An article by Dr R.K Bhandari - 'Where the Hills Remember, We Forget'

 Remembering the 1968 Darjeeling–Sikkim Catastrophe and the Lessons Lost in the Thin Himalayan Air

Where the Hills Remember, We Forget

The Mountain’s Enduring Reminder

Each year, the anniversary of the 1968 Darjeeling–Sikkim catastrophe reminds us of one of the most devastating multi-hazard events in the history of the Indian Himalaya. The tragedy was monumental—not only for the scale of its destruction but also for the enduring silence that followed. We must continue to remember this event, not merely to mourn its loss but to internalize the lessons it sought to teach—lessons that, if truly learned, could transform how we understand and manage our fragile mountain systems.

Disasters arrive as wake-up calls. Yet, time and again, we have slept through them. The dynamic equilibrium of the Himalaya is inextricably tied to its climate, geology, forests, water resources, and human interventions. Indiscriminate construction and unregulated development now threaten more than 45 million people living in the Himalayan region—and nearly seven times that number in the plains that depend on it (Bhandari, 1986). The future of both is inseparable.

1968: When the Himalaya Broke Loose

Between 2 and 6 October 1968, the Darjeeling–Sikkim Himalaya was battered by an extraordinary sequence of landslides, debris flows, and floods. Torrential rainfall lashed the fragile, steep, geologically young slopes—already compromised by deforestation, road cutting, and unchecked urbanization. The result was a chain reaction of slope failures and river blockages that cascaded through the region.

The worst-affected areas stretched from Kalimpong, Darjeeling, and Kurseong in West Bengal to Gangtok, Mangan, Namchi, and Rangpo in Sikkim. The Teesta, Rangit, and Rangpo Chu valleys witnessed massive slope collapses, debris accumulation, and flash floods downstream. Landslides blocked streams, altered drainage networks, and unleashed sudden bursts of water and debris. In Darjeeling alone, the Siliguri–Darjeeling Road was cut in dozens of places, paralysing transport and relief for months.

Spectacular failures marked the event—the collapse of the Anderson Bridge over the Teesta River on 4 October 1968, the destruction of critical sections of the Siliguri–Darjeeling and Siliguri–Gangtok highways, and extensive damage to tea estates, settlements, and communication infrastructure.

 The Lessons That Fade

The catastrophe of 1968 offered timeless lessons about terrain vulnerability, rainfall thresholds, the multiplier effect of connectivity loss, and the imperative of preparedness. Yet, these lessons faded into history—largely because we faltered on facts and failed to report with rigor.

When Data Deceive: Misreporting and Lost Opportunities Follow

Disasters are powerful teachers—but only if we are attentive students. Too often, we squander the opportunity to learn because we fail to decode their signatures scientifically. The value of any post-disaster learning depends entirely on the credibility and completeness of field data. Without evidence-based investigations, analysis, and contextual reporting, we lose the chance to extract actionable insight from catastrophe.

The Blind Spot: Rainfall Alone Cannot Explain It All

While the 1968 Darjeeling–Sikkim event was triggered by extreme rainfall, the fixation on rainfall alone obscured the multi-causal nature of the disaster. The region’s tectonic instability, anthropogenic disturbances, and poor slope management played equally significant roles.

The Centre for Science & Environment in Down To Earth (DTE) cited 20,000 landslides, but without clarifying the basis or criteria for this count. The figure was later echoed by ICIMOD, media outlets, and several researchers—none offering validation. Other studies cited about 7,500 landslides, also without standardized parameters. Such unverified numbers diluted the scientific understanding of the event.

The eastern Himalaya routinely records extreme rainfall events—ranging between 300 mm/day and 1,100 mm/day. In the 1980s, Sikkim’s annual rainfall reached 3,000–5,000 mm, with 50–90 % falling in just four months. Rainfall, river action, seismicity, deforestation, and blasting together amplify slope instability (Bhandari, 1988).

In 1968, a deep Bay of Bengal depression interacting with monsoon currents trapped along the Himalayan foothills caused nearly 100 hours of continuous rainfall. The IMD recorded 499 mm in one day and over 1,000 mm in 52 hours, while DTE and GSI reported totals of 1,000–1,040 mm for 3–5 October. For comparison, Padamchen in East Sikkim once recorded 1,580 mm in 36 hours (Chandra, 1973).

