by Pankaj Dubey
‘Come on,’ shouts someone. Her ears perk up at this. It’s Aamir. He is down below, at the other end of the log, waiting for her. He will catch her if she falls; she is confident of this. And on this thought, she slides. Slithers down, her eyes half-open, till gnarled roots and a rock-hard chest break her slide. Aamir helps her steady herself and climb off it even as Kuldeep comes down in a rush soon after, landing almost on top of Sanam.
Her Chandigarh-wallah friend claims her the minute he jumps off the log and has dusted off the leaves and bits stuck to his bottom.
Aamir walks back to rejoin his group.
‘Slimy!’ mutters Kuldeep, not referring to the log. Why hadn’t the damn guy stuck around to help more OTs? Why only Sanam? And so they continue.
The path narrows even further and the trekkers now move in a single file. A sharp descent is next. Down they go, wary and quiet although their minds are abuzz with a zillion questions. Why? Why should they be taken on these treks? What was the logic? What was this preparing them for . . . a fall? Broken backs? All this risk . . . it made no sense to these brilliant minds.
But no one says it aloud. The almost vertical descent keeps them preoccupied.
They come upon a stream next, the gurgling waters beckoning all. After the dirt and grime of the trail, the refreshing sight soothes many a jangled nerve.
‘We halt here for ten minutes,’ announces the trek leader. The OTs sigh in relief, grateful for this breather. At once, they drop down on grassy verges and smooth round boulders. Most are too exhausted to talk or even think.
Badal perches on a rocky outcrop beside Aamir. The mountain boy’s head is buried inside his backpack. He’s looking for something.
‘Here . . .’ he pulls out an apple and offers it to Badal. Takes out another for himself. Then dives into his bag for something again.
‘Some salt?’ Aamir offers Badal next, taking a salt cellar out of his bag. Badal is game. So Aamir sprinkles some on his apple and also on his own.
But before he can bite into it, a cry rents the air.
‘Aaaagh!’
It’s from the direction of the stream. Aamir rushes down, as do several of the other OTs.
It’s Kuldeep. They find him hopping around on one leg, trying to dislodge something off the other. He seems to be in great pain. Something is stuck to his leg, below the knee. Kuldeep must have rolled up his trousers to wade into the water, when something pink and gross latched onto him.
‘Aaaaarrrgh . . .’ Kuldeep howls.
Aamir runs back to the rock he had been sitting on. Rohit, Sanam and a couple of other OTs force Kuldeep down onto the grassy bank and bend to examine his leg.
‘Leech!’ cries an OT. He has read about it and is fairly sure that this is a leech.
Everyone steps back immediately. Apprehensive, they nervously look around to see if more of these parasites are crawling around in their vicinity.
‘Watch out for those bloodsuckers!’ the trek instructor had warned them this morning before they had set out. ‘There may be leeches in some pockets . . . mostly near water.’
‘Get sir!’ shrieks Sanam, and two OTs hurry away to find their instructor, who has strolled off to collect some plant samples. Meanwhile, someone shoulders through the group encircling Kuldeep.
It’s Aamir. He’s back and in two strides, reaches Kuldeep. Kneels down and in a snap, grabs the gummed up leg. Before Kuldeep can jerk it away, Aamir sprinkles a fistful of something on the grotesque creature stuck on it.
Sanam peers over the crowd to see what he’s doing, but cannot make much out with the OTs swarming around their fallen comrade.
Whatever it is, it makes the gelatinous slug squirm. And shrivel. But it stays put.
Kuldeep bawls louder, trying to haul his foot back. But Aamir holds on to it tightly and whips out a pocketknife.
‘Sir is here,’ shouts someone. And the group cleaves to make way. Kuldeep now tries to kick off Aamir so sir can check his leg. But the damn fellow only grips it harder, sticking his knife into it and literally carving the leech out of it.
The OTs watch in wonder as the slimy bloodsucker is sculpted out and chucked towards the stream.
