I hope no one will get offended when I don’t say anything. In a world where there is nothing that someone will not find a way to get offended about, where everyone is at the other’s throat, the one who everyone wants to banish from society — even silence is offensive. For them, your existence is offensive. Only death can bring them peace and joy, such is their miserable existence. I don’t plan to remain silent to comfort idiots, so I hope at least one idiot gets offended when I say something.
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.
Interpreting the sudden sight of a shadow.
A barren grey wall hot and lit under the sun past noon. Sunlight falls in a triangle on the entire right corner of the wall. As I sip watermelon juice by the window looking at the wall (my exclusive view in the city), a kite’s shadow passes across the triangle of light swiftly. The hunter is as if on the hunt for this wall, not having found anything else to eat in the scorching heat of Dehradun in June.
I can’t wait to plunge my head into the snow.
I’m in Dehradun right now where it’s 43 degrees Celsius of brutal city summer.
I can’t wait to plunge my head into the snow and come out looking like the apple trees in snow. I can’t wait to plunge my head again and again into the snow until I start to look like an apple tree in snow and no one can tell me apart. I can’t wait to be an apple tree in the orchard who loves the snow.
Selfie in the snow. Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India. January 2022.
I’m desperate to wake up once again into this magical world.
Snow in the apple orchard. Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India. January 2022.
I want power.
I want power. To bring to life my way of thinking. I want power and I’ll get it.
A message from the Beas.
This is the Beas river posting as a guest. I have a message for some of you, to warn you of a devastating flood:
Pray that the day may never come when the huge concrete walls you have built on the riverbed for your illegal home or business will come flying on your back, leaving you bedridden. As restricted as I feel today.
Pray knowing that this day may come as soon as tomorrow, knowing that you may not be able to walk from tomorrow no matter how much you pray for prayers do no good for criminals.
What seemed like it happened yesterday was three years ago, in phone photos. Time flies in times of tech excess. Nothing is important, nothing to remember.
Hello, little black ant.
Where are you going on this lovely morning in the Himalaya with a tiny white crumb — half your size and more than half your weight — perfectly held in your black mouth?
A landscape for you.
Of the partially dry and colourful Tso Kar, with fresh snow on the mountains around this fluctuating salt lake. Taken in the bitter-cold (so lovely) morning, the day after the snow. It was September 13 2021, one of my many wild days of travelling and living everywhere in Ladakh.
Isn’t it a painting?
Fresh snow on the mountains around the Tso Kar lake, Ladakh, India. September 2021.