'Sir jaise aapko yahan mushkil lag raha hai, waise hume sheher me kuch samajh nahi aata' said KC, effortlessly trodding through what I felt was a steep descent. It seemed his feet always knew where to land, and how much. And his eyes took no notice of the 100 odd metre fall on the right. The only thing that stopped him from gliding down was me. Walking in front, my brain was relaying messages to my feet about the various ways of not falling to death.
'Pehli baar kab gaye baahar' I ask him. He looks far away on a distant mountain, like pahaadis do often and answers 'Chandigarh jata tha Sir pehle bhi Seb (apples) lekar ek do din k liye. Fir wahan ek garage me kaam kiya 6 mahine'. I add one more thing to the huge list of stuff he already knew. Seasoned cook, experienced gardener, minor electrician, on-call plumber, and what not. If mountains make you humble, mountain folk make you question your existence. They are the ones capable of grinding it out day after day with skills getting added to their hands, when all we do in cities is change TV channels.
KC continues, 'uske baad Delhi gaya Sir, Honda ki factory me kaam kiya. Wahan jaundice ho gaya to vapas aa gaya'. This makes me remember my own days of living in that poultry farm of a city. Either too hot or too cold but forever noisy and polluted. And yet capable of attaching a part of you with itself. Not for KC though. I don't think anyone remembers a jaundice with such warmth and regard. A disease that took him to the cure by itself.
Like most pahaadis, KC takes his time opening up. He doesn't speak unless absolutely required and doesn't reply more than absolutely needed. However, when camping in mountains, he's much more vocal. Like he's among his peers. His childhood friends, teenage companions, and his guiding elders. Being a shepherd, he has walked all around these peaks. He has caressed their newborn wildflowers with the same hands that later changed automobile spare-parts. And it was the water flowing from the heart of these summits that shaped his bones, ones that later needed packaged aquaf*na after he had enjoyed the only freebie that city life offered him. Jaundice.
When your backyard has a garden of a million flowers..
KC belongs to that blessed lot who were unblemished going into youth. One that saw a bear in wild much before seeing it on TV. One who thought finding a cave to stay the night in jungle equalled luxury. It was later in his life that he would discover threats much bigger then bears and luxuries much darker than caves.
Deep in hills, being a bright student is generally not the most sought after trait among children. Offcourse one has to finish homework, but that's on farm land, not in notebooks. And if your report-card at the end shows red for apples, you pass with flying colours. KC, like most intelligent hill kids, excelled both at class and chores. As a utility younger brother at home, he was loved. As a topper headboy in his government school, he was followed. Years passed and KC, armed with common household stuff, and uncommon high grades, landed in nearby town of Rampur. With history richer than its people, hill towns like Rampur are many things at once. They are cities for nearby vilagers, towns for new settlers, and a habitation (with a rest-house) for metropolitans.
So KC got a small room in his big city. His two and a half connections to his village were a fellow classmate, a bagfull of kode ka aata (finger millet flour) and a lone bus service that dropped 4 km before his village.
The journey towards the freedom of mind is an interesting phase of life. Most people take that path, few make it to an apt end. One may see it like a pendulum. You go from unquestioned social lemming to a spurt of exhilaration. For a moment it seems you won't come back ever, but then sooner or later the centre of gravity is discovered and one settles in life with their set of Newtonian laws. Well, but mostly. There are times where for some people, by the time they become stationary, the frame of reference is not same anymore. It is here that the laws of their lives change forever.
KC doesn't try to play the hero-victim card. He admits he went down a certain path. He smoked, drank, drank more, dropped out of college, went untraceable. The pendulum gatecrashed cities. And by the time he was stationary, his simple harmonic world looked more like an endless brownian motion.
He did trace himself out. Took the lone bus home and came back to his moorings. He found that his goats found him same and the apricot tree in his courtyard loved him even more. Somewhere inside, he still has the guilt but more importantly he also now has the wiseness of an experience; a belief of someone who has turned things back from the brink. He did go down a steep slope, the one that exists right besides our shoes as we walk, but he had clawed his way back. And now his step was firm than ever.
