For two-and-a-half years this column has examined relationships of all types. We looked at parents and children, teen boys and teen girls, teachers and taught — somehow we never considered the relationship between mountains and men.
Not until now. Well most of the time it’s a peaceful interaction, a solid and stable equation, until the mountain decides it’s had enough. Then the men die, the mountain sheds brief tears, wraps itself under a mourning shroud of mist for a while, and emerges shining and single, with a wolf whistle and a smile.
That’s a lesson we never learn. Don’t burden a mountain like you burden a plain. Or you will feel an unbearable pain. Men all over the world have craved to own land, to rule over territory. All political philosophy is more or less — a refined excuse to grab and hold on to someone else’s land. That land might include rolling plains, prairies, farms, orchards, riverine borders, estuaries, even deserts and forests — but not ice-capped mountains.
Men have never quite understood that snow mountains are their own masters and always have been. They bend to no man’s jurisdiction, they submit themselves to no law but their own. They are at best — borders that others can’t cross. You never own a snow mountain — the snow mountain owns you, it just allows you to feel you are its master, and when it gets tired of your greed, it buries you in its bear hug and moves on.
All my life I have been fascinated by the greatest snow mountains of all — our very own Himalayas. I have walked all the way to Mount Kailash, trekked deep into glacier-filled valleys, and once, trudged up a narrow goat track at 13,000 feet — into the Valley of the Gods — the source of mother Ganges —Gaumukh.
On the way, my dear friend Surender nearly died. When he turned blue in the face with lack of oxygen, he remembered an ancient prayer and managed to mumble it through cracked and bleeding lips. It worked. Then the mountain goats attacked us by dislodging stones hundreds of feet above us. Those stones turned into missiles hurtling down at frightening speed, and as we felt them brush past, we said more prayers. That too worked. As we returned, our driver kissed his hands and touched his heart as he dropped a few coins at the local deity. Even that worked — we returned safely.
Then last week, all prayers from everyone stopped working. Towns got wiped out. Villages disappeared as if they never existed. I know well how the dead might have felt in their last few minutes of life. I too have had near death experiences in the mountains. But I was in luck — the snow mountain was in a mood for kindness. Now it has wreaked a vengeance out of proportion — as if it was extacting punishment for generations of excesses.
In a sense, the whole nation is collectively responsible for what happened in the Himalayas recently. It’s a lesson we again refuse to learn — tread lightly and softly on a mountain, treat the Mountain God with utmost respect — or He will suddenly bury you in a jiffy and move on as if nothing happened.