Snow...

The year is at its end and I am told it is a time to be merry. I try to find reasons, and I find them too, without much difficulty. I try and stretch my neck, and look beyond this wall of present into the neighboring future. But, my eyes seem blind to such prodigal wanderings of a languishing mind and looks away, past-wards.

Past, though, is like a book one has already read, and which one has come to love; a book that one goes back to, ever so often; a book whose pages contains lines that describe memories in present tense. So powerful are the words in it, so vivid are the memories that you are sucked into that vortex of words, the only way to stay afloat in which, lest one succumb to its power, is to hold onto the sole thing that exists in its world: the past.

Slowly, you feel addicted to past; you feel that if you are to live, you need to breathe in your past. You are so hooked onto the past that you find the present, constricting, and the future, insipid…. And like that abject soul addicted to his snow white powder, let me once again go back to that book and describe to you one memory of mine. I do not understand why it comes to me at this point in time and why this one in particular; perhaps, it is because this mysteriousness that I find it necessary I must share this with you…

Snow; white snow: I saw it first, last year. It was on one of those peaks which formed the chain of foothills that was a part of the lesser Himalayas. Apart from the fact that it was the first time I rode on a mule, and also, going on the reasonable (albeit naïve, and foolish) assumption that all mountains are basically the same, I had this feeling that I was almost trekking Everest; well, apart from these absurd feelings, my memory of the journey to the top of the peak is blurry and I shall not speak of it more. But, let me describe to you the sight that was offered to me on that peak…it was, the singular most overwhelming sight I had ever seen.

Nature, it seemed to me, was lying on her back, sunbathing, naked; her snow covered breasts proudly pointed towards heavens, teased the gods; and those dark valleys covered with pine trees, tempted us men to lose ourselves in between her legs. The nipping wind gave me Goosebumps; the sheer breadth of the land beneath me caught me off guard….And showing off its prized possessions, cool as ever, there she was…laughing at me…and all I could manage to mumble was “Why?” and how does she answer?—with silence.

What I saw before me petrified me. What I saw before me was old, it existed even before I began my own existence, and it will be here even after I bit the dust and become a part of it. But…but…that is not sufficient is it? One wishes to do more; one wishes, to be immortal; one wishes to also lie naked without fear and tease the gods and (wo)men alike; one also wishes to be the cause of envy…But, sun was setting, and as it did, it did what all alchemists of history put together could not do with their centuries of obsessed perseverance: it transformed all that powdery whiteness called snow into gold in those few moments of twilight…but, by the time I could take my eyes off it to grab some, sun had already set, twilight was over, and night had fallen.