A crack in monotonous days

Only a couple of days have passed after I along with my roommate and few other friends gathered in chilly evening at Som’s room and discussed how mundane our days are passing. Going to college, coming back, cooking meals and retiring to bed was all that we were doing. Since it was in the midst of a long stretch of holidays, Som promptly suggested that we venture out on a trip that very night. Everyone agreed in excitement and planned the logistics. My roommate has a car and after arranging for two more bikes, eight of us ventured out at midnight to a place called Mussoori, which is 50 kms from the place of our stay. It’s a very popular hill-station which has been conferred with Queen of the Hills. The road to the hill top maneuvers through thick forest with numerous curves and bends.

I wore the toughest from my closet that can withstand the pre-wintery cold. We started the journey with me being in the car and others on the bikes and car equally with soulful songs played in the background to subside the hearts beating high on adrenaline. After having travelled through the city, I volunteered to ride one of the bikes, and I say this with immense happiness that it was the best ride of my life here in Dehradun. The cold wind slapped me with its icy hands as I maneuvered the bike through the curves and bends of the road. I felt elated and alive. How I wished the journey never ended but before I knew we had reached the hill top. We parked our vehicles and ascended to the peak of the hill on foot which was strenuous in the thin air. But we walked in the dense of the night taking photographs of ourselves in the light of street lamps. The little city of Mussoori perched on the hills was silent and tranquil with only street dogs giving out soft howls.

After half an hour or so of trekking uphill we reached the peak which locally is called as the Gun-hill point. The view from this point was splendidly picturesque that we couldn’t stop ourselves from taking photographs. The city below spread in the slope was illuminated by lights which looked as though the night sky adorned with twinkling stars had fallen on this hill to form a breathtaking picturesque as a treat and delight to our longing eyes. And in the far end, the city of Dehradun radiated itself in mystery; unfathomable to a busy man.

All the hard work of ascending to this point was to, at the break of the dawn, watch the sun rise. But we had ample of time before the sun rose so what followed was a photo session in myriad of pose and posture. Jokes were cracked and humorous one lined insults passed which prompted in hysterical laughs with no alien to hear but the cold air. After an hour long wait the sun finally rose spreading its virgin rays on the peaks of the silhouetted mountains. It rose from the mountain like a vast golden ball all by himself in the sky determined to retire in the west.

By this time the locals; particularly the early risers had filled the paths and roads: some jogged, while some walked their dogs and others were students going to school. The tea vendors were I street and after drinking a cup of hot tea each, we returned back; to live the same mundane and monotonous life.  

Doon in Spring

As a Forestry student I am obliged to tell you an amusing fact that Sal trees deviating from the normal protocols of nature, sheds its leaves in spring. Before I came to Dehradun, I had only heard that the Sal tree which is called Shorea robusta sheds its leaves in spring but I have seen it happen.
There is a rocky trail that snakes through the Sal forest and reaches college. It’s a delight to walk that trail to college in the spring kicking the dried Sal leaves knowing the spring has come and everything around will be back to their life. Walking through the Sal forest with its floor carpeted by dried leaves takes me back in time when I was just a small kid in Gorsum village, Lhuntse. The winter there used to be harsh with its cold hard winds blowing against our rosy little cheeks. The morning and evening were comparatively colder with the need to warm the room with bukhari. Hence, to meet need of firewood we used to swarm the nearby oak forest to collect the dried branches and wood from the felled trees. It was then that I used to walk the forest ground filled with dried oak leaves that was shed in the autumn. It was a joy beyond bound to walk ahead of the group and burry oneself in a heap of dried leaves and rise with a shrill cry from the ground as the group approaches near, scaring them to their bones.
Seeing the same kind of forest floor here, sometimes, the little child in me which I have with outmost care and patience kept hidden from the world tries with all its might to come out but I have grown up big enough in strength to always hide it within.

