Family Short Story – The melody of the hills
Photo credit: puravida from morguefile.com
Leaning against the bamboo pillar, as she savored the steaming hot tea from the kulhar, she was humming a melody from a song she remembered only a couple of lines of. Not that she was trying really hard to recollect the rest of it, she was just lost in a trance, basking in the view of the first monsoon rains. The hills of Nainital had come to life nimbly. The peaceful valley, with its aborigines locked indoors, had regained youth. The kaleidoscope of pluvial sounds, rain falling on the tree leaves, of water trickling down the rocks and forming of small streams with the croaking choruses of the toads and insects. The greens appear greener and air fresh and clean with the fragrance of newly wet earth. In a nutshell, everything that makes a perfectly tranquil monsoon evening in the hills was all around Shivani who had hoped for just this in coming to Nainital for a vacation. She had all the time in the world as she was between jobs.
This quietude was disturbed only occasionally by a passing vehicle or by the jingling of bells hung from a mules back. She kept on going on a loop on the melody of those two lines. Possibly it was some folk song she had heard some local girl sing in the hills. But she still could not remember the tune beyond or where she had heard it. It had been three years since she had last visited Nainital. The last one after she had lost her elder sister to a road accident here.
She had evaded this place and the memories it brought alongside for very long now. But as it happens with the passage of time, the memory of the valley had passed from one of resentment to one of reminiscence of how Taniya, her elder sister had showed it to her through her eyes and words. The serenity of the hills and the woods that shrouded it or the vast lakes underneath; the tiny wooden houses decked up sporadically along its slope; the simplicity of the people; it all seemed so familiar to her.
She now imagined fondly how Taniya might have felt when she fell in love with a local guy here who would sing beautiful folk songs of love while blowing at his mouth-organ occasionally. That night when Taniya had called her to tell her of her lover and had warned against telling their parent both the sisters were very agitated but in totally different ways of course. But as she described how beautifully he sang for her, how he wore a funny smile as he slept and how naïve he was, she had felt happy for her sister.
When Taniya was coming back to Delhi to break the news of her marriage to this guy, the vehicle slipped down the hills due to a landslide. In ways she didn’t know and didn’t want to know, Shivani had held the place and its people responsible for taking away the most precious person from her life. But now time had embalmed her wound and she wanted to see the place her dear sister had spent the most beautiful days of living.
The tea cup though not empty, its contents had grown cold. She asked for another one, which was promptly served. The tea shop was the only one open among the few other shops on the street. The sound of rain drops bouncing off from their tin and asbestos roofs filled the desolation of the street. There was a strange melancholy to the ambiance.
Suddenly someone started singing in the regional dialect, felt like a song of love lost or love gained. The words felt joyous but the voice had an unnerving pain in it. Perhaps it was some lover sitting under the shade of one of the shops nearby remembering his companion. Then the mouth-organ started playing!! She remembered the song now, the one she herself was humming, the one she had heard in the background while Taniya was recounting her saga over phone! The possibility was perhaps one in a million. But the yearning to go and ask him was daunting. But something changed in her heart at that very moment.
She felt like her sister was breathing through the winds; was swaying to the melody with the trees; was smiling through the setting sun. Like she was right there by her side, gently singing along and caressing her hair. No, she didn’t need to see or chase anything. She just needed to be. She was living in a moment in borrowed time where her lover was sitting somewhere near, singing love songs to her and she was all excited talking to her little sister about the beauty of the place and her new found love.
She was alive once again…
–END–
