And then you walk away

It is that, isn't it.

Finding balance in places where there is an utter lack ot it.

Where you know you are gonna drown
So you drown well.

It is that isn't it

You do well, everything you have to do
And you take the pain and laugh with it, my friend.

You laugh at everything and you do it well
You laugh with yourself and the other

It is that isn't it

It is that happiness isn't it, thats hiding deep within. That which hides in open sight. That raw thing called life.

So then, you take the pain and imbalance, take the joys, the balances, and you look at it. Look at the life in it all. Find the raw happiness thats not hiding now.

You take it all and throw it away. Then, you  walk away.

Buddhaban

"No" - His father's no was as hard a stop as Saleem had ever seen. Equal with the will of those icy mountains he called home. Just like Abba, the mountains were always cruel. At 10 years old, he had some way to go before he understood that they both meant good.

His grandfather, Dada, was looking on as his mother, Ammu, lit the firewood in the clay hole and placed a milk bowl on it for the visitors. Dada knew that these were the moments that could change everything about them. Not just the child, it was about the Khandaan, the bloodline, his ancestry coming down from hundreds of years.

...

They have always been shepherds, grazing goats in the high mountain passes of the beautiful Parvati valley in the summers and migrating back to lower villages of Tosh, Pulga and Kulga during the winters. The valley was sometimes kind and sometimes cruel, but it was home. 

The Parvati gave them everything they needed to live a good life. And a river ran through it. The Parvati river that flowed right through the heart of the valley was ever refreshing and always has had nourishing fish to offer. The green pastures were heaven for the cattle and the forests had rare herbs. The forest also gave them the firewood which was the only fuel they used - key for survival during the winters when the snow was knee deep and cold made its way right through to the bones.

The winter months were just about that - survival. And so, they ventured into higher mountains during warm seasons leading the cattle into the grasslands. The sheep was the only wealth the family ever really possessed, they put their money where their mouths were -  the sheep’s mouths. Though the Muslim community was a minority, it was a significant minority, very much part of the valley life. The family, much respected through the ages, had built their summer shacks on one of the higher flatlands in the region.

This place, called Buddhaban, was practically the highest of meadows in the region. It was also at the furthest end of the valley, far away and high above Tosh, the last of the valley villages. Spiti, another charming Himachal valley to the east that touched the Chinese border, was just a days' trek away, maybe two. But the trekking paths went around some really big peaks and glaciers, through mountain passes that were safe only for a few months in the year.

...

As far as Saleem could remember, he had been going about his wanderings and small thrills without much care for all that his Abba and Dada tried to teach him. He loved herding the sheep and staring at the birds and the clouds on those lower Himalayan mountain meadows. His favorite times of the day were the mornings when his Ammu gave him glasses full of sweet goat milk, and the evenings when he sat around the fireplace with his Abba and uncles. He also loved running along the slopes with his elder brother Karim when they had to fetch something from the lower villages. His relationship with his brother was the closest he had or would go on to have - it was just that they had only each other for company and nothing to compare to. Everyone else in the Buddhaban dwelling, including their cousins, were way elder or younger than them. All the twenty-or-so people from the three families living together there were pretty much one family and had cattle as the main livelihood. That has been the way of things for decades now.

It was not all well for the family though, nor was it for valley people in recent years. The old times were changing. It was a boon for the Parvati people that the valley became the go-to hippie destination in the Himachal for all the prosperity that it had brought. At the same time, it was threatening. At the stake was their way of living itself.

The youth had lots of opportunities to earn a living now, catering to the tourists. No longer did they have to depend solely on cattle and farming. Livelihood was not an existential problem. Markets were getting bigger and trade has been ever-growing. The development came in the form of infrastructure and better opportunities. But the culture was slowly rotting underneath.

The fabric of the society was not as pure as it once was. But like any decay, this was slow. It was too late before anyone realized that their villages were not as happy as before - harmony was waning. Opportunity brought conflict with it and groups fought for prominence. The ugly side of urbanization - plastic, over-crowding and noise - was now a fixture in the famous marketplaces. Many young men and women were getting involved in the hashish business and it was a slippery slope from there towards more hazardous drug mafias. Too many outsiders were venturing into the mountains and valley lives, and not every visitor was a good-natured trekker. The villages more often felt like tourist destinations and relations based on familiarity were slowly giving way to more practical businesses. The traditions and habits passed on from fathers to sons and mothers to daughters were slowly being intruded by external factors.

...

Even as Buddhaban was more than four hours of intense trek through the maze of a forest from the nearest village Tabu, Saleem had been seeing visitors regularly this season. His father, Abba, was not thrilled with the strangers but he always treated them graciously -  warm to the travelers and tourists alike. Everyone who ever came was surely many times richer than them. After all, the shack that the family called home and what protected them from the chilly winds at night was nothing more than a handful of huts put together as though they were was meant for a few days of camping. But the visitors knew that these people here were living a life which was both a dream and a nightmare at the same time. They had seen enough on the way to understand what it meant to even survive here. So there was an environment of mutual respect accentuated by easy smiles and longer attention spans during conversations. 

