Animal

I was on my way back from my first trip to the mountains. A month spent in pristine air, some times very little air and definitely very few people, apart from fellow trekkers. I’d been carried up impossible seeming roads on rickety buses and wondered what feat of willpower kept them together on the rocky road, for stable roads were few and far.

At every point were the valleys, the trees, the seemingly continuous mountain ranges and the sudden views of a chocolate layer cake mountain topped with ice and snow. It was very different from the last part of the trip, which was to a holy place seemingly at the roof of the world. Though, not really because there were higher points to access. At that height, it was white, black and silver. Even the trees didn’t bother with chlorophyll. They just survived. In craggy nooks, in slivers of earth in rocks. It was a place that seemed inhospitable but once there I found it difficult to leave.

I could understand someone crawling into a cave or grotto in such a place and living a life of austerity or actually rich abundance. On the way back, I picked some silver ferns, some lichens and petrified mushrooms from a much lower level as mementoes of my time out before returning to a city life where the daily commute may kill your soul much before you actually die.

The train was packed to the gills. The trekking group was divided up and I was given a seat by myself in a different compartment. By now after having seen so much natural bounty which was also incredibly powerful and survival of many species, I was feeling confident and top of my game. I’d been in the mountains. City life could not permeate my armor.

I put up my bag on the bunk above the single seat I was given and sat down and saw my co-passenger. She hadn’t been there a moment before. I won’t claim she appeared out of the blue, since this isn’t a ghost story. She wasn’t there one moment and the next moment she was and I noticed her. Simple, right?

So we exchanged pleasantaries and I found out she was traveling from the north, to my city, Pune. I was a bit surprised that she was travelling alone. She seemed like a home maker who hadn’t travelled much. Her clothes were of the rural belt, simple, traditional salwar kameez, a dupatta over her head and arms loaded with gold bangles. I wondered about her security, but it seemed, nobody would be able to get those bangles off if she didn’t want them taken.

A bit later, after the train was moving steadily and the journey was pretty much underway, she spoke. She asked me what I was doing. I told her I’d just finished graduation. I told her of my trip to the mountains. She was surprised that I had gone off to the mountains without a reason, as in not on a honeymoon. I asked her rather cheekily if that was the only reason. She replied, usually.

She went on to tell me about her daughter who was approximately my age, maybe younger who was married and had recently had a baby girl. She had been to the mountains for her honeymoon. She had returned to the city of Pune with her husband and his family and then there had been a long silence after that.

I wanted to ask for details, but I didn’t think I should rush it, besides who wants a conversation to turn into an interrogation? If anything were to be mentioned she would tell me. She proceeded with the story then. Her daughter called one day to tell her she was pregnant. She also told her mother quite matter of factly that her husband had left home. He had chosen to go to an ashram and become an inmate. His family had supported his decision to leave and offered her the option of staying with them or joining him at the ashram. She chose to stay at his house.

By now it was clear to me I had been given the broad details. I’d heard of this ashram and back then it was a gargantuan machine which seemed to swallow people up whole. At least that’s what I used to think prior to going to the mountains. Now I was not so sure. Since I wasn’t sure I could not make the usual noises expected in this particular situation. I waited for more.

Which came of course. A year or so later, her daughter called up again, telling her she had had a baby girl. Her mother was delighted and offered to come down and stay with her or bring her back home for a few days, but it wasn’t going to happen. She had been called as a courtesy. It was just a call, to let her know all was well, a baby was born…

Another phone call happened, just a bit earlier this time. When the baby would be around nine months old. The daughter called, her husband was dying. In fact, by the time her mother would get there, he would be dead. She asked her mother to come and fetch her and her baby girl. Her mother told her she could send her dad or brothers over. But her daughter simply said, no, you come. Only you.

We both sat in silence looking out of the common window our single seats shared. I wanted to say something…you know, wise, erudite, knowing, comforting, generic, platitude, but luckily for me it wasn’t something I could come up with. So I shut up and waited.

I heard her sniffle once or twice. A hand wearing gold bangles like a manacle lifted up to her face, the dupatta covering her head wiped at tears which had pooled at the corner of her eyes. I didn’t know if it was polite to watch her do this, I didn’t know if it was impolite to look away. Or should I smile sympathetically? That seemed like the creepiest thing to do, ever.

I asked her where she had to go. I offered to escort her there. She smiled sweetly and said, a vehicle would be sent for her. I asked who would be coming to pick her up. She said she was being picked up by the boy’s mother. I did not miss the irony of that…in fact suddenly my mind was working a breakneck speed and I could have told her everything about her life, the situations, the circumstances of it and why she and her daughter were in this predicament. And precisely because I knew with such certainty it seemed I knew nothing at all.

At the train station, we might as well have been strangers. She was cordial, and said goodbye before she was escorted off the train by a man who seemed like a family retainer. Her daughter’s mother-in-law stood at the gate of the station next to a monster truck or SUV…I stood back and watched, curious to see how this would play out. Would these two ladies acknowledge they were up shit creek and show each other compassion or would they just carry on and maybe be more compassionate that way?

It seemed that I may been in the abode of the king or lord of animals and birds, but the animals in the human metropolis would prevail. By definition, man is a social animal. There are qualities which being social confers, you can work better in large groups, you achieve greater success, you can distribute collateral damage over a vaster network and maybe reduce the sting of it. At that moment though man the animal had shown a very mundane and socially acceptable side which was barbaric and shocking and would be ignored.