In the bustling main bazaar of Gangtok, ensconced in a small shop, lies a slice of history. Sanjeevani Medicine is the kind of store one would instinctively walk past, one among the row of outlets that punctuate MG Road. But its proprietor is quite different from the other retailers in this line.
Frail and bespectacled, 78-year-old Ridh Karan is not your normal pharmaceutical shopkeeper. From a Marwari family that settled in Sikkim more than a century ago, Karan is among a few still alive who were a part of the erstwhile kingdom's thriving economy during the 1950s. Those were the days when trade with Tibet, through Nathula, was still in operation, forming the backbone of the eastern Himalayan economy. Indeed, archives suggest that 80 percent of Sino-Indian trade was conducted on this route, linking Calcutta and Siliguri to Shigatse and Lhasa via the Chumbi Valley.
Karan was an active trader, and traveled annually to Tibet from 1953 to 1959. Looking out at the busy street, he says wistfully, "It used to take us two days on muleback to get to Yadong in Tibet, with a stopover in Chhangu … We didn't just engage in commerce at the border. I had a shop in Yadong, where we took commodities which were in demand on that side." These included rice, lentils, clothes, petrol, kerosene, even motor vehicles and Rolex watches. In return, the main items of import ranged from raw wool to Chinese silk.
The presence of Chinese troops in Tibet, the Dalai Lama's escape, and the increasing tension between India and China gave Karan a sense of the troubled times ahead. In 1959, the very year of the Dalai Lama's flight south, he closed his shop and decided to focus on retail within Sikkim. This political astuteness saved him from economic ruin. In the wake of the Sino-Indian War of 1962, Nathula was shut down, leading to the collapse of several large trading houses. The mule trains stopped plying. And Sikkim was left with little more than tales of trade and the wealth of Tibet, as narrated by misty-eyed traders.