If a single catastrophic landslide demands detailed mapping, analysis, and remediation, how would we manage 20,000 such failures simultaneously? Many were likely inter-connected—progressive or retrogressive systems rather than isolated slides. Without classifying landslides by type, size, mechanism, and cause, no meaningful investigation or mitigation strategy is possible.

 Credible Loss Assessment: The Basis for Response

According to Down To Earth, approximately 20,000 people were killed, injured, or displaced—a figure often misinterpreted as fatalities alone. Some secondary sources vaguely reported “thousands killed,” while no authenticated death toll exists even today. What is certain is that damage was widespread and intense, devastating tea gardens, settlements, and market areas such as Rangpo, which lay buried under two metres of debris.

DTE also reported 92 road cuts, multiple bridge collapses (including the Anderson Bridge), and weeks-long railway closures. The GSI corroborated extensive breaches along the Siliguri–Darjeeling highway and major failures in the Teesta valley. Estimates suggest 10,000 homes partially or fully damaged, hundreds of bridges destroyed, and large sections of NH 31A washed away. Rivers like the Teesta and Rangit changed course in several places.

The confusion in reporting—some data referring to Darjeeling town, others to the district or to Sikkim—underscored a critical gap: credible, area-specific loss reporting is essential for a measured post-disaster response. Without clarity, policy and recovery both flounder.

A Clarion Call for Scientific Slope Engineering

The 1968 catastrophe was a clarion call for scientific landslide investigation and engineered slope management. Roads in Sikkim and North Bengal traverse elevations from 120 m to over 4,300 m, cutting across unstable ridges and deeply dissected valleys. Slopes vary from forested to barren, shaping complex hydrogeological responses. When roads are built without protecting natural drainage or stabilizing slopes, the mountains retaliate.

At the International Symposium on Landslides (New Delhi, 1980), Gen. J.S. Soin, then Director General of Border Roads, recounted the catastrophic slides of 1889, 1900, 1906, 1911, 1914, 1958, 1968, and 1973. He described a 1-km road section in 1968 completely destroyed—retaining walls gone, new alignments carved, drainage and river-training works repeatedly rebuilt after successive floods. Such cases illustrate that ad-hoc repairs are no substitute for science-based, environmentally consonant engineering.

More than five decades later, that lesson remains painfully relevant. The scars of both dormant and active slides demand ongoing investigation. Each reactivation is a reminder that the Himalaya remembers—even when we choose to forget.

Global Reflections on India’s 1968 Reporting

Dr R.L. Schuster of the United States Geological Survey once asked me to verify data on the 1968 catastrophe. Lacking credible evidence, he doubted reports of 20,000 landslides and 20,000 casualties. A UNESCO publication (Moscow, 1988) later cited Mathur (1982), estimating restoration costs at $14 million for North Bengal and $8 million for Sikkim. Even globally, the 1968 event stands as a cautionary tale—less for its magnitude than for the uncertainties that clouded its record.

The Way Forward: Learning Before Forgetting

The 1968 Darjeeling–Sikkim event reaffirmed that the future of landslide risk management must rest on E A R T H—Ethics, Accountability, Resilience, Technology, and Humanity.

For decades, the management of landslides and the mitigation of their societal impacts have run on parallel tracks, intersecting only at conferences or in official declarations. The time has come to walk the talk—to embed every lesson from every disaster into planning, design, and governance.

Ethical responsibility and societal well-being must sit at the heart of our disaster-mitigation agenda. Bridging the divide between scientific insight and public policy is no longer optional—it is the only path forward.

References

Bhandari, R.K. (1977) : Some Typical Landslides in the Himalaya. Proc. 2nd Int. Symp. on Landslides, Japan Society of Landslides, Tokyo, pp. 1–33.

1.      Bhandari, R.K. (1981) : Landslides in the Himalaya—Problems, Causes and Cures. UNESCO Project “Protection of Lithosphere as a Component of Environment,” Alma-Ata, USSR.

2.      Bhandari, R.K. (1986) : Slope Stability in the Fragile Himalaya and Strategy for Development. IGS Annual Lecture.

3.      Chandra, H. (1973) : Problems of Highway Engineers in the Himalayas. Journal of the Indian Roads Congress, 35(2), p. 363.

