The Himalaya Dispatch #1

Omens—Goodbyes—East

March 30, Somewhere in the Kumaon Himalaya.

Bloodied a toad with my sickle. It is an accident I regret; I had been clearing bushes and weeds off some abandoned fields. He has a wide purple gash on his back where my blade found him. He looks like a clump of cancer tumors dyed in black bile and brought to life. He is crawling towards the shade of the rotten banana tree to breathe his last. I take a ten-minute break from work and head to the bench by the terrace-field’s edge.

The wind is cool and strong and tearing through the slopes it makes the pines rattle and sound like a thousand furious waterfalls. The patch of shin-high grass beside me is dry and hollow and waving in the wind it lets out a sonorous hum. Not a blade of grass dared move on that patch five years ago, I remember, lying flattened for hours after the leopard had left that spot.

Seeing the leopard again would be a good omen. A glimpse of vigor, strength, poise and decisiveness, a memory to savor and turn over in your head again and again in idle moments. I’m desperate to take a good omen along for the travels ahead. I remember our encounter five years ago (at least I like to think of it that way). There’s never been any tree stump near that patch, I had thought when I first laid eyes on him. He was at the edge far away, and from the little house and through the trunks and boughs of lemon and oak I could barely make out his eyes. He was looking in my direction, not anxious, not furious, unmoving, a spotted stone. This wasn’t a stray that’d be spooked by the wave of a stick. That affront he would punish.

I lay down where he had lain half a decade ago and look up at the cloudless sky for a while. Then I get up and get on my knees and look at the little house. I try to be as still as him, as quiet as him, but my ankles and toes are having a hard time propping me up, and I sneeze. I give up and sit back on the bench; the grass has rebelled already, waving and singing its songs in the wind again.

There are rumors of a leopard staking out a few houses with dogs in the village below. I can go there, I will go there after work. I’m lying to myself.

For now the baby deodar would do as my good omen. He’s a miracle, the only tree like himself for miles at this elevation. He has become strong enough and tall enough that no bear or mad boar can tear him down anymore; he is set to grow into a grand old sage.

My ten minutes are up. I wipe the blood off the sickle and get back to work.

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April 15, Nainital.

Lately I have a terror of the shins.

I wasn’t an athletic kid ever. The dregs of fitness I do have is an accident of geography—steep long walks: to the market, school, fairs, bus station. I was proud of those feats, and I therefore find it unbelievable I’ve been looking up Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome on the internet lately. Earlier my knees had been giving trouble. Over the past year the nerdspiritedness inherent in athleticism has been a revelation, a deeply disappointing one. An obsessive recording of time and distance, of knowing what and where one’s anterior cruciate ligament and anterior tibialis is. It can be a distasteful affair.

I’m in a foul mood. Some travel-vlogging oaf gets in my face and asks me some crass question and I want to run a grater down his windpipe. I wanted to be in town before I leave, but not in these circumstances. Family of a friend wants me to talk to him. He has run away from his home up in the hills and now rents a matchbox in the bowels of the town, hidden away from all beauty and charm. I owe him one; I’d probably still be a shut-in had he not forced me out of my recent intense period of total reclusion.

It is a small room by the large monsoon drain. The stale pink paint looks like sunburnt skin sloughing off walls. I notice the bottle of rum in the corner and sigh.

“They’re fixing me up with a whale.” He passes me the to-be’s photograph. I look at it and pass him his phone back. We sit in silence. I can smell the rum on him. I want to break the bottle on his head.

This has gone on for too long. Diplomat from Sober-World negotiates with the drunk, the unhappy, the suicidal. Last year at a wedding I had swiped a drunk uncle’s keys right under his nose, pocketed them, and then helped him look for them outside the venue all night. Had I not done so he’d either have backed his car into the highway and gotten squashed by some speeding truck, or he would’ve stumbled back into the wedding and ruined it with all his shouting and swearing and a thousand other festering resentments.

What am I doing. I take a deep breath. He is my friend.

“We’ll walk for a bit.”

No cars are allowed in Thandi Sadak. It is a stretch of tranquil road by the lake. I remember all the drunks I have handled here: lies, flattery, insincere advice, anything to get them home safe. With B______ I am honest: “You’ll have to leave home, start something of your own. There’s no other way. You’ll just be delaying the inevitable otherwise and there’s only so much time.” He is the only heir to a modest business. If he takes my advice his parents will never want to see me again. I have known them since childhood. By renting the room by the drain you have taken your first step towards freedom, I tell him.

We walk on in silence and we reminisce about nothing. At length he asks:

“You leave tomorrow?”

“Yes. By bus to Delhi. From there I’ll fly to Assam, Guwahati. Then onwards to Arunachal.”

“You’ll be back when?”

“Not soon. Brother will join me in Arunachal once I’m done. We plan on travelling together for a while after that.”

“I wish I could just leave all this nonsense and go with you.”

“Decide wisely, B_______”

He hugs me and pats my back. His eyes are watery and his breath stinks of rum. He’s not drunk out of his mind however. He’ll remember everything.

“I’ll walk you back.”

“Nah, I’ll find my way.”

I trust him and do not push it. It is quarter past four. I can still sneak uphill, steal a glimpse of my childhood home and hurry down in time for the 05:00 pm bus back to Haldwani.