Revisiting Dalapchand - Second Part

The legend of Lampokhari and an unknown burial at Aritar

I find myself fortunate that my effort to provide information about our state's bygone days through this column is appreciated. I have always considered myself a storyteller rather than a history digger. 

I am just a medium through which these stories, anecdotes, and essays are shared so that readers can learn more about the state of Sikkim. I firmly believe that the more I share, the more I hear in return. To add to last week's article on “Revisiting Dalapchand,” today I share exciting stories of a legend of Lampokhari, which is not recorded in papers but passed on from one generation to another.

BB Rai, my former staff member at Dalapchand SS, told me some exciting stories he had heard from old folks. When the British occupied Dalapchand after the 1888 Sikkim Expedition, the water of Lampokhari dried up. The British men then used the huge landmass to collect rations for the British soldiers and villagers nearby that were dropped from the helicopter.

Interestingly, nearby this lake is a place called "Ration Goan," which is still called by the same name. I looked up the meaning of ration in a dictionary, and I found that it means " a fixed allowance of food, provisions, etc., especially a statutory one for civilians in time of scarcity or soldiers in time of war.”

Another legend I heard from him was about two huge snakes that used to be found at the lake. The British soldiers shot down one of the snakes, and the other one flew off from the lake, creating a massive sound that would never be seen again. Thereafter, an unknown disease spread out at the place, and those British men who shot the snake also died in mysterious circumstances a few days later. 

Some of the British men were buried in a graveyard at Aritar (which is still found to this date, but very little is known about those persons beneath the graves). It is also said that another such unknown burial related to the British men who killed the snake at Lampokhari is found near Pedong (West Bengal).

The story seemed interesting, and I could relate it to a paragraph from the book Among the Himalayas, written by LA Waddell (1899). Laurence Austine Waddell was a multifaceted British explorer who travelled across the Himalayas in the 1890s, and his account was published in his well-read book. 

Waddell writes about a small hamlet that was a trader's halting place. Its name in English was "The Great Flat Stone" (I am told Dalapchand means flat stone, and the stone is still found to this day).

He points out that the barracks on his visit to that place were left abandoned a few weeks back due to the outbreak of a bad epidemic of fatal fever that had claimed lives. Waddell was informed by his Tibetan porter about the revenge of the sylvan deities (the spirit that lives in or frequents the woods) and the water sprites (nymphs that inhabit or haunt a body of water) for an immoral action committed by the soldiery. 

Other oral - stories related to the unknown burial at Aritar say the burials of four dead bodies are believed to be of soldiers of the British contingent representing the “1904 British expedition to Tibet” led by Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Young's husband that had entered Tibet via Aritar (Old Silk Route). 

It is believed that the four soldiers were injured during the massacre and brought to the Health Camp at Aritar Dak Bungalow, where the latter died. A century later, the present burial site was re-constructed into the cemetery by the Aritar Panchayat in honor of those four unknown Britishers.

There are four graves, but old folk say that more people could be buried under them. It is hard to explain what happened then, but the two stories have fascinating things in common. 

I wonder, I too feel strange that if the graveyard belongs to those British men who had actually killed the holy snake, will the grave lying by the roadside receive the same attention and curiosity that they are getting right now?