The Old Man and the Hills...

 During our tireless travels for the last twenty years, hopping continents, countries, adapting to new cultures, learning other languages, oft and again, I was reminded of the old man who owned a little tea shop at the outskirts of Dehradun in U.P., India. A sudden cloudburst followed by torrential rains is what had sent us scurrying for shelter into his shop, and right into the wafting aroma of home. We had been on the road for only two days, and were already beginning to miss it. Sparks from the embers smouldering in the earthern stove flew across the cosy little room nonchalantly. A blackened aluminum  kettle sat atop whistling, adding its own trilling notes to the orchestra. It was a perfect weather for some steaming masala tea and biscuits, and the old man seeing us hunched because of the sudden nippiness which had descended over the hills, got down to making it with a sense of urgency.  

Silently sipping hot tea, and munching biscuits which came from a small glass jar, we sat in the tiny room, the sound of  rain on the tin roof drowning every possibility of conversation. 

The rains dissipated with the same vigor and abruptness they had poured down a minute ago, and a patch of blue sky, washed clean, stretched outside, as though hung there to dry. We took the old man's leave, and thanked him profusely for the delicious tea and biscuits. "Come and visit us sometime in Delhi," my father said with a smile, extending him an invitation to his side of the world.

"Sahib, in pahadiyon ko chod kar kahan jayenge", meaning, "Sir, where would I go leaving these hills behind?". 

Even after two decades, I am haunted by his words.  Poignant in their simplicity,  they encapsulate the spirit of a man who was as much a part of his ambient, as it was of him. And for as long as he could remember, he had lived in the comfort of its laps, contented. It was the music descending from  those undulating hills which had lulled him to sleep, night after night...and touched him awake at dawn. There was no parting for him from his beloved hills...

While I was busy circumventing the world, gleaning a few moments here and there, and leaving enormous carbon footprints in the process, the old chaiwala innately understood the beauty of treading softly, the world in his backyard, and eternity at his disposal.