heaven's gate by pico iyer... imp.points to be considered

Heaven’s gate… written by pico iyer… Things need to be taken into consideration in a story… Recognizing the figures of speech, noun, verb, adjective, adverbs and transitions… and other structures used in the text… Identifying the literary terms…. Such as similes, metaphor, paradox, irony, dramatic irony, etc… Teaching aids… Travel writing, when it comes to travel writing…. We could observe that the author description.. Especially Geographical description of the location…. Culture that influenced the look of the place… Significance of the place…. Such as anecdotes or any archetypes…. Historical significance, cultural significance… associations… allusions…. Sojourn to ladakh. Journey as a metaphor for life… for that matter, a journey of purgation…. As the title is rightly named as heaven’s gate…. The author is disillusioned after visiting ladakh, imagined and anticipated romantic and traditional look of ladakh and proclaims in one of the sentences…. Yet what you find when you enter imagined romance is always a reality…

Adjectives used in heaven’s gate….

1. Motorable pass 2. Ragged prayer flags 3. Great boulders 4. Impromptu song 5. Pristine and surreal landscape… perfect, untouched and dreamlike landscape… 6. Huge flat plain 7. Emptiness like tears.. as a similie… 8. Two-storey white buildings… 9. Two humped Bactrian camels.. 10. Aromatic Buddhist city.. its chapels thick with the smell of centuries of melted yak butter, its white terraces looking out on miles and miles of noiseless valley. 11. The houses gathered along the valley, 12. barren mountains 13. blue-skied purity 14. cosmopolitan trading posts 15. skull capped muslim elders 16. a scramble of dusty, mud colored buildings 17. an abandoned palace… 18. ladakh –a land of high passes… 19. Diskit temple rising above the slope as if on its way to the heavens… 20. Kakhi-colored stretches 21. Small white Buddhist stupas.. 22. Mystical scrolls 23. Sharp cheeked men.. 24. Elegant apartments 25. Roulette wheels 26. Masked lamas, 27. Urbane travel agency manager… 28. Apparently self sustaining traditional world… 29. Ladakhi food…. 30. Mindless juggernaut intent 31. Long indigenous culture.. 32. Beautifully unfallen place.. 33. Blue glass shopping malls 34. Long isolated Bhutan… with its chic new hotels.. 35. The ruined nine storey palace… 36. Honking cars… 37. Desert rain coffeehouse…. 38. Fashion conscious teenegers… 39. Shady rustic lanes… 40. A faraway look…

The important points in this lesson….


When you think in terms of development, development always happens with a plan” a leader said to the author…but the author mentions “when I look at leh at this moment, there is no individual thinking of a plan. It’s all very chaotic” --- here these two sentences express the opposite views, hence it can be a paradox and can also be equated as irony…. As the reality is clearly seen in the words of the author when we compare to the unrealistic words of the leader… He declares… The future of the ladakh people lies in packaging or even abandoning of their past.. Compact, otherworldly and highly magical, ladakh is the latest secret treasure to dramatize all the paradoxes of civilization and its discontents. Its temples that mock gravity, Yet what you find when you enter imagined romance is always a reality… As a result, inevitably, ladakh is something of a test cas of what good as well as bad can be brought by travelers, who in ladakh seem mostly committed to protecting the apparently self sustaining traditional world they have discovered here. A faraway look came into his eyes and he remembered a moment in ladakh “ just looking out across the valley—the silence, the river in the distance, the temples” he said for him, of course, ladakh was probably the closest he could come now to the Tibet he had known as boy and feared he might never see again. For me, though – and for all of the rest of us—ladakh is a way to retrieve something lost, sustaining within us that, which once experienced, comes to seem as contemporary, as invigorating, as tomorrow.. This essay ends with a paradox…that the author observes that ladakh has transformed itself into a modern town though there are people who are trying hard to keep its traditional look, especially tourists who come to ladakh for its traditional look, thinking that it would be a heavean’s gate…. Without any humdrum, or buzz of metropolitan cities… but the truth is that it has almost lost its traditional, real look of the ancient ladakh, inevitably, transforming itself into modern town.. Usually, the author imagined and anticipated something out of his bookish knowledge before taking sojourn to ladakh…. Ladakh …a traditional, historical, and socially different from other parts of the country…. Only to be disillusioned by the journey… came to conclusion that unless heritage of the ladkah or any part of the country, tourists cannot be attracted,… the reality is always there to remind you of change or transformation , especially for the ones who need to bask in the glory of the past…