In the crooks of your body, I find my religion.

this year i cannot celebrate it. i am too angry. i am too heartbroken.

the kumaon region has honoured this day for generations, and so have parts of himachal pradesh. this festival was a relationship between the people and their mountains. and our government has taken that relationship and turned it into a performance and a photo op, while the real forests burn and fall around us.

the delhi-dehradun expressway was built to reduce travel time between the two cities—something the citizens never asked for, only the tourists did. this pathetic expressway instead opened the floodgates to the overtourism that has already been severely prominent in uttarakhand for the past few years. thousands of trees have been cut, wildlife has been pushed out of the only homes it has ever known, all of it sacrificed in the name of "development", as if that one word can launder what has been done here.

and now this. locals have already reported fresh tree felling inside the iconic 'saat mod' (7 bends) of the dehradun reserve forest. the government plans to completely straighten this legendary, scenic ecosystem just to facilitate a bit faster tourist movement. i genuinely don't have words for how much this hurts, and i don't have words for how much this enrages me.

so today, on the 15th of july, we are not celebrating harela. we stand and mourn it. today we observe black harela.

black harela is a citizen-led protest and mourning movement rising out of dehradun, born directly out of this contradiction, the state government pushing massive tree felling projects, like the widening of the bhaniyawala-rishikesh highway, while running state-sponsored tree planting pr campaigns on the very same festival meant to honour these forests.

today, instead of the usual festivities, we wear black, we gather peacefully, we mourn openly and publicly for the thousands of mature trees that have been cut down, trees that cannot be replaced by a sapling planted for a press photo. we are angry about the destruction of ecological zones and elephant corridors across the shivalik forests. we refuse to accept that a few saplings can undo the loss of old growth trees that took decades, and in this case, centuries, to grow.

harela was never meant to be a hashtag for the government to hide behind. it has always been a promise from the people to the mountains that we call home. we are done watching that promise get broken just so that some of the most beautiful cities of uttarakhand can be developed enough to be "virtually a part of NCR".

our times have given us more than enough reason to protest, for our right to breathe, our right to live with dignity, our right to protect the environment, the ecosystems, the forests and the mountains upon which our survival depends.

if you are not angry, you are not paying attention.

i ask my friends, wherever you may be, to join this movement and support #blackharela.

sherpas used to be treated like expedition partners...and now they’re treated like they are lowly disposable service workers Two things can be true at once. As technology improved, and information spread, the value of the sherpas' knowledge decreased.

that knew the land better than you because they were raised on it Weird how when it comes to following American customs and practices in America, this argument means the opposite, that the locals have an unfair advantage and should be more accommodating to, and understanding of, newcomers

setting up heated tents or spas for wealthy hikers who have no business on the mountain Whyever not? Who says? What is the difference between people who believe this about a mountain in a country that makes a significant amount from tourism, and people who believe other sorts of foreigners have no business in their land?

like they are collecting your nasty trash off Oh, is littering a disqualification for foreigners visiting? This is going to be exciting news for nativist movements throughout the developed world...

one of the holiest and most sacred mountains in the world like do y’all understand that we see sagarmatha or mount everest as a living deity on earth Literally your problem, no one else's. I know people who wince, experiencing real psychological pain, when others use the word "Jesus" as an epithet. I know people who refuse to spell the word God when writing. It's their issue, no one else's.

while the rest of the world sees her as a conquest Yep.

i grew up in oriental orthodox christianity and now practice buddhism, but tell me again what i don’t know. Get bent. This is explicitly in reference to your racist assumptions and statement.

you don’t have to believe in “my” gods to respect the deep and cultural ties nepalese people have for You were the one who picked the grounds for the discussion. You gave that as the reason, and it was the only one you gave.

desire behind wanting to protect one of the most historic and coolest natural sites of the world Everest is cool because of its height. When someone starts knocking of bits of the tip to make it shorter, then we can talk about protecting it. It's also not all that historic, since it wasn't the site of much activity until rather late in history, and that mostly recreational.

even if it comes from a spiritual practice you don’t believe in. Well, when Christians have spend half their time in political discourse parsing out their non-religious reasons for supporting any policy, because actually having religion as a motivation is considered disqualifying, you're not going to get a culture that is very sympathetic to your religious motivations.

ecological destruction and death of indigenous people for profit isn’t cool just because you hate religion. Assuming your understanding of writing is as lacking as your grasp of capitalization, this was not the subject of the OP. Whatever you meant, you complained about the decline in dignity of a group whose profession has become adulterated by time and the rising prosperity of the rest of the world. No rational analysis would ascertain an ecological argument in that post, as your sole allusion was in the context of it being beneath the dignity of the sherpas.

What this looks like is a lot of exceptionalist whining, and when you got called out for it, attempting to shift the ground to hide behind a broader moralistic position.

this made the university of oxford and cambridge press insanely mad, they sued both delhi university and the xerox shop in a landmark case

I get it now. The youngsters for whom u refuse to take a stand are just here to fill your theatres and your own pockets.

Guys I dont care what your political standing is. I dont care whether you support bjp or congress but you cant deny that the government is utterly shameless for letting a man like Sonam Wangchuk starve himself just to have a dialogue with those in power. This man is literally fighting for something that is going to affect lakhs and lakhs of students across the country. And he doesnt even need to do it. But he is still out on the streets fighting for justice and our rights

You could hate CJP with everything that you have but dont let that hate blind you from the fact that a scientist, an innovator, the recipient of Ramon Magsaysay award is doing everything he can to reform the education system, to make the lives of students better.

Coming back to those 'heroes' who have done everything to sell patriotism on screen....where does it disappear when it comes to taking a public stand for your own country? You guys did not feel the problem when making a film based on Sonam Wangchuk's life. Then why are they silent now??? I could name so many celebrities rn - Akshay kumar( bhaisahab herogiri jaise fufu karne mai nahi hai vaise chup rehne mai bhi nahi hai), Aamir khan( ab samaja chatur chatur kyu tha - to all those ppl who are saying omi vaidya is an american citizen so he does not have anything to lose - bhai chup baitho..atleast he had the guts to speak up ) alia bhatt, varun dhawan, sachin tendulkar, katrina kaif, vicky kaushal, shah rukh khan and i could name so much more ????

Her— no, his— muscles ache. New skin covers the bones that roasted in fire, new muscles and organs make the body their home. Nestled in this new body, Amba’s soul feels an emotion that is new, and foreign, and different from anything else it has experienced before. Comfort. Never before has it truly felt at home in its body as it does now. Something deep within himself curls up and settles in his body, and a strange sort of bliss washes over him. He likes this, he decides. Now all he needs is a name.

He takes Sthunakarna’s leave, and finds his grandfather. Hotravahana treats him differently, and he wants to stomp his feet like a child and say ‘But I am the same person, why won’t you treat me the same!!’. He wants to throw childish tantrums, but he knows, in his heart of hearts that it will not do anything.

He also suspects that the real reason his grandfather acts different is not because he is a man now, or because there is a fire in his eyes that feels foreign to someone who watched him grow up as a happy little girl with her every wish fulfilled, but because the dark energy seeping out from him, the determination in his eyes— it scares the old man. It breaks his heart, but that is the price to pay, he thinks. He is an abomination now, a thing pieced together with fire and blood and anger and darkness and magic. Everyone’s eyes follow him as he goes about his business and tries to think of a plan to do what he set out to.

"Agni-jā yoshatī atisundarī, kamal-patra-nibhe ekanayanā, śyāmā, keśā nila-valyah, nakhā su-nābhā, bhrū lāvanyavati, stanau gambhirāvati"