'Pehli baar kab gaye baahar' I ask him. He looks far away on a distant mountain, like pahaadis do often and answers 'Chandigarh jata tha Sir pehle bhi Seb (apples) lekar ek do din k liye. Fir wahan ek garage me kaam kiya 6 mahine'. I add one more thing to the huge list of stuff he already knew. Seasoned cook, experienced gardener, minor electrician, on-call plumber, and what not. If mountains make you humble, mountain folk make you question your existence. They are the ones capable of grinding it out day after day with skills getting added to their hands, when all we do in cities is change TV channels.
KC continues, 'uske baad Delhi gaya Sir, Honda ki factory me kaam kiya. Wahan jaundice ho gaya to vapas aa gaya'. This makes me remember my own days of living in that poultry farm of a city. Either too hot or too cold but forever noisy and polluted. And yet capable of attaching a part of you with itself. Not for KC though. I don't think anyone remembers a jaundice with such warmth and regard. A disease that took him to the cure by itself.
Like most pahaadis, KC takes his time opening up. He doesn't speak unless absolutely required and doesn't reply more than absolutely needed. However, when camping in mountains, he's much more vocal. Like he's among his peers. His childhood friends, teenage companions, and his guiding elders. Being a shepherd, he has walked all around these peaks. He has caressed their newborn wildflowers with the same hands that later changed automobile spare-parts. And it was the water flowing from the heart of these summits that shaped his bones, ones that later needed packaged aquaf*na after he had enjoyed the only freebie that city life offered him. Jaundice.
KC belongs to that blessed lot who were unblemished going into youth. One that saw a bear in wild much before seeing it on TV. One who thought finding a cave to stay the night in jungle equalled luxury. It was later in his life that he would discover threats much bigger then bears and luxuries much darker than caves.
Deep in hills, being a bright student is generally not the most sought after trait among children. Offcourse one has to finish homework, but that's on farm land, not in notebooks. And if your report-card at the end shows red for apples, you pass with flying colours. KC, like most intelligent hill kids, excelled both at class and chores. As a utility younger brother at home, he was loved. As a topper headboy in his government school, he was followed. Years passed and KC, armed with common household stuff, and uncommon high grades, landed in nearby town of Rampur. With history richer than its people, hill towns like Rampur are many things at once. They are cities for nearby vilagers, towns for new settlers, and a habitation (with a rest-house) for metropolitans.
So KC got a small room in his big city. His two and a half connections to his village were a fellow classmate, a bagfull of kode ka aata (finger millet flour) and a lone bus service that dropped 4 km before his village.
The journey towards the freedom of mind is an interesting phase of life. Most people take that path, few make it to an apt end. One may see it like a pendulum. You go from unquestioned social lemming to a spurt of exhilaration. For a moment it seems you won't come back ever, but then sooner or later the centre of gravity is discovered and one settles in life with their set of Newtonian laws. Well, but mostly. There are times where for some people, by the time they become stationary, the frame of reference is not same anymore. It is here that the laws of their lives change forever.
KC doesn't try to play the hero-victim card. He admits he went down a certain path. He smoked, drank, drank more, dropped out of college, went untraceable. The pendulum gatecrashed cities. And by the time he was stationary, his simple harmonic world looked more like an endless brownian motion.
He did trace himself out. Took the lone bus home and came back to his moorings. He found that his goats found him same and the apricot tree in his courtyard loved him even more. Somewhere inside, he still has the guilt but more importantly he also now has the wiseness of an experience; a belief of someone who has turned things back from the brink. He did go down a steep slope, the one that exists right besides our shoes as we walk, but he had clawed his way back. And now his step was firm than ever.
Too gud...I m loving the mountains even more...They take me to serenity now n then.
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