In Search of Silence

by Poorna Bell

  We stop for black tea to remove the taste of clouds from our tongues, and, as we get up to leave, there is a sight that stops my heart.

  Having Rob in my thoughts for most of the day (it is that kind of day), there is a shaft of light that turns the furthest crease of the mountains into a shimmer, a promise of a different place where he might be.

  I don’t think I will ever stop feeling like this, as if he is so nearby I could almost reach out my hand and feel him reach out for me on the other side.

  Despite my independence, despite this being a journey about me and not my grief, there is something about the gathering of mountains and silence that makes every part of my soul cry this question to the skies: Will I ever love and be loved again?

  Google isn’t just a search engine; it reveals some of the most hidden, vulnerable and human parts of ourselves. I’m talking about auto-complete, the function that tries to finish off a question you’re typing by suggesting the most commonly searched phrases.

  ‘Will I fall . . .’ immediately prompts: ‘Will I fall in love again’. ‘Why does love . . .’ immediately prompts: ‘Why does love hurt’. So here we are, yearning for an answer about something so personal to ourselves, from an algorithm. We want there to be rules so that we can follow them and, that way, mitigate being hurt.

  We try to instil order in a primary emotion that has no intention of playing by the rules. We say it should give us certain things, it should fix illnesses, it should make us happy, but the truth is: it never promised to do that.

  Although I had a big love with Rob, I felt utterly lost when it came to thinking about my future and the part love played in it once he was gone. I knew my expectation of love, before I met Rob, was that it would fix everything, and it would last for ever. It’s a hugely popular line of thinking, but one that doesn’t bear up when that love fails or dies.

  Before I left on my big trip, I emailed Daniel Jones, who has edited the New York Times’ ‘Modern Love’ column for thirteen years – a beloved fixture for showcasing all the intricacies, complications, betrayals and reunions of love. I wanted to know whether he had noticed patterns in the way people approached thinking about love.

  He wrote back that we tended to try to follow scripts in life. ‘Those scripts – wedding, marriage, children – don’t allow for a lot of variety. I have seen couples break up over infidelity – even when they don’t want to – because that’s what people do, essentially, and that’s what others expect. It’s hard to cut your own path.

  ‘But one of the biggest problems in terms of how we view love is the way we often think of it as a feeling. As something we can’t control. And as long as we feel good about someone, we’re in love. But love is really about active caring, active curiosity – choice. Love isn’t passive, and people who treat it that way aren’t likely to hold onto that feeling for very long.’

  I wanted to know about marriage. Mainly because I want to know if I got it wrong. ‘We used to marry for other reasons – practical, religious, political,’ he says. ‘Now we marry for love, and supposedly we stay together for love, but that’s a lot of pressure.

  ‘We don’t need each other in the ways we used to, so love is our sole bond. A better question for newly married people might be: What are our expectations for how we are going to try to be kind and helpful to each other going forward?’

  I think about Daniel’s words over and over with each hour, each clomp on a tree root, every step up and down. I turn them over carefully like pearls.

  When I think about why people get married, why I got married, it’s because I saw it as the ultimate declaration of my love for Rob. I loved him, and so obviously marriage was our natural end point, right? Except, a marriage requires a lot more than just love.

  Commitment was never our problem or the doubt that we could and wanted to be together for the years we never ended up having; it was all the other messy stuff that tied into his illnesses. A big part undoubtedly was that Rob felt he couldn’t tell me that he wasn’t the man I thought I’d married because maybe I wouldn’t want to be with the real him. I don’t know that he understood that the lies were far more damaging than the actual reality of himself.

  I’m fairly sure that I won’t remarry, and, admittedly, a small part of that is because the prospect of meeting someone to seriously date them seems so impossible. But the biggest part is because, while I loved being called his wife, and there is something about marriage that deepens a bond, I don’t know that I want to build a life with someone in that way.

  I’m capable of love – I know that in my bones. But I don’t know if I’m capable of setting aside my life, to become part of theirs in that all-consuming way. And I don’t feel like I need to do it to be socially acceptable to others.

  Once I remove the idea of having it again, it releases the pressure like a whistle.

  We continue. There are leaves, brushed along the branches of trees as if by a miniaturist, gentle and fine.

  Around the trunks are fronds of some beautiful parasite, its leaves descending haughtily like a beggared aristocrat down the length like a spiral staircase. Millet and grasses cover the downward slopes in a melt of yellow and green, bursting into gold when the sun is allowed glory from behind the clouds. Along the darker paths, more beech trees, this time growing in a less ordered tangle.

  At various teahouses, I meet a lot of different people. Trekkers in the region can be on different circuits – not everyone is headed to base camp – and some people go at a different pace to others. There are also several teahouses clustered in the same area, and there’s not a guarantee you will always see the same people in the same teahouse. The guides also seem to work to their own structure of loyalty, so there are some restaurants and teahouses they will visit, others they won’t.

  This set-up places a lot of emphasis on human connection. You know the ones you get on with, and the ones you don’t. A chance encounter with someone you like might brighten the rest of your day. There is no TV and no phone, so something as simple as watching kids on a homemade Ferris wheel is hugely thrilling. And concerning: the Ferris wheel is made from blocks of wood that look like they are going to spin off into the mountains at any moment.