Aamir lets go of Kuldeep and moves away. Kuldeep is still whining. The instructor calms him down and applies some antiseptic to the injury.
As they resume the trek, the instructor orders Aamir to join Kuldeep’s group.
‘Just in case . . .’ he tells the boy, patting him on the back for a job well done.
Sanam is thrilled to have him in their group. ‘Was it talcum powder that you sprinkled on it?’ Sanam asks him once they are on their way.
‘Why . . . you want me to sprinkle some on you?’ he asks, looking all serious.
She punches him and then says, ‘Do I look like a leech to you?’
Aamir checks her out from top to toe, before replying, ‘No, you don’t.’
‘It was salt,’ Kuldeep shouts from behind. Sir had told him. Aamir nods and explains how salt instantly dehydrates a leech and makes it easy to remove.
Sanam shudders.
They are climbing up now. It is steep. And relentless. Their legs rebel as they are not used to such torture. Most of the OTs are not used to such gruelling physical exercise. There is one, though, who is nimbly negotiating the slopes, clambering up like a mountain goat. Aamir. He checks out the trail and guides his group up the gravelly path.
Sanam soldiers on, pausing only to gaze at a shrub or a flower. First time in her life, she has trekked, come so close to nature. It’s slightly scary but it fills her with wonder nonetheless. Tufts of grass so soft to touch; she clutches onto some, at points where the path is especially steep and the OTs have to crawl through. And she sights then, these serrated leaves, arranged opposite each other, on erect, furry stems. She has never seen anything like it before. Sanam reaches out to feel the leaf.
‘Don’t!’ Aamir screams and slaps her hand away. ‘Don’t touch it.’ Sanam takes a moment to recover before turning around. Aamir tells her and the group, ‘It’s bichhu buti . . . stinging nettle.’
Oohs and aahs rent the air. Now all climb with great care, ensuring no part of the nettle brushes against them.
Just when it seems like the trail will get worse, it eases. The climb is not so steep now. Aamir narrates how the fine hairs of the nettles can sting and irritate the skin for several hours after contact.
‘But it’s very nutritious,’ he adds. ‘You can roast or boil them; the hairs turn harmless then.’
Everyone pooh-poohs the idea. With a billion other ways to get nutrition, why would anyone choose hairy nettles?
They pass some hamlets. And a cemetery as well. Conifers dominate the landscape. Pines and pine-cones are everywhere. And rhododendrons.
‘Buransh we call it,’ Aamir informs the group. ‘Come in April . . . that’s when buransh lays out a red carpet for you.’
Sanam shuts her eyes for a second and tries to picture the scene. The instructor tells them to hurry. They are at Lal Tibba. Almost. All that arduous climb and they reach a viewing point manned by binoculars. What an anti-climax!
‘You’re lucky . . . no cloud cover today,’ announces their trek instructor. ‘Most days, nothing is visible.’
Then why trek up to Lal Tibba?
There are some questions you want to ask but cannot. Probably that was the lesson the academy wanted to drill into them that day.
16
Most of them go to bed. Some to eat. And a few to get their cuts and gashes tended to. Aamir is the only one on whose body the trek had not taken a toll. It is his mind he needs to calm and the library can provide the one cure that has worked wonders in the past—poetry.
The library is deserted. Aamir makes his way to his favourite section, pulls out some titles and takes the table in the corner by the window. It’s a vantage point from where he can look out even as he uses verse in an attempt to look within. Lost in the pages of the book, Aamir does not notice the person who slip
s into the chair beside him and softly touches his hand.
‘Ramya!’
He has always found her here and delighted in the fact. Today, however, it had not struck him to seek her out.
She flips his book over to see what he is reading. ‘Ah! Ahmad Faraz,’ her eyes shine. ‘You’re exactly my type.’
Aamir says nothing. Ramya quietly fetches some of her favourites to the table. More of Ahmad Faraz; also, Ada Jafri and Aqbar Allahabadi.