4.      Down To Earth (2023). Darjeeling and Sikkim: 1968’s Forgotten Deluge. Centre for Science and Environment.

5.      Telegraph India (1968). Darjeeling–Sikkim Devastation Déjà Vu: Autumnal Cloudburst Triggers Hill Horror.

6.      Geological Survey of India (1969). Report on the Landslides and Floods in the Darjeeling–Sikkim Himalaya.

7.      Indian Meteorological Department (1968). Climatological Report on the October 1968 Rainfall in Eastern Himalaya.

8.      Inventory and GIS Mapping of Landslides in Sikkim (ssdma.nic.in).

9.      Mathur, H.N. (1981) : Influence of Human Activities on Landslides. UNESCO Publication, Alma-Ata, USSR.

10.  Natarajan, T.K., R.K. Bhandari et al. (1980) : Some Case Records of Landslides in Sikkim. Proc. Int. Symp. on Landslides, Vol. 1, pp. 455–460.

11.  Starkel, L. (1972). The Role of Catastrophic Rainfall in the Shaping of the Darjeeling Himalaya. Geographia Polonica.

12.  Basu, S.R., & Sarkar, A.K. (1981). Landslides and Morpho dynamic Evolution in the Darjeeling Himalaya.

13.  Soin, J.S. (1980) : Landslide Problems on Roads in Sikkim and North Bengal and Measures Adopted to Control Them. Proc. Int. Symp. on Landslides, Vol. 1, pp. 69–78.

14.  Wikipedia. 1968 Sikkim Floods – Details of Rainfall, Fatalities, and Landslides.

My grateful thanks to Dr R.K Bhandari, whom I have known for many years now

Dr R.K Bhandari, is long acknowledged to be one of the foremost authorities on landslides in the world. He is the recipient of numerous, well deserved awards including the prestigious Subash Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar in 2021.
He is a member of HA.

Praful Rao,
savethehills@gmail.com
9475033744

 

An interview with the Father of Landslide Hazards (India) : Dr RK Bhandari

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district,
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

Chennai Flood Disaster Catastrophe of December 2015-Are you listening? - Dr RK Bhandari

The worst is over and the city of Chennai in the State of Tamil Nadu in India is limping back to normalcy after the unprecedented flood catastrophe of December 2015. The whole country applauds the exceptional grit and grace with which the citizens of Chennai fought the fury of the floods as one single family of friendly strangers! When the Indian Armed Forces, the NDRF Battalions, the Paramilitary Forces, the State Police and the common men intermingled with the victims of the flood-ravaged city of Chennai on the mission to save lives, by heroic deeds they won the admiration and gratitude of the nation as a whole. India can be justly proud of the inspiring examples set out by the rescue teams and the citizens, in the defiance of death and destruction. The ensuing trail of success stories, which will be retold for generations to come, has reaffirmed peoples’ faith in India’s capacity to manage the post-disaster phase of the cataclysmic events.

Now imagine the dreadful scenario in the flood-ravaged Chennai without the timely and decisive interventions of the post-disaster response teams. The loss of lives, the number of those injured, the count of the homeless, trauma of the victims, damages to the infrastructure, the cost of recovery and construction and pressure of demand on local administration would have been several folds higher. On the other hand, imagine the scenario which could have developed to our advantage after implementation of preventive and mitigation measures in tune with the experiences gained and the lessons learned from as many as six major flood disaster events in the last 40 years. The loss of lives, damages to the infrastructure, the hefty relief package of Rs 1940 crores and the astronomical sums of money now required for reconstruction could have been drastically curtailed, if not altogether avoided. We all know that prevention and mitigation pay and yet it is unfortunate that those at the helm of affairs still prefer to pay for the end-of-the-pipe solutions from the public funds at the expense of the basic human needs.

By not taking recourse to the prevention and mitigation route, contrary to the stated policy, even the Central Government does not do justice with its own commitment to the people of India made in the National Disaster Management Act of 2005. The Act, which was enacted about the same time as the last Chennai flood disaster of December 2005, had promised to the nation a paradigm shift from the relief-centric approach to the culture of prevention and mitigation. With ten years of lead time since the last major flood disaster, the State Government was expected to feel the pain of disasters and take the Act more seriously.