  We watch a dog chasing a cat chasing a rabbit and, at that moment, it’s better than an Oscar-nominated film.

  I name my walking sticks Thelma and Louise. At one point, Louise loses the protective cap on her pointy end and she ends up picking up leaves like I’m doing community service in a park. Sometimes they get stuck in rocks, but they save my knees, which collapse around day eight.

  Around 99 per cent of people are friendly and helpful because we are all in the same situation. We swap stories about the food – it’s vegetarian and simple because the country is so poor – and exchange snacks. No one is a dick on the trail in terms of pushing past or not letting you through. People are considerate – kind, even. It’s the best of humanity.

  I ask Suman if he’s noticed any differences since he started doing the trail, and he said one big change, in that there are more Chinese trekkers than ever before.

  I meet a Chinese couple fairly early on in my trek who are trapped in their language because they don’t speak English.

  At first, we see them fiddling with their phone; they have trouble getting Wi-Fi to power their translation app. They don’t have a guide or a porter and since the guide is the one who negotiates your accommodation and sorts out your meals, they are in trouble.

  Some of the lodge staff and Suman are laughing at them and their confusion and inability to understand things. It makes me feel uncomfortable.

  But then, the world widens a tiny crack. It turns out they are looking for a porter and someone helps them with a mixture of broken English and hand gestures. A couple of days later, we see them on the track and say hello. They break into a smile.

  A couple of days after that, while walking down a track I hear the loveliest baritone voice singing opera, and it turns out to be the Chinese m
an as he clomps down the stairs with gusto. I smile at him and his wife as they pass by.

  ‘You’re strong!’ she says to me and mimes Arnold Schwarzenegger pumping his biceps. She earns my lifelong devotion.

  A day after that, we see them at a restaurant, and the Chinese lady comes up to me and gestures for help with her translation app. I’m kind of pleased she picked me to help her.

  She points at what I am eating – vegetable noodle soup, holding my steaming bowl with two eggs floating in the broth. The woman nods and taps it into the phone and shows me what it says so she can show it to the waiter.

  My heart sinks.

  ‘Ah, no,’ I reply. ‘That reads “vegetable faces”.’

  She taps some more. It reads ‘egg faces’. These guys are going to be eating next week at this rate.

  The last and most epic stretch is the day’s walk to base camp. The landscape changes entirely, as if shrugging off a shawl to reveal the bare skin beneath, a glimpse of the heartbeat.

  The path cuts away to a valley, a long, flat path laid between rows of mountains.

  They are like sentinels, the tallest peaks dissolving into a vast, curling cloud of steam at the top. Some of their surfaces are covered in a carpet of moss, some beginning new life from the snow melt, others dying and turning copper. We walk on long, yellow grass, and when the sun frees itself from the cloud, we are in a corridor of gold.

  It’s a forgotten land, a different realm. This is the healing hum of the earth, not cities, where we think our own noise is the only one worth listening to. Once through the valley we walk a narrow path hemmed in by slabs of rock. Next to us is a glacial stream, and to our left rises a huge wall of snow caps.

  The trail gets quieter and quieter as we go along. Not everyone makes it to base camp, and some make it in their own time, so I don’t pass anyone for a time. The sky drains into white, clouds cloak the mountains and, soon, snow starts falling.

  As we walk, everything is so obscured and ethereal it feels like I’m walking through a mist of creation.

  At base camp, everything is hushed, the landscape hidden, and the dining room starts filling up with people. You can’t light fires after a certain altitude on the ABC circuit, so it gets cold and wet. The room is packed and feels like a warren filled with rabbits, tired and close together for body warmth. Most of us are staying in dorms, so when it’s time to go to bed, we all stream out of the dining room and settle in for more rabbit warmth.

  When first light hits, I get up to use the bathroom, but what I see stops me in my tracks. The sky is clear, and the mist and the clouds have departed to reveal the most staggering sight I have seen: snow caps so close I can almost smell their breath of frost and ice. The Annapurna range stretches her long body into the distance, peak after peak, speckled with white against sharp crags. She is so austere and beautiful, and the close knit of mountains seals off the track so dramatically, she feels like the full stop to this part of the earth.

  Thick snow covers everything, and in the half-bluish light, a black mountain dog pads over for a bit of attention.

  I know that in a matter of minutes, people will start waking up. So I take the time to look at her, truly look at her, and think about how this feels.

  I feel the frequency of true silence as I walk through the snow. It is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard – not empty, not lonely at all.

  When the sunrise meets the point of earth nearest to me, I’m surrounded by mountains which seem as if they are on fire. The peaks are the colour of flame and slowly the light consumes me until I’m standing there, with tears in my eyes.

  Getting here wasn’t easy.

  Barring hardcore farmer and fisher people, most South Asians are utterly shit at the outdoors. We wear suede boots in muddy fields, carry chiffon shawls in freezing temperatures, ballet pumps on snowy terrain. We can barely inch out the corkscrew from a Swiss Army knife, let alone use it in any meaningful way.

