Even from beneath that enclosed darkness, I could hear the steady roar of the Marsyangdi
A noisy brook is flowing ‘silently’—silently because of its carefree winding across uncharted territories, humming the rhythm of its unending music and unperturbed by the eager footsteps of the occasional listeners—trekkers—trailing its path high above in tiny, winding trails...
“It’s not a brook. It’s the river, Marsyangdi.” My friend insisted. He was leaning over to my bed to reach for the petroleum jelly tube and must have caught a glimpse of the damn word.
“I know” I said. “But ‘brook’ sounds better.” I wasn’t feeling like giving an explanation. But I did it, anyway.
“Besides, I am not a damn reporter or something.” I murmured. I never do that, when I am writing.
The truth is I have this grand illusion that I am supposed to write some big stuff in my life. But another big truth is I can’t write shit. I have written about a dozen ‘novels’, but the thing is they never seem to move beyond the ‘epilogue’ stage. If you want to know, I think a novel shouldn’t have an ‘epilogue’ printed out in big fat words, sticking right at the nose of its readers. I feel like people do that if they don’t know what they are writing about; or to show off as the big shot writers they supposedly are. I am exactly that kind of writer. I know that.
My ‘writing spirit’ had been killed anyway, so I closed the damn diary and chucked it beneath my pillow. I do that all the time. Chuck my diary beneath my pillow I mean, right when I feel like I am in the zone or something.
“What were you writing, anyway?” He asked, chucking the jelly tube at me.
“The Two Trekkers,” I replied, and caught the tube midair. I am good at catching things. At least, I like to think I am. Mostly, it reminds me of what a horrible catcher I used to be when I played cricket as a kid. I was a decent batsman though and a fast bowler as well; at least until I broke my damn shoulder blade during a crazy spell.
I opened the tube and applied some cold jelly on my lips. It felt nice and sticky and all, and made me want to smoke. Usually, anything cold makes me want to smoke. Not that I needed the excuse of the poor half-frozen jelly. It was freezing cold anyway; outside the mountain of three blankets I was buried under.
Anyway, I opened a window and lit the damn cigarette. The truth is I like to smoke when I am cold and all, but I am not too crazy about sleeping in a cloud of tobacco smoke, especially if your room is nothing bigger than a damn toilet, and with no ventilation.
I began smoking anyway, and followed the trail of smoke fumes sailing into the darkness. It was snowing outside, and occasionally a freezing whiff of the nocturnal breeze would force the smoke back into the room.
“So, where’s our next stop?” he was now lying on his bed, eyes closed, probably counting his breaths. I used to do that too, years back, until I lost the counts. I would just smell the damn tobacco now, anyway.
“Perhaps, we can reach Manang if we leave off early,” I replied, as if in a trance, my eyes wandering in the darkness, the snow-infested vista shining in a dim light.
“You realise that it’s a three-day trek for the kuires?” He meant the foreigners.
“I do. But we should also realise that those boots they wear are worth near our entire trekking budget.”
“They even have extras,” he added and suddenly. I felt like laughing out loud. I would have, if I hadn’t been smoking. He was laughing anyway, and I joined shortly in these really hollow, meaningless laughs nearly choking myself to death in the cigarette smoke. I am a terrible laugher.
After the laughs and chokes had faded, and I was just a few puffs away from burning my fingers, he asked for the cigarette. I handed it over to him and watched him silently take the last few puffs, and then stare at the incoming smoke stream for a while before finally put it off on the window sill. For a moment, I felt like asking him to throw the damn cigarette butt out of the window, but the room had been spoilt anyway—with the smoke and all. So, I just closed the window, asked him to turn off the light and buried my head inside the blankets.
Even from beneath that enclosed darkness, I could hear the steady roar of the Marsyangdi. I am not usually too high about the sound of rivers and all, but sometimes, I just can’t help having these images of half-naked people running barefoot on sandy banks hollering alongside the roaring river—especially when there is nothing else to listen to than my own crazy thoughts.
Thoughts! They kill me sometimes. There are times when I actually wonder if I had a lousy past life in which some saintly saint in his orange robes and goat-beard must have cursed me with a tweaked brain prone to these crazy, non-directional, stuffy thoughts from all spheres. If you want to know, it’s not as much my own thoughts that kill me. Honestly, just put a goat or something in front of me and I swear that the next moment, the goat will be thinking of these crazy, steep grasslands to scale the next day—through me. With people, it’s even worse. I can virtually read their minds. It’s not bad or anything but sometimes it’s tiring, especially when you know it’s not absolute. Mostly, it ruins the conversations for good.
Anyway, when these crazy half-naked people were running all over my head, I began thinking of these crazy boots of this Dutch trekker we had met the other day. They were not too fancy or anything, much like these old Chinese boots of mine, now smelling like a rotten rat from some corner in the room. And then I saw her walking in these Chinese boots of mine, all the way to the Thorung-La Pass—this crazy pass at an altitude of something above 5000m after crossing which, you were supposed to squeal like a donkey or do other crazy stuff like write an emotional poem the next night over. Anyway, I saw her in these old Chinese boots mine, the holes in its sole stuffed with a generous amount of donkey shit, having treaded across the unending windings of the donkey trails, high in these mountains. I saw her tireless and nonchalant, unperturbed by hours of mountain climbing and seconds of defying the natural barrier, and how she never paused for a still and moved on through paths that lead to the one.
But then I could also see how the same shoes would be witness to an entirely different journey through the same path, would hear thoughts, equally crazy but in different whispers, and how they would be allowed to dry in the warm kitchen oven, whose fate mostly depended on the needs of ‘better-shoe-wearers’. They would sit near the oven anyway, on account of the team spirit, and
I could see how they would eavesdrop on numerous tales—tales across phantom paths, unlike the ones they had taken.
Honestly, sometimes I think I can get crazier about things than about people. In a way, I feel like they are sort of following a path without the need to judge their steps, without the urge to exhale at every other stop, or without futile promises of a destiny. Like the carefree river itself, or a stone plunging from the mountain tops into its depths.
I told you I can get crazy about things—about shoes and stones— if I get the slightest opportunity, like this stuffy world inside the blankets. The problem is I can’t bear it for too long. I need to get some fresh air now and then.
Next morning, it was snowing even worse. Ironically, my Chinese shoes had separate stuffy worlds of their own beneath the three feet of snow. And now and then, I would wonder if they were yearning for some fresh air too.
We reached Manang alright, but even the thrilling lure of Thorung-La Pass failed to raise the spirits of our shoes. Ultimately, it was destined upon them to trace back the paths across the donkey trails.
“It’s not a donkey, it’s a mule” My friend exclaimed days later.
“I know” I replied coolly—and I did. “But ‘donkey’ sounds better” I said. I wondered if the poor mules could care less if they were called ‘donkeys’. That’s the terrible thing about being alive—you are supposed to care about things.
- Nirajan Raj Regmi
No comments :
Post a Comment