Another stated strategy of the Government of India is to shift the focus from development to sustainable economic development. The X Five Year Plan clearly mentioned that the planned expenditure on disaster prevention and mitigation will be coupled with the Calamity Relief Fund. There was a major shift of Focus in the XI plan which laid emphasis on integration of disaster mitigation with development planning. If the government would have taken its own strategy seriously, the severe flooding of the areas surrounding Perumbakkam because of the construction of the IT Corridor on the filled-up lake could have been avoided. The flooding of Mudichur, Velachery, and several other areas are not a matter of surprise to those who Chennai because they had encroached the wetlands and the river basins. The city’s largest mall, Phoenix, is on a lake-bed — Velachery.  In 1976 floods too, Adyar over-topped its banks invading houses by several feet precisely because of the stream encroachment.

There is no denying the fact that for economic and infrastructure development, land has to be found. The national challenge lies in using the land in a manner that construction and mitigation measures are planned, designed and implemented as a single package. This should have been done when the major bus terminal was built in the flood-prone Koyambedu or when the Chennai airport was built on the floodplains of the River Adyar. Building a Mass Rapid Transit System over the Buckingham Canal and several automobile and telecom SEZs and many housing estates, over the erstwhile water bodies, were less of engineering in development and more about the recipe for a disaster. By hindsight, it seems clear that the government should have walked the talk by integrating disaster mitigation with planning for sustainable development. Reportedly over 300 water bodies have already been lost to urbanization and construction. The 16 tanks belonging to the Vyasarpadi chain downstream of Rettai Eri have reportedly met with a similar fate.

All the blame cannot be placed on either the Government or the Extreme Weather Events. We the people are equally responsible for our compromising positions when it comes to our self-interest. Often times, we pressure administration for bending of rules and regulations for our narrow gains. According to a report submitted by CMDA to the Madras High Court, there are over 1.5 lakh illegal structures in the city, hazardous also to the city drainage. When High Court ordered demolition, the people appealed to the Supreme Court and sought stay-orders. Naturally, we need stricter laws and swift disposal of such cases. It is high time people realize that disasters drain our resources, sap our strength, halt the pace of economic development, rob the posterity of India’s cultural heritage and  inflict lifelong suffering on the victims, especially in the low-income group.

Those responsible for the above acts of omission and commission must be held accountable not only for what wrong they did, but also for what they should have done, which they did not do. The professionals who implemented the above projects were responsible for ensuring that the projects themselves do not become a cause of disasters.

Since it is not in our culture to fix accountability, the civil administration, on the predicted lines, did pre-empt inconvenient and hard questions about public safety by declaring the Chennai 2015 floods as a natural calamity and placed the blame entirely on unprecedented rainfall due to Climate Change, completely ignoring the interplay of numerous other causative factors. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, even without any investigation, reportedly said “Losses are unavoidable when there's very heavy rain. Swift rescue and relief alone are indicators of a good government.” [1] Earlier also, the Chennai floods of 1969, 1976, 1985, 1996, 1998, 2005 and 2015 were attributed to the heavy rainfall events. Does that mean that factors such as unrestrained and unplanned urbanization, non-engineered and illegal construction, encroachment of water bodies and low-lying areas had no role to play?  It is true that the heavy rainfall forced authorities to release 30,000 cusecs from the Chembarambakkam reservoir into the Adyta river over two days, causing flooding and submergence. But the question to ask is why such situations could not have been anticipated and provided for in project design?  How can one explain the flooding of Koyambedu and the neighbourhood other than by concluding that the related storm water drain projects failed to account for the built-environment, the altered urban landscape and the water logging data of the previous cataclysmic flood events?

 It is only when the authorities ignore such ground realities and try to hide behind the Extreme Weather Events as the sole cause that we keep working in the comfort zones of business as usual, take recourse to the obligatory post-disaster relief-centric approach when needed, and keep re-reaffirming our faith in the merit of disaster prevention and mitigation , as parrots do.

There are no simple solutions to the problems of flooding in the city of Chennai which have been allowed to develop over the period of many decades. Instead of overlooking the wrong doings of the past and throwing blame on heavy rainfall, the political masters, bureaucrats, professionals, the civic officials should come out of the denial mode, own the responsibility and concede with humility that they have failed to walk the talk. It is time to learn from the past experiences and put institutional mechanisms and Standing Operating Procedures in place to ensure that disaster mitigation measures get firmly embedded in all the future project designs.