  I think back to what I’ve experienced on the ABC. I’ve slipped on ice, my knees issued a strongly worded ‘fuck you’ to my brain, I kept going through valleys of golden grass, thickets of bamboo, beech trees drunk on sunlight, tiny ferns, steps disguised as boulders. I saw a moon shaped like a scythe. I met people, I made friends and heard their stories and shared mine. For a short time I stopped connecting with people from behind a wall of technology and I started connecting with them using my eyes, heart and brain.

  I know I’m not unique or that I’ve even done anything that registers on the scale of impressive things to do. I know that as we speak someone is trudging through Antarctica or travelling around the world in a kayak. I know I’m not Cheryl Strayed, that I didn’t grow up with the outdoors, that I can’t put up a tent, light a fire or pull off a toenail.

  But I brought my heart along with me. This heart that has been through so much. This heart which is so full of Rob and the past; this heart that struggles with the future.

  I place my heart at the feet of mountains and ask for strength and the courage to know my own mind that has been shattered in the past two years.

  And, as always when I am in the centre of a silent and calm place, I say to him who is now of sky and earth: ‘I hope, wherever you are, there is peace, and there is laughter.’

  8

  THE CALL TO WEIGH ANCHOR

  I have an odd memory from when I was very little in India. Like most kid memories, it is painted in bright, vivid colours but can only be recounted in snatches – there are gaps of information such as: where we were going, who I was with. It’s like watching a short film but with deleted scenes.

  In this memory, we are driving to someone’s house in another state. We decide to stop at a small town to use the loo and grab a bite to eat, and this place is dusty and quiet. There is only one thing to see here: an anatomy museum.

  The museum is empty, and to my child brain, it is vast in size. We walk down long aisles and it’s the first time I see organs pickled in fluid. There are jars upon jars for the smaller body parts – animal and human – and there’s even a series of cases showing the preserved remains of babies at different stages of life.

  At the time, it didn’t seem creepy or unusual that we were there.

  When I returned to Bangalore after Nepal, I felt like parts of me had been removed and placed in those jars of yellow fluid. Somewhere, pieces of myself were sitting in a dusty, timeless town for the time being, while I was reconfiguring my sense of self.

  I already felt different. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. It wasn’t sad or lonely, it was just life and me working out how to be with each other.

  It began the moment I stepped off the plane. I felt the warm, gentle mood of the air. I closed my eyes and pressed my thoughts to the further reaches of the city, coconut trees, old buildings mouldy with rain, cars, rickshaws puttering past, buses with ‘OK horn please’ painted on their backs, and I felt its familiarity unfolding around me.

  As my taxi pushed through the slog of the city’s traffic, I saw familiar landmarks.

  One of them was the Chris Hospital. Whenever we drove past this, Mum and I joked about it – as it’s named after Christ.

  ‘You can’t just abbreviate the son of God’s name to Chris. Like, “Yo, what’s up, Chris?”!’

  She cackled with laughter. I thought of my parents, and the smiles on their faces when I’d arrive at the gates. Dad had cried, apparently, when he learned that I had made it safely and hadn’t been eaten by mountain lions in Nepal. (There are no mountain lions in Nepal, but such a detail is irrelevant to he who worries.)

  I thought of my little mum with her dazzling smile and curly hair. I don’t know what made me do it, but I thought of the day when they wouldn’t be around and my heart almost stopped there and then.

  The reason this felt strange was that, in all my life, I have never been the one who left. Since I was a kid, people have been leaving me like shoals of fish pulsing towards more exciting waters, returning
after a time.

  When we were small kids, Priya and I lived in different countries, then we were separated from Dad during our five-year stint in India. When we were older, Priya had various periods living in America, India and France, while our parents spent half of the year abroad travelling.

  I couldn’t shake the worry of: what if something happened to them while I was away?

  And then, I realise, this is the fear that I’ve carried all along. I couldn’t do anything about people leaving, but if I was the one who stayed, then I’d be there when they decided to come back. Really, this constant anger I have felt since Rob’s passing is actually me being scared of losing them.

  But I don’t think I can live like that any more. I have to see what it is like to be the one who leaves, who makes decisions for herself rather than holding so tightly onto everything.

  I don’t belong in India, but I don’t belong anywhere else either – not for the time being. When I reach back for my sense of belonging, my anchor to England, it is not there. Someone has pulled it up from the bottom of the sea.

  We have a few days together before I move on to New Zealand. Dad is going to stay on a little longer to get in as much sunshine as possible, but Mum’s decided she wants to get back to her home in England and get things set up.

  When I hug Mum goodbye, and I feel how small she is, I almost start crying. It’s as if the moment of when I will never touch or smell her again has been briefly brought forward, and the loss of her, an inevitable future without her, is a sensation so sharp I can’t bear it.

  She gives us instructions on where to find things, what tasks she needs us to do. I look at my dad doubtfully – he has big shoes to fill in her absence. He gives me the same look.

  I see for the first time how lost we will be without her, how she makes our life easier through tireless effort and cajoling. We are dumbasses moving through the dark by dint of her light.