She reads out some to him. Dwells on the mood of the verse. And the poet. And its relevance. And then, she falls silent. For he has not spoken. Not once.
‘Aamir?’
‘I’m just tired I think,’ he says.
‘Are you sure?’ she looks sceptical.
‘I’m not sure about anything now.’ He has replied without thinking, but now that he had said it, he realizes that it is true. Life has suddenly become a giant Ferris wheel and it is upturning him every second. He feels high, but knows the low shall follow soon after. ‘I don’t even know how I should perceive the things I see.’ His thoughts are haywire, and he is finding it difficult to express.
She says she understands his confusion. It happens to everyone. And the two just sit there, their books open, but neither into it.
They talk of other more mundane things and make desultory conversation. An hour later, he walks out. Still confused about the path life was taking him. Girls were to be out of it. Yet . . .
You okay? he texts Sanam as he lies in bed.
Yes, you ensured that I was, the sentence is followed by a happy smiley. Her reply gives rise to more questions; questions he needs to ask himself first. He bids her goodnight and drifts off . . . not to sleep . . . but to another world . . . the one inside his mind . . . and deals with its questions.
Their foray into the mountains had transported him to another place . . . to another time . . . to another mountainous range.
Aamir opens his laptop and begins typing:
Mountains are the same everywhere. It’s man who creates the differences by writing various stories about them and giving them various names.
Why? Why do the lives of people on one mountain be dictated by those on another? We, Kashmiris, are expected to heed, enjoy and dance to the tune of those seated on another mountain—a mountain of power.
Why must we face this mountain of problems that we never chose for ourselves in the first place?
You try to camouflage from the world this mountain of a problem that you have given us. You try to contain it behind pickets and barricades, concrete and barbed wires.
All is well, you say.
But all is far from well. And will never be. Not until you let us determine our own well-being.
We are afraid. Our parents are afraid. Our parents are afraid, for us, even more than they are for themselves, which is why they telephone us several times each day. Even if we are close by.
They ask just one question—is all well? They know very well that all may not be well. There could be a blast. A random firing. A detention and questioning. Almost anything. So, they telephone; they are afraid.
But why should they be afraid? Remove this fear. And you remove this mountain of a problem that you have built on our mountains.
Give us our Valley back. And give us our lives back.
If not, then give us a choice. Give us a voice.
The Unknown Voice has had his say on his blog. This is one voice. Another day, he will present another voice. One blog, many perspectives. No wonder Sanam calls him ‘balanced’.
Sanam . . . he smiles as he drops off to sleep.
* * *
Post-trek, it is back to the grind of the classroom. Days disappear into weeks, the OTs mutate into zombies—tracking time only in terms of the number days remaining until the next submission. Now, the mid-term exams loom and so much is due before that: projects; reports; essays; book reviews. Those OTs who attend classes only to snore and recharge after the debilitating PT drills of morning, try staying awake and take notes. Some even start asking questions in class.
But no one can ask as many questions as Sanam does, class after class. The OTs joke that Sanam prepares more for the questions she must raise in class than she does for her subjects.
Only Dheeraj sir is happy.
‘Good question . . . that’s a brilliant point you make,’ he says before the class.
Whether he likes her questions or not is their personal equation. The class is not bothered. War erupts when he asks the class to also appreciate them and follow her lead.
‘Why? Are we besotted fools like him? She’ll keep chanting . . . we’ll keep following, huh!’ Does not matter which OT said this. The whole batch agrees and seethes.
Aamir is amused. One girl managing to rile an entire generation of future bureaucrats is an achievement indeed.
The girl in question remains blissfully unaware of the waters she has muddied.
What fills her head is mid-terms. And . . . she has not gotten around to examining the second thing in her head . . . till this afternoon . . . when the unexpected happened, classes were suspended. This almost never happens in the academy. Everyone cashes in on this windfall, using this extra time to do whatever they wanted to do and not what they had to do every day.
Aamir prefers to spend these free hours with the mountains, so he makes his way to the officer’s lounge. He slips past the curtains that screen the large French windows into the wide balcony. From here he can get an excellent view of the foothills of the Himalayas.