The large scale flood hazard maps and hydrology maps of the City of Chennai should be revised on priority. The corresponding large scale maps should clearly mark problematic areas, buildings and infrastructure at risk. These maps should guide the revision of the second Masterplan prepared by the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority. Both, the hazard maps and the Masterplan should be independently peer-reviewed, and thereafter the future flood risk scenarios should be projected with sensitivity to Climate Change, highlighting the problem areas in the backdrop of the experiences gained during the December 2015 flooding. The National Guidelines on Flood Management issued by the National Disaster Management Authority in January 2005 would need revision and adoption, mutatis mutandis.

 All the illegal constructions should be demolished by expediting pending court cases.

 Extreme Weather Events and heavy rainfall are going to be matters of concern all the time and should not ever be taken as unforeseen happenings. The extreme rainfall events like the one which pounded the State of Tamil Nadu and triggered the catastrophe will have to fully accounted for while formulating preventive and mitigation strategies. Modern technologies should be deployed to improve weather, rain and flood forecasting.

India has an ambitious blueprint of economic development and one of the high profile programmes is development of Smart Cities. Ponneri of Tamil Nadu has been identified for development as a Smart City. Hopefully, those responsible for its planning carefully study why the airport was closed and several iconic companies had to shut their operations. The functioning of giant software exporters like TCS, Infosys and HCL and automobile giants like Renault Nissan, Yamaha, BMW and Ashok Leyland were also badly affected by the floods. In the fiercely competitive world with international commitments, India cannot afford the repeat of such sad experiences ever again in future. An empowered High Powered Committee should be constituted to approve the plans of Ponneri, and be accountable to the nation.

 Because of the flood catastrophe, leading newspaper, The Hindu was not published for the first time since its inception in 1878. Future Quiz competitions in the schools of Tamil Nadu will make sure that the younger generation remembers the Catastrophic Chennai flood of December 2015 at least for this reason. The Prime Minister of India gave a post-disaster package of Rs 1940 crore against more than Rs 5000 crore sought by the State Government. Why not think of a mitigation package of Rs 20 000 crores to put a lid on such disasters forever and live happily thereafter!

______________________________________________________

Prof RK Bhandari is a distinguished alumnus from IIT Mumbai, a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering  and a recipient of the coveted Varne’s Medal for Excellence in Research and Practice of Landslides.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong,
Dist Darjeeling

---

---

Disaster Management in India, the Urgency of Fresh Thinking - Prof RK Bhandari

Disaster Management in India - The Urgency of Fresh Thinking

Swami Vivekananda once visited a great sage of our country, a very holy man and wrote: “We talked about our revered book- the Vedas, of your Bible, of the Koran, and of the revered books in general. At the close of our talk, this great sage asked me to go to the table and take-up the book; it was a book, which, among other things, contained a forecast of the rainfall during the year. The sage said, Read them. And I read out the quantity of rain that was to fall. He said, now take the book and squeeze it. I did so and he said, why my boy, not a drop of water comes out. Until the water comes out, it is all book, book.”

This is also the story of disaster management in India. We have a National Disaster Management Act, a National Disaster Management Authority with the Prime Minister of India as its Chief, a country wide disaster management apparatus, an impressive array of knowledge institutions, a full fledged National Institute of Disaster Management and an over stocked library of Guidelines, Plans, SOP’s and Office orders. It is time we squeeze them all to count the drops! We have definitely progressed but we have a very long way to go.

By the very nature of the challenge, the road to disaster management has always been under construction and will remain so in the future as well. It has long been realized that the road begins from the territory of policy formulation, but the results will begin to trickle in only the day we come out of the comfort-zone of the business as usual and bridge the gap between our scientific and operating tempers and between the plan and its implementation. In our straight –jacket style of functioning, we get easily swayed when we see a logical, demand based approach to project identification, a scholarly written feasibility report tuned to environmental sensitivities, and a convincing environmental impact assessment. An exclusive chapter on Integration of disaster risk reduction with the project planning makes us feel that now is the time to take a break and hope for the things to happen on their own, as we had planned. Have we ever thought whether it is the right road that would lead us to the freedom from disasters?