As usual, these visitors were nice folks, awestruck with everything they saw around them. The scenic beauty of Buddhaban during that season was unmatched even by Himachal’s standards, which put the tourists in especially good spirits. Abba invited them into one of the bigger huts after the greetings. After the visitors enquired about the family's lives here and after they recovered from the culture shock, Abba offered them to come into another hut that had the fireplace and kitchen, for some refreshments. 

All the while the visitors were playing along and laughing with the kids. Saleem was especially enchanted these days with the visitors’ fancy gadgets. Abba had already warned him to maintain his distance with the outsiders but Saleem was just too thrilled with everything about the modern people and their stories, so foreign to him. He flooded them with questions, trying to understand everything that so was different from him and his surroundings. This had been sensed by his parents for some time now and they were slightly worried about his feverish energy whenever one of the visitors showed him their phones. Abba had already been given the wise word by his own father, Dada. The fascination with the glitter and glamour had to die young and Abba had to be the one to enforce it.

The person with whom Saleem was most playful this time around was relatively reserved about showing him his fancy stuff. He didn't use his phone in front of the kids except for the obligatory selfies and groupies. But the time had come when Saleem became over-enthusiastic after Ammu served them milk and the elders seemed to get engaged with their conversations. As his new friend was showing him pictures of the cities beyond his imagination, he was visibly vocal and started requesting for car games. The visitor hesitated knowing well that it wasn't for him to expose the kid to such seductive stuff. Especially when his father was looking on intently.

Abba seemed to look at Saleem forever who was trying to grab more of the iPhone. After a few moments though, he has had enough. His "Saleem. Nahi." was clearly a condemnation and not a scold. The stern voice grabbed everyone's attention. They all looked at him, a bit ungrounded. Abba had fire in his eyes "Pehle bhi bola tha tujhe" - told you before as well.

Saleem hung his head down - tears down the reddish cheeks. The visitors were apologetic with their soft smiles. They only wished well. The phone slid quietly into the visitors’ pocket, not daring to come out until they were out of Buddhaban.

Saleem didn't eat that evening and he would be moody for a couple of weeks, but he would never get enticed by the bait of fancy technology again, first from the fear instilled in him that day and later from understanding and the love for his people and place. He had learned his lesson and humiliation was a necessary tool in the process. Karim, three years older, was higher up the wisdom chain. He knew his Bhaijaan would come along fine now that the storm was over. His Abba told him so.

…

That evening, there was no fire in Abba's eyes as he squatted in front of the fire along with Dada. He only had moisture in them now, for all that his sons would never have. He said, "Kya kya qurbani mangunga apne baccho se" - what all sacrifices will I ask of my children. 

"Vahi qurbani jo maine tujse maanga tha" - the same sacrifices I asked of you, Dada looked straight through the fire into his teenage days in Buddhaban.

Where do bats go at night (on a prompt called "laugh yourself silly")

It is already late. But the fuckers won’t stop, no. To be fair, best conversations start after 2AM and I am generally at my rhetoric best then. What with all the booze I have had by the hour.

So we sit in the balcony, which isn’t really bad at all. If it was not facing a busy road, it would’ve been so much better. I did mention this to my host-cum-colleague. Despite my best efforts to keep my comments subtle, they do show me for the ungrateful asshole that I am.

Anyways, we were talking, the five or six of us. It wasn’t all pleasant because this collection of people was brought together by the virtue of being teammates – by no means a promising context. But we were slugging out this party with half-jointed expressions of ideologies and philosophies, which were promptly interrupted and shouted-over so that the speaker hardly ever reached the conclusion he intended to reach.

And so, the timing couldn’t have been perfect for the bat to go flying over the buildings against the background of the cloudy skies (what beautiful weather that evening had by the way). What with everyone seeming to hope that some miracle would happen that will relax all the unaccounted-for frictions that were floating in the air.

Alright, I intrude whatever was being said to say to my mate sitting beside me “You know what it means when you see a bat at this time?”.

Silence.They wait, some curious, some anxious. After all, this was also the time of the night for epic anti-climaxes. And I seemed to have set myself up for another minor failure.

Aha, but this one was well prepped my reader. After someone suggested lamely that “its too late?”, I said “nope, it means the bat is lost”.

Everyone burst out laughing. There ensued a series of screams and curses. But this was exactly what the whole night was struggling to be!

It took a couple of minutes of haggling for me to get called out for what I was – full of shit.

Sehnsucht - on a prompt

I climb up the mountains. I can touch the heavens and laugh at the clouds. 

All the solitude I dreamed of when I was down in the world. 

Ran away, I did, but forgot to take myself along.

I sit on the beach. Wave after wave passes me by. 

Sand is soft, yet cruel is life. The beer bottle talks but there is water in it now. 

Is the ocean salty or is it my loneliness.

I drench in the rain and the traffic is buzzing all around my bike. 

I feel the wetness, right through my white shirt. 

I need to let go. Why can't I let go. 

There is a freedom that I seek. And always here it seems. 

I could never reach out enough though. Nothing can grip it.

I find a bench in the retreat. 

A temple of peace. A place with a heart. 

A treasure trove of nature, a forest dwelling for the soul that yearns. 

An empty mind I seek, but something still evades.