He came to date the mountain, but finds Sanam there. Huddled on a chair by the balcony wall, lost in thought. Aamir stands quietly, watching her for some time. So much is knocking her about these days. Even the workload is getting to her. Since that fateful night of the brawl at the nightclub, she has not given herself time to breathe. Driven as she is to scale up, do whatever it takes to reach the top; rise and rise until the world ceases to affect you, and petty people like Chandrav dare not raise their head.
‘Sanam!’
Aamir! Yes, this is the other problem niggling her in addition to her pre-occupation with the driving need to outdo and outshine everyone. Aamir is rather like that spicy red Thai curry that tantalized her tongue and fired her insides, but ended in heartburn.
‘Sanam!’ Aamir calls out louder to catch her attention. She snaps out of her trance and finds that her spicy tormentor is no longer just an intrusive thought but a personified menace, standing right there, scorching her with his searing gaze.
‘What?’
He comes to perch beside her on the ledge of the balcony wall.
‘Your Kuldeep is running around like a headless chicken looking for you,’ he says smiling.
She is sure that he is only saying this to irritate her, but her hackles rise nevertheless at the ‘your Kuldeep’ gibe.
‘At least Kuldeep has to look for me,’ she retorts. ‘Your fan club is forever by your side; however did you manage to break free?’
‘They’re my leeches, what can I say?’ he shrugs with a wicked grin. Mildly irritated and failing to understand why she can’t get properly furious at him, Sanam turns away to gaze at the mountains. Better to spend time looking at the rocks than at this smart-mouthed girl-slayer.
He nudges her gently on the shoulder, ‘What’re you thinking about?’
‘Life,’ she replies. Straight answers don’t suit him, so she was not going to give him any.
‘And what’re you looking for in life?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Yeah. Actually nothing. What I want is mostly not easy to get . . . and I’m not ready to compromise.’
Both had become serious now.
‘Achcha, I got it!’ he snaps his fingers.
‘And what is it that you’ve got?’ she rises to his bait.
‘You want a movie-wallah scene . . .’
She frowns.
‘Rosy sunsets . . . happily ever after . . .’
‘Not at all,’ she shakes her head. ‘I don’t believe in all that.’
‘Then what exactly is it that you’re after?’
‘Perfection?’ she says wryly. Aamir looks at her, uncomprehending. ‘I want everything in my life to be perfect,’ she pauses, ‘and I don’t want to settle for anything less.’
Just then Aamir’s cell phone beeps with an incoming message, but before he can read it she snatches it from him.
‘Hey!’ Aamir tries to retrieve his phone.
‘You said nothing to what I said . . .’
Aamir cocks his head to a side, ‘Tell me, are you perfect?’
‘I think I am.’ She takes not a second to reply.
His eyebrows fly up. She scowls at his blatant disbelief, ‘You don’t think so?’
‘Do you care what I think?’
‘Not really,’ she laughs.
Aamir shrugs, reclaims his phone and starts texting, ignoring her completely. Sanam feels as if she is once more alone in the balcony, even though he is right there beside her.
A few minutes later, Aamir is done chatting; he pockets his phones and stands up to go, but she pulls him down, holding his hand even after he sits down again. She continues to gaze at the Himalayas until Aamir gently holds her chin and turns her towards him.
‘There is no such thing as perfection,’ he whispers softly. She looks at him, waiting for him to continue. ‘You said you were perfect . . . right?’
Sanam nods.
‘If you already possess it, why seek it?’
‘I want it in all that I do and from all the people in my life,’ she counters.
‘We only seek what we don’t have. Meaning neither are you perfect, nor anything else.’
She falls silent. He’s right. Only she has never seen it like this before. Never considered herself to be anything less than perfect. Dad had always thought she was. And mom agreed. So had all her teachers in school and college. Even her friends had never questioned this. But now . . . that bubble was gone. She was seeing things in a new light.