A Celebration of Nothingness

- 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