I feared getting bored of the Himalaya.
This is what I had noted down in December 2021 in Vashisht — in my phone notes and never published on the blog:
What if I get bored of these mountains that are so beloved to me right now? What if I wake up tomorrow and want to leave? Quite possible as I’m naturally someone who gets bored. Sometimes I suddenly get so bored of something or someone that I like that I wish I could forget it/them immediately so that it’s no longer boring. I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of living here, but what if?
If I do, I do have a plan. It is to visit my favourite places in summer when they are on fire. Like Jaisalmer and Udaipur. Or I’ll go to the roots of my beginning somewhere in Kathiawar where I was born.
Just thinking about going there in peak summer makes me nervous.
Perhaps just a week or two over there will bring my bored self to senses, and I’ll be rushing back to the Himalaya. If sitting on a hot chair will not make me want to run then being unable to sleep at night will surely do.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
When I wrote the above, I was only imagining, I wasn’t bored yet. But recently, I’ve had to come down from the higher Himalaya to the burning city of Dehradun, turning my bored, senseless dreaming into reality.
I experienced the terror of living in a hot place at the peak of its never-ending summer when it should have rather been raining. And I experienced such unbearableness in a city, exactly what I have been avoiding. Which is to say, I have been avoiding the harsh, life-less life of an Indian city. The insanity of ever wanting to live here — oh, why anyone would want to live here, why so many live here and even die here without ever really living anywhere else.
I came to Dehradun on June 6 and I already deeply regret every day of the one to two weeks I end up living here — except for one cherished memory of meeting my dear friend.
I no longer fear getting bored of the Himalaya. I must be really stupid if I ever get bored.