Since most of the bigger discoveries were made already I lay content making smaller ones. Like the snooze alarm built into the rooster is set for exactly half an hour. A dog howling in the mountains is interpreted in many ways, some even borders the supranatural; but the truth is that they are actually booing the rooster down. The howling followed by barking is a threat to shut the fuck up probably followed by a warning never to cross paths in the village square. Nevertheless the rooster continues with his god-anointed business sedulously, with pluck. I tried to peer through my top floor window with as little movement as possible – any untoward movement would set off from the congeries of blankets an odour which conjured in my head images of skunks on a trampoline which took ages to settle. A truck passed by the engine gnashing its teeth from the steep climb. I heard noise from across the street – the muffled slamming of big plastic drums being washed. The rooster, I could hear now, was clucking excitedly.
Room for thought
I was on my way to Dharchula in an old Leyland lorry carrying supply to commissaries in the border town when the driver suddenly decided we would halt here for the night. It was a good call as he had by then polished off a half bottle of rum and taken two stops at roadside hovels for quickie sex. Even though he assured me – and I believed him – that the routine was quotidian, I felt he could do with some rest. We were to leave at first light, which was the light after he first opened his eyes. He began the night aboard his cabin but sometime in the night he judiciously seemed to have decided a room would be more comfortable. Right now he lay in a heap, muffled snoring coming through the layers of blankets like a dying motor.
Warding off weary clinomania, I quietly slipped out of bed and stepped on to the narrow corridor which led to an open terrace at the back of the lodge. Shoddy construction had seen to that concrete had fallen in lumps so high that you could actually trip over them. A water tank on the top of a platform fed several outlets. Frayed underwear and faded tees hung on clotheslines smelling of cheap detergent. There were other rooms like ours all of which shared a common toilet which was, somehow, remarkably clean. When you wash your ass on a winter morning with meltwater is when you envy the Westerner for their waterless interventions.
As we had arrived after dark the previous evening I hadn’t seen much of the place. We just popped into an open restaurant, had a basic dinner of roti, dal and sabzi and retired for the night. The cook showed us into the room on the top floor of the restaurant after serving us food.
“Come for breakfast,” he called out as he left.
Gods…all
Renting rooms was good business in these outlying townships close to the national border. There was no tourism in these parts but an occasional motorcyclist with the ubiquitous prayer flag flapping across the handlebar could be seen passing by probably taking a long detour from the more scenic Munsyari. These rooms were taken by mostly traders and government contractors. In the room next to the one allotted to us was a government contractor who was supervising a stretch of tarring close to the international border. It was a prestigious project, definitely one of national importance. His eyes darted around each time his mobile phone rang and he would repair into a dark corner slouching over the mouthpiece. Since I had worked on government projects, actually film projects funded by various central government ministries, I could rationalise his behaviour and I smiled at him with feeling. But it only served to make him more suspicious and slink further away.
In the blue-tinted break of dawn I espied mountains falling over each other like shuffled cards all the way to the far horizon. Stately snow peaks stood reflecting the golden rays, a sight so aureate, the majesty of which transports you into a state of notness. I stood there agape for a while, a reverie broken by the wrassling of dogs somewhere down the road. Potatoes were being peeled by a helper with Down Syndrome who looked around and grinned at the few customers sipping tea. The cook was up and rationing himself onions whose price had shot up, again. I settled into a corner bench against a wall plastered with pictures of the multi-handed goddess Durga astride her tiger and other people with folded hands, politicians requesting vote. The same bunch of people I had briefly met during dinner was there, almost like they didn’t leave. Familiar smiles were directed at me and I felt warm. These are the little things that make you want to settle down somewhere.
“Did you sleep well?” The cook asked bringing my tea.
I was sold.
The boy from Bijnor
After my tea I walked towards the broadest point in town which I assumed to be the commercial centre with its tumbledown buildings and small shops, bus stop and taxi stand. It was on the other side of a narrow concrete bridge over a gurgling brook that went up the flanking mountainside. Immediately before the crossing stood the local barber shop in all its jarring finery of fluorescent blue doors and green windowpanes. From the walls inside all the sultry, busty actresses ever to grace Indian cinema beckoned me. Partly for selfie-sake and in part to reward the hardworking lad, I popped in for a shave. Uncharacteristically for a barber, the boy was taciturn choosing only to answer my courtesy questions. But gradually he opened up after which there was no stopping.
Nothing mundane here
He hailed from the seriously backward district of Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh and had been brought here by his uncle who owned the shop.
“He is very busy with his family with already three children. I think she might be pregnant again.”
Liberosis or the yearning to let go of things, to care lesser and lesser, I have seen in others slightly elder to me but definitely more evolved. I certainly didn’t expect to come across it in someone so young and probably just starting out on his career.
“There is nothing I want from life – no motorcycle, no car, no house. Definitely I don’t need a girlfriend.”
I waited for him to finish the shave before I asked him whether he had any boyfriends. He answered me assuming I meant platonically.
“I don’t have friends, I hate friendships. It is such a waste of time.”
Moulding a generation
A faint interest was detected when he asked about my mobile phone and enquired the features. He himself was given one by his father even before he could walk.
“That too, a smart phone.”
He watched songs on YouTube and Tik Tok videos all day. Maybe it explained why he wasn’t interested in the mundane like ambition, goals and love.
I tipped him and heavily so.
“Thank you,” he smiled brightly.
There were some saving graces.
As if on cue, soon as I exited from his shop I spotted the signboard of a mobile repair shop that functioned in a basement – hidden from public view but keeping an eye on the world. It spelled many key words wrongly but the cartoonish fonts exuded a mute confidence. Like a reminder of all that was going wrong with the new generation. Or maybe that was never right with the earlier ones. On my way back to the room I also bumped into the madman mandatory to every Himalayan village. He stopped me and pointed at my wrist. While I unlocked my mobile phone to check the time he had walked away. I should wear my watch more often I made a note to myself.
Hearing a commotion I turned to look before entering my room, it was the rooster which woke me up that morning. I felt a little remorseful at being dismissive – antagonistic even – of its wakeup services. It had woken up its master who ran a chicken shop on the other side of the restaurant. The man was dipping trussed chicken into scalding water in big, blue drums, clutching off handful of feathers off damp ones and chopping up those already cleaned – all in one seamless motion. The rooster with its girth and ugliness looked like a feathered Idi Amin and was helping itself imperiously to the small pieces of meat that flew around from the chopping board while the hens cluck-clucked around him.
It could be another discovery.
Stirring to life – in a new height
