The Hills Out My Window

We were to come by train, but I insisted to book a cab. I had heard the rail tracks passed through a much banal and dusty region. It would be too much for my nerves. A car, driving through the green plains and winding roads would suit me much better. There wasn’t anything to argue. Hence, the train tickets were cancelled, and a cab was booked to take the much-insisted journey. We pleasurably drove for two days to reach our destination. It was a calling of my husband’s job, and we were taken to this distant land. I wasn’t much in appreciation of his job, but there was one thing which I loved about it- frequent transfers, which meant travelling to new lands. I was a gipsy at heart.

I wasn’t wrong about taking a cab ride to the valley. The journey got more promising as we approached our destination. Just outskirt of the town, the cab was halted near a small stream that flowed beneath an over-bridge. The water was bluish-green. The stream appeared shallow and meandered out of sight through large rocks. On the other side of it, a band of boys was trying to catch fishlings with crude hand-made nets. But this short break was broken up with my husband’s plea to cover the rest of the distance as soon as possible. That man was not gullible with such imageries. I resolved to come here some other day. As we moved further, I could feel my heart swelling with suppressed joy. It felt like I was getting swallowed by a gaping green mouth.

It was a small, lazy town, flanked by hills on both sides. The hills lying on the West were sparsely populated, mostly by the aboriginal tribal population who were recently introduced to coffee plantations there. There were small identical houses set up by the government for the inhabitants of the hill, to recompensate for their displacement from the surrounding regions, as the government was setting up some sort of a research institute. The village uphill was nearly inaccessible. There was just one narrow road connecting the city at the foothills, to the little abode on the hills, and it was mainly populated by one or two old derelict local buses and trucks carrying goods. The government was hardly doing anything to fix this issue. The hills on the East were ironically more popular. With no habitation and scrubby vegetation, it was a hit among the hikers. But I was no adventurous soul. Rather, I preferred to compare myself to this new town- lazy, and quaint. I simply loved to blink at those hills, and sometimes, when I was in the most active form, I would dare to dream of climbing one of those shortest of the short hills. I couldn’t help being mesmerized by them – the wonderful giant paperweights on the sheet of the Earth.

It was already evening when we arrived there. The night felt like an unending journey to the morning when I could go out and explore the surroundings. After a restless night, waking up at the crack of dawn wasn’t tough. I sneaked out of the house. Half of the world was still asleep, and it appeared that the other half was resolved to wake them up. The sparrows on the huge mango tree inside our compartment were twittering to wake up the world. Their animated cacophony at first gave an impression of an unorchestrated performance, but soon it dawned upon me that it was a divine symphony. I stood there for a while, witnessing their playful banters reverberating in the air, before silently walking out of the gate. The gate opened to an unconcreted road outside, across which was a large ground. On the other end of the ground, a thin crowd of women was standing with empty paint buckets and tin jars, around a handpump. They’re probably constructing the new road that was to connect this lane with the main road. The ground was fenced with a low wall. Beyond it, one could see a thin forest of deodars. Among a few other things, it was deodar that would always transport me to the memory lanes, where the Ayah of my childhood resided. One could always find her small room garlanded with fresh deodar leaves. Ayah used to say that deodars repel bad luck, as equally as they repel insects. “A bad luck is an insect too. Unexpected, uninvited, and always ready to feast on your fortune.” The deodars across the ground seemed to whistle to me. Whistling for me to dance to the tunes of my long-lost childhood.

As days passed by, it became a sort of ritual every night for me to nestle on the deewan by the window and stare at the decked-up Western hills. The hills would be glowing as if someone had strung fairy lights across them. And ceremonially I would dream to someday take a trip to that brightly lighted Bazar up there. But to my chagrin, my husband would appear beside me after a short while and wheedle me to shut down the window, whining that the pesky mosquitoes march in to invade his flabby body. I always wondered why they never feasted on me.

Occasionally, someone in my family would ask me whether I was liking the new place or not, to which wouldn’t give any reply but simply would chuckle over the phone. It was a couple of months after we had shifted when my mother paid a surprise visit to me. My mother wasn’t a long-distance traveller anymore. She was a persistent moaner of how her bones would creak and crack. Upon her arrival, she revealed that it was my enthusiastic ramblings about the scenic beauty around me that set her up. I couldn’t recall when I had shared my ‘enthusiastic ramblings’ with her. Nonetheless, I was too pleased to see her after years. The next morning after she arrived, the old lady was fidgety. She’s constantly looking out of the window. Probably the long journey had rattled her old bones. I asked her if she was feeling well. She threw a blank look at me. There was an unexplained shadow of fear lurking on her face.

“But where are the lush green hills outside, dear? I can only see dusty and barren hills stripped like a chicken. And aren’t that some sort of factories over there, belching so much smoke?” My mother was pointing towards the West, in the direction of the small village up on the hill, where I could only see the lovely houses and some cows lazily grazing on the green meadow. I threw a perplexed look at her. She was sounding so much like my husband.