- remembering an evening at Langmale Kharka
As clouds tailed every step of ours
Up to the silence of hilltops
Down to the cacophony of a river
Long before we reached the destination
The fog was already there waiting
It swirled around the scattered tea houses
Wrapped them up like Christmas gifts
On an emaciated barren plain
Luggage was tugged into a chilled room
A callous touch on an icy zinc sheet shocked me to the core
We retreated to a cramped dining room
I sipped the warmth of ginger tea
At a corner where dimness dwelled
My guide left to join a conversing crowd
Unfamiliar language shoved me further into an unfamiliar land
Deserted and strangely quiet
When their cheerful chat stretched longer
On the murky window panes
Setting sun painted a thin sheet of light
The translucent softness nudged my heart
And I found solace in its calmness
After a long while
Tea cup emptied
The crowd dispersed
Spoken words weakly echoed in the air
My guide returned and sat next to me
What followed was practically nothing
Nothing to do
Nothing to say
Nothing to breathe
Nothing to perceive
Gone missing in the sense of place and time
Directionless we loitered in a no man land
As cold air infused the space
Diluted light retreated inch by inch
Clock seemed to have slowed down ticking
We talked with vapour blowing out between lips
Aimless and insignificant
The mercury was falling brutally
So were we
Falling into a whirlpool of vacuous consciousness
Trapped in between stark reality and dreamy fantasy
It led us to a nowhere where space didn't matter
Where time was irrelevant
As we were momentarily neither here nor there
Non-existence became a true bliss
Then my guide left
I just sat by window panes
Staring at the world went by in slow motion
Fog wafted through the rhododendron forest
I was hit by a sweet familiarity
A deja vu that repeated itself annually
Nothing mattered anymore when nothing needed to be done
I just indulged in this rare luxury of life
Tracing the shape of the fog when it danced like milky fluid
The path of weightless clouds effortlessly encroached colossal peaks
I grabbed a deep moment of emptiness
Held it liked a long lost friend
As my real world was thousand miles away
I unleashed my thought to swim in the unreal ocean
Coldness crept into the dining room
In fading light my imagination was warm
Warm enough to torch my solitude
Loneliness of doing nothing was the purest form of emotion
Ephemeral but it lingered long and loud
Bubbling a pristine joy even doing nothing
Nothingness that created significance of my life
I continued sitting alone by the window panes in the vacant room
Nothing to do
No one to talk with
No voice to listen to
Until the night finally fell
