Mother Nature put together Himachal at leisure. She arranged mountains, rivers, glaciers, she was extra generous when she planned the forest cover and took care to throw in a grand diversity of plants with medicinal properties. In Flora Simlensis: A Handbook of the Flowering Plants of Simla and the Neighbourhood published in 1902, Col. Sir Henry Collett of the Bengal Army writes about the variety of flowering plants. The ferns of the place were so numerous that he had planned to write a separate book on them.

Not man-made

Lady Dalhousie collected specimens of plants here --- in the 1830s --- and sent these to William Hooker, who was the first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London. At different altitudes in Himachal, Father Nature painted in different species of butterflies — Regal Apollo, Hill Jezebel, Tawny Coster… The two of them — Father and Mother Nature —would have woken up from some barren dream when they carved out Khajjiar. Today, Khajjiar is known as that place Swiss envoy Willy P. Blazer dubbed ”mini Switzerland" because of “topographical resemblances”. In the 1913 book Simla In Ragtime, the writer who goes by the name DOZ says of the place, “A Scotsman boasting of his highlands has no chance in this portion of the earth’s surface.”

Oh! Naturale

The Himachal government has declared the devastations that have begun since June, “natural calamity". As if it is Nature's doing, the construction of highways and flyovers, widening of roads, cutting of mountains. As if someone sought the permission of the forces of nature before felling trees, building new houses, bigger houses, VIP and non-VIP. As if not flagging the loosening of the soil is Nature's fault. Yes, natural bounty might have attracted more tourists, but it is not Nature behind the unchecked littering, the choking lakes, the commercial frenzy, the mushrooming of cement factories, multiplying hydro electric power projects, changing land-use patterns, indiscriminate use of machines and brute force… That's classic homo sapien.