Calming my breath to bring focus
at each step in front of me.
Not on the peak, not on the person ahead of me.
Just the next step is where my focus would be.
I look up and my head swims,
fear creeps up inside.
No amount of preparation seems enough
when the goal is in sight.
Fear starts to swell,
growing and it expands.
Legs shiver, feet tremble,
thoughts arrive in my mind.
What is your best moment in the trek?
Why do you come to mountains?
What did you take from the mountains and what did you leave in the mountains?
These three questions were posed to us by the camp leader of Patar Nachauni (Uttarakhand) and we were asked to give our own answers without discussion when we returned to Patar after summit. After the questions were asked discussions started and there was a difference to be noticed. The relatively younger ones (recent undergrads) immediately started discussing and words like perseverance, endurance, will power etc could be heard. Most just smiled at each other and didn’t discuss these questions with each other (not in my knowledge atleast). After successfully summiting Roopkund when all of us had returned to the camp of Patar Nachauni, one or two of the camp trek mates randomly asked if we have to answer the three questions and if we have to, when will they be asked. The questions were casually forgotten later maybe even the answers. In my case, one of the questions remained unforgotten and unanswered. I tried finding out the reason but everything seemed shallow, incomplete, dissatisfying or simply not the real reason. Maybe it requires many more treks to be able to realize the answer. Continue reading
Varanasi is one of the major cities of Uttar Pradesh. A shabby city, mind you.
On the other hand Banaras is the only city of its kind in the world.
It does not conform to any standard of a city, per se. It is like any other 2nd tier city-potholed roads, traffic jams, and bad infrastructure. Name the flaws and you have them. But you don’t go to Varanasi for Varanasi. You go there for Banaras or Kashi.
This place has an ethereal quality lacking structural beauty. Lacking the luster of a city and seeming as if covered in dust of non-existent fervor, Banaras has an inherent stability, equilibrium though dynamic in nature. Dynamic because there is a movement beneath all that non-sensitiveness. The place never reaches its stable state. It is not supposed to either. Very true to its essence. Continue reading
Mountains hold different meaning for different people. Everyone is influenced in a different way. They are for everybody willing to climb and belong to no one in particular. However easy or tough is the climb, the satisfaction of reaching the top and being among or above the fellow peaks is worth every moment of trouble.
Sar Pass at 13800 ft in the Parvati Valley is one of the Himalayan treks I decided to undertake. It takes you to a height where you, even though being at the same height as the mountains around you , don’t feel a tinge of pride seeping in. The huge snow-capped eminence humbles you. They overwhelm you to an extent of making you speechless. Feelings cannot be described at that point. Sar Pass is not a tough trek. Hence some people may lack a sense of achievement after crossing it. But what everybody positively feels is the immense beauty that those mountains have to offer- The beauty of the Himalayas. Continue reading
When someone’s college time reaches to an end , the first thing that comes into their mind is that “I am going to miss my friends or my hostel or my college etc etc blah blah..” But not me..
Its right that I won’t be living with my friends all day all night, I won’t be having those fun moments each day. Understood. But I don’t think that all of this is to grieve but to cherish forever.
As my final year of graduation is nearing its finish line , I don’t think about missing my friends but of far more fun moments that I am going to have with them and in my life . Continue reading
She stares out of the window. Rainwater running down the window pane. Drop by drop. Unlike the time around her. Blank. Thinking about her life just a few days back. Was it truly her life? Is that how she wanted her life to be? In reality. I wonder. She wondered. She thinks. At least I had a job. Someway to utilize my time. Sorry, did I just write ‘utilize’? Someway to vile away her time at a place which she loathed, around the people so shallow, hollow and archaic robots!
She had been torturing herself by working in a company which she was never really interested to work for . She could not develop an interest in it even after 5 years . Worked with people whom she first looked up to and in five years started looking them down. She earned well. Great to be true. Six figures is great for 5 years. She completed her studies in the way she had thought she wanted to. Successful, not immediately though. But yes after certain setbacks and hurdles, she came up and in the end was successful in her career.
Now she is jobless for 2 weeks, not disconsolate though. Jobless by choice or by her past actions. One day after waking up and getting ready for her usual “job”, she stopped, sat down, opened her system and with ruthless yet smooth strokes typed a resignation letter to her “boss”. She had truly woken up that day. She didn’t think twice because every time she thought she deleted the letter that she had typed. But today she didn’t think. Just wrote. And with her grey matter throbbing hard against her skull to come out and congratulate her along with her pounding heart went to the office and gave him the resignation. He looked at her with quizzical eyes and made her sit down. For the first time she never uttered a word. Just smiled ,left the office and went to coffee shop. Had her favorite cappuccino, one after another ,just enjoying the rain. She had not felt the rain for a long time. That day she did. Felt every drop of it. The rain soaked her and washed away all the inhibitions. She was truly awake in the past five years.
2 weeks on, she did that she had not done in the past 5 years. Treated her enervated mind and body with exercise and literature. She started writing . Opened a free blog. Joined a small dance class. Called up her parents and friends. And is going to go trekking day after tomorrow alone. And just a few hours back has applied for a course in journalism in a university. Hopeful that she will get a scholarship. I hope too.
Now she is looking out of the window. In the rain. Her residence is same, her locality is same but with a different niche. She is different. She is herself. Her eyes reflecting the serenity, contentment and the energy lighting the flame of her newly-discovered life.
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Ruminations 