Other side of the street II

Two days after I explicitly wrote about the lonesome house at the other side of the street which belongs to an elderly Tibetan couple which rests behind the silhouette of guava and pear trees opposite to the house I have rented, it was a holiday, hence I decided to wake up late to compensate all the sleepless night prior to which I had invested in preparing slides for a presentation on wildlife and human welfare. And as I was sleeping that morning I could hear people shouting and repeated thuds as though someone was hammering a blunt wedge on a dried log. There was surely a commotion outside and even before I woke up from the bed that day, I cursed people for interrupting my sleeping hours with their noise. I tried to cover my head with the pillow and sleep again, that didn’t work. Finally with my squinting eyes, I lazily extended my hand and fumbled the corner of the curtain, drew it apart to see what was happening outside. My jaws dropped at the sight of it. The guava and the pear trees which I wrote about just two days back were being cut. Two young men were cutting the branches of the trees and the two young girls dragging it to the backyard to be chopped down to fine storage-able length. That fine morning I felt like those elderly couple had read my write up and they didn’t like a bit of it and as a sign of protest they are cutting down the trees for I am a forestry student. Otherwise why would they even cut those trees? Because those two girls spent more time in the shadows of those trees playing the hand-patting-game? Or because they see me as a thread to the existence of the whole Tibetan colony and since they have nothing to do all day, they decided to watch all my moves clearly by cutting down the trees and not through the small spaces between the trees and leaves. Whatever be the reason, but I didn’t like them cutting down the trees, not because I am forestry student and I am by default the guardian of the trees and plants but because my veranda is nakedly exposed to them and now I cannot disguise myself to be reading a book in the veranda and actually watch them. But I keep a little light of hope burning in me to be at good terms with the elderly couple one day and ask for sure why did they actually cut the trees. Until then, I guess, all I can do is weave some obvious conclusions and think about a new way to watch them.

Other side of the street I

Across the house I live in, at the other side of the street, behind the silhouette of the Guava and the Pear tree rests a desolate house belonging to a Tibetian couple whom I assume is not less than seven decades old. The house is bounded by walls at all its four sides and the only entrance is the low gate just opposite to ours. The house lies next to street that I walk on my way to college.  Nothing guards the house, but loneliness and an old dog whose cheeks has lost its youthfulness and is hanging below his jaw line. I have a feeling that the dog has miraculously survived and is as old as the couple.  Sometimes it barks at me with its toothless, protruding mouth but as I near him from outside the gate, he drops its tail between his legs and pees. It barks few coughs to the bikes that ply the street. Basically he barks at anything unfamiliar to him. That perhaps must be the technique he must have derived after much contemplation as to how he should maintain his worthiness in the eyes of his owners; by barking with all the little energy he has for if he don’t, he has learned the human way of thinking and knows that his owner would forget how sleepless nights he had guarding the house when he was young and replace him with another youthful dog who later would be bestowed with the same fate.

Every morning as I walk to college the elderly couple would be sitting on a chair each with a table in between in the veranda of their bungalow, fumbling crimson beads and reciting prayers. You do not hear the prayers, only murmurs. The table in between would be loaded with eatables of mango and guava. Two cups would also be sitting on the table. Two little thin and pale girls with their skin tanned by the heat of the sun, who must be in their early teens perhaps either from Bihar or Nepal is assigned to attend to the needs of the couple even before the old couple needs the need. One fine Sunday I sat at the veranda of the house that I have rented and attempted to finish reading a book, only to find myself looking across the street  the whole day to see what happens. Nothing really happened. The girls do the laundry, cook for the couple and do the dishes, clean the house-interior and the exterior and at last if time permits and they have little time at their disposal, they sit together under the shade of the guava tree and played a game that involves patting each other’s hand until one of the elderly couple needs something again. I wondered how the old souls couldn’t see the girls playing and needed them time and again a minute.

I only assume that many years ago the house had been a home and that when all the elements of a home ran away due to the untamed old soul which persisted to hold on to each particle of its soil, it finally became a house. Otherwise why would a lovely looking house remain lonely with all its empty rooms when it has the strength to shelter three generations and still have room for the air to enter and leave?