Only one road can lead us to freedom from disasters and that is the road passing through the culture of safety to be travelled in the vehicle of non-violence with a deep sense of commitment to posterity. I have lost no chance to express myself by repeating Antoine de Saint Exupéry‘s words: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up men to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

The real world of disasters is far more complex than we can singly or collectively imagine. In the real world, we can be only as successful as our ability to foresee multiple scenarios of hazards, vulnerability and risk. For decades, we have been in the business of making hazard maps and printing atlases. Let us squeeze and stir all our hazard maps and atlases, and count the drops. Sorry, we will have to wait until someone more serious and scientific places the first, validated and user-friendly hazard map into our hands. And imagine, if we can’t reliably anticipate the hazards before they strike, how can we ever prevent them from happening?

We are a democratic country and in order to appear democratic, we are perpetually engaged in discussion and planning, that leaves us without much time to spare for implementation of plans. According to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, “no real change in the history has ever been achieved by discussion.” But his words did not suit our way of life. Discussion per se is not bad, but when it comes to managing disasters, we have seen our plans getting bogged down in the quicksand of endless discussion and become stale on its way to the printing press. It is said that the devil is in the detail and yet we prefer to ignore details and instead face the wrath of the devil. On the other extreme are our people who would not move an inch beyond discussion because of the paucity of data or absence of consensus. ” Reality is, after all, too big for our frail understanding to fully comprehend. Nevertheless, we have to build our life on the theory which contains maximum truth. We cannot sit still because we cannot, or do not know the absolute truth,”said Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. “The finest of the plans are always ruined by the littleness of those who ought to carry them out, for the Emperors can actually do nothing”, said Bertolt Brecht.1

The use of clever or dishonest methods (chicanery) and sugar-coated populist approaches have hurt us a great deal. Non transparent approaches in the investigation and knee-jerk reporting often sully the disaster case records and bury the truth deeper. We were taught in the classroom to walk slowly when in a hurry. But in the race for supremacy in reporting, we fancy reporting as we walk and document as we talk. As Richard Bach has said, “The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.”2 But by not being honest, are we not robbing the future generations of the awe inspiring grandeur of nature’s exposition? By ignoring proof, logic and science, are we not ignoring our own future? Are we not increasingly getting identified as the generation of editors rather than of authorship?

From the Italian proverb “Alexander never did what he said and Caesar never said what he did”, we infer that disaster managers are generally seen to play Alexander’s role for the wrong reason. This is because of the Hobson’s choice managers face in dealing with disaster scenarios as they unfold, bearing little or no resemblance to those about which they had spoken. We have to create systems in which our actions speak louder than our words and we will feel free to act as Caesar did. Only when we will have the courage and humility to confess that our plans were useless scraps of paper as testified by the recent tragedies, that we will justifiably get license to plan. Einstein once said, “Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are ever incapable of forming such opinions.” He further adds that, “we cannot solve the problems we have created with the same thinking that created them”. And, according to John Maynard Keynes, “Difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones.”

We have long been working with an ill-defined disaster management strategy conceived in a comfort zone, reducing one of the most challenging tasks to a hectic exercise in relief and response. With the advent of the National Disaster Management Act of 2005 came the hope that the world around us would begin to change from then onwards. We had hoped to see more of prevention and mitigation, more of the culture of scientific scrutiny and technological innovation, and more of an action than speeches. We seek development, but what value is that development which fuel disasters and takes us back to the zero-sum game? It is no choice, if we are asked to choose our day between 12 hours of pain followed by 12 hours of pleasure, or for 12 hours of pleasure followed with 12 hours of pain!

“There was an old owl, who lived in an Oak. The more he heard, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, more he heard. O, if men were like that wise old bird.”3 The time has come when speeches can wait and the endless engagement with the design of wings can end. All we need is a vision, a sense of direction and a will to succeed. “If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favourable to him.” 4 Let us recall Ray Bradbury, who said that, “You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on your way down.”

Please listen, the last of the sparrow or sterling, which wants to fly to freedom from disasters is watching our movies! And as Martin Luther King, Jr, has said, “Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
Endnotes

Bertolt Brecht in Mother Courage, 1939.

Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Cited from Punch.

Seneca

-  Prof RK Bhandari is a distinguished alumnus from IIT Mumbai, a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering  and a recipient of the coveted Varne’s Medal for Excellence in Research and Practice of Landslides.
Other articles by Dr Bhandari are placed at 1 and 2

Article credit :- Vivekananda International Foundation.

Praful Rao,

Kalimpong,

Dist Darjeeling