back, but I was feeling restless. I was in two minds, I had heard about the sighting of Shokpa, the local name of now popular Yeti. I could have easily believed if the mark were in contrast with the yetis. But at the same time, I did not want to disturb his belief in it.