Echoes Across the Pass: A Geocritical and Ecofeminist Analysis of Guru T. Ladakhi’s “A Himalayan Ballad”

Abstract

Guru T. Ladakhi’s “A Himalayan Ballad” is a lyrical meditation on longing, displacement, and relational identity set within the culturally charged Himalayan trade corridor. The poem situates its emotional narrative within a landscape marked by mobility and border-crossing, beginning with the trader’s voice as he travels “across the wind-filled pass of Nathu” and ending with the woman’s intimate longing framed by domestic stagnation. This spatial contrast, movement versus waiting, creates a gendered dialectic that aligns with feminist and ecofeminist readings, where the male body participates in political and economic mobility, while the female voice remains embedded in place, care, and continuity. The poem’s natural imagery, peach blossoms, white cranes, wind, and snow, functions not merely as scenery, but as emotional and cultural geography. Nature becomes the medium through which desire travels: cranes serve as messengers, fallen blossoms become symbols of passing time, and the harsh climate underscores vulnerability. From a postcolonial lens, space is not neutral; places like Lhasa, Shigatse, and Nathu La are historically burdened with trade, contested sovereignty, and cultural transformation, echoing Homi Bhabha’s notion of the “unsettled in-between” (Bhabha 3). The speaker’s identity, similarly, is suspended between home and commerce, belonging and itinerancy. Ultimately, the poem renders separation as both personal and structural, revealing how landscape, culture, and history shape emotional experience. Through intimate address and sensory detail, Ladakhi crafts a narrative where love is inseparable from geography, and memory becomes the bridge that binds bodies divided by mountains, trade routes, and time.