It is day two of life in the mountains. We are up early, as it is a day to explore the land.
A cup of tea and then a delicious breakfast of the oh-so-Maharashtrian kanda poha and some rice bhakri. A great way to begin the day.
When I look back at the day and try to summarise it, there are just two things that come to my mind. It was all about silence and time—the former deeper than anything I have seen, and the latter moving slower than I have ever felt.
As we step out of the house and climb a bit to reach the trail in the jungle where we have parked the car, we spot two men in conversation next to it. It is when we get to the vehicle that we realise they have a run-down Jeep standing in the distance. There was no space for it to get through. They seemed to be waiting for us rather than looking for another way through. Whatever they were up to and wherever they were going could wait.
One of the men, the elder one sporting a grey beard, smiled at us, wished us and got into the Jeep. As we cleared the trail, he drove past with a wave of his hand. Not a word about anything. No worry about the blocked road, lost time or missed deadlines. A smile and a wave. It almost seemed to me like he would wait the whole day without batting an eyelid and still smile at us.
We drove through the dry, rugged road and reached the village. There was a small temple that was the centre of this world. It looked bright and had definitely been renovated. A few houses stood on the edge of a slope. A woman stood near the trees, looking out into the valley. The temple and the area around it were spanking clean.
Next to the temple stood another, bigger house. I looked carefully and spotted a man sitting inside, looking out of the window. All the time we were in and around the temple, this man never moved. He sat there looking out at nothing in particular. No movement, just staring into the distance.
From where he sat, I am sure he could see a few houses, a bit of the blue sky and a tree silhouetted against it. While the rest of the world stared at flickering screens, here he was, sitting for what seemed to be an eternity, looking out into a world that stood still. I remembered a haiku I had been told about once.
Sitting silently, doing nothing
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
I made sure I captured the scene, so here is the house and our man… and then the scene he would have been staring at from his seat.
As our car moved out of the temple grounds, I cast another glance at the man in the window. He had still not moved, not even to look at the car. He sat there. Just sat there.
In a world where all we do is sit nervously, rush as we walk and are busy looking everywhere for nothing, the man was a surprise to me. Could we do this? I assume the answer is a resounding no. Perhaps, it is just about what the cities do to us and what the village does to him.
The next stop is a riverside. Some of us need to swim. The dirt track joins a road that leads us further down till we reach a river. The water level is low as the rains are gone; at its peak, the river, they say, swells majestically. Today it is just the right level for a swim. It is a great place to be in.
There is a small brook flowing in from the west. It winds away gently, its clear water tumbling over pebbles. The bubbles catch the sunlight in fleeting sparks. As we sit with our feet in the water, the rippling whisper of the water is timeless, as nature itself.
It is a moment that demands that the senses be alive to the soft dance of nature. The mind is clear like the water, and the heart calm like the pebble.
The brook soon joins the river a few metres away from where we sit. It merges into the calm of the river, which flows on serenely as it has been doing forever. The green on the river banks is of a radiant tinge. The grass is light and swaying in the soft wind. The trees leaning into the river are a shade darker.
The beauty is in the contrast that nature creates with its brush. Colours are just the unspoken language of this ageless earth.
The water is cold. Soft sunlight doesn’t hurt, and the call of the birds hidden away in the trees is the perfect background score. One could sit there for hours and not move away.
It takes a lot of effort to get away, but we do.
Lunch beckons. A nap after a simple meal, an evening of watching the sun go down over the hills, and the night is upon us.
The bibtya (leopard) is still out there. Behind the locked iron grill, the bonfire burns away. Stories from the memory bank are being recalled. The evening is all about a nostalgic walk through the lanes that were taken a long time ago.
One more timeless evening before we return home to the madness of the world.
