Could I Have Taken Some More Of It?

It was a drive back to hotel, a small one in Bhaderwah. I was sitting beside the driver, in a 7-seater with all my dear friends I made in college. They were asleep, tired from some snow slips and cigarette hits. I saw the tallest of tall beasts fallen on the road, those mountain trees, you know; people say they fell because they could not handle the snow. I guess all species have their weak ones. Then there were the ones standing, I sighed. I sighed on every turn possible with an empty feeling in my stomach, with a fear of the known, that all of it was going to end. Those who have been reading my blogs know that I studied in Jammu and am head over heels for whatever it offered me. I used to be the person who, in disguise of my extravagance, used to flaunt how I am a beach person and mountains are boring, until I got up there. They know, the mountains know, everything. It is like you be there, wait, have you heard of those crystals that people keep around them to absorb energies? That is it; those big mountains are giant crystals; they just take away everything, those thirsty beasts. I was in the car, teared up, with a fear of the known and the feeling of knowing everything possibly I had has been taken—my might, my anger, my sorrow, my worldliness, my belonging to anyone and anywhere—all felt like a clip of 10 seconds, sent on view once perhaps. The mountains have a tombstone put up on every part of the road that had been a place of death or, say, a road accident. So what the other alive mountain people do is, whenever a road accident happened and people lost their lives, they put up a tombstone mentioning the names and pictures of those people on that particular part of the road from where their vehicle might have fallen. So, I was watching all of them at about every 250 meters, and it hit me at one point that I did not fear death today. When I say I lost my sense of belonging, this is also an aspect of it. You can tell how my empty-feeling stomach was so full of whatever these mountains gave me that I could not ask for more from life itself. I saw apple trees and orange trees moving down the hill; I saw all the dead barks were blooming; it was an ombre of life; the snow gleamed in glory; the greens had their story. I heard one of them, the mountain people, saying, We paint our houses so vibrant because it's hard to find a tiny house on these beasts; it's like finding my fallen eyelash on my body, just to make a wish. I know you won't get it; I don't want you to get it. It's a tear of everything and nothing; it's a curved road with its waterfalls melting; it's a pink house on a dry and brown mountain; it's the same pink house in an array of tulips; it's just two tectonic plates overlapping each other; it's just simple people denying to end their hustle; it's worth it, and you will know, the more you know, the more you are empty. 

© Kashish Saxena