Amarnath Yatra

 

The soul eating focus on the editorial desk gave him a tired and brooding look. He, the young man from The Broken Dream, seven years down after the debacle at the hands of the state, looked different from his still-enthusiastic face at the start of his innings in the publishing sector. The civil services candidates, at least from the humanities background, cram bits and pieces of all subjects to be jacks of all trades and masters of none. And when the sledgehammer of reality smashes the dream, all they are left with is to grope around for some respectful means of earning bread and butter. He had been a bookworm, so faced with this challenge to earn his bread, by default sneaked into the publisher’s world. He had always worked with his civil-services-preparations-born ethos. It only means more and more hard work. But then you have to be smarter at many levels to excel in the corporate. The more he worked, harder became things for him. In the melting heat of July, his life unbearable under the harsh torchlight of insecure bosses and jealous colleagues, his mind literally on the brink of insanity, he escaped to the blessing climes of the Kashmir Himalayas, to find himself, to regain his lost footing, to seek solace, to find a saviour, to be with himself.   

Life is all about exploring the self--its limitations, its specialties, its weaknesses, its strengths. Putting yourself in inhospitable conditions can be one of the means for this. The holy cave of Amarnath is situated in the frigid heights of higher Himalayas. As you move along the rain-lashed, slippery and stony mountain track, you find yourself caught in a dualistic chasm. Pleasure and pain side by side. Sighs of agony as well as excited palpitations of heart over the nature's masterwork. In the misty heights the melting glaciers are a visual delight; but the hazy heights lacerated by gloomy, craggy tops gets into your heart like some ice-cold stare of a corpse. 

Walking on treacherous muddy foot-track, with life and death side by side, with agony and ecstasy mating to give a queer sensation, he felt the little world in Delhi inside the cubicle of an office to be funnily tiny with its tinier characters. How could that little hovel turn his life literally into hell? This boundless, open nature cannot give enough pleasure like that tiny bread-earning hovel can give you the misery. He recalled the faces, the faces that had literally broken his hardworking convictions in the professional life. The selfish seriousness on their faces loomed more dangerously than the risky precipice he was taking a rest upon. Their plotting and strategising appeared gloomier than the threatening raincloud surrounding that mountain top and admonishing to come his way to make the climb more treacherous.

Gasping like a fish without water, for the oxygen was seriously low, he found the next little step as the most unachievable task in the world. One look however at the melting glacier on the opposite side of the valley uplifted his spirits like Phoenix. He saw the signs of warmth triumphing over snow: emerging pastures side by side with snow. Yes, green gives solace! The mountains lost in their massiveness just took his tiny existence into their mystic oblivion. He just surrendered! Even their selfish, smart, suave, polished, over-imposing selves, that always intimidated the simple human being in him, appeared a puny little, inconsequential piece of craziness against such massiveness surrounding him. It became bearable for him. Their triviality and this massiveness. ‘We should realise that we are mere parts of nature that can simply smite our existence away in just one angry stroke of little finger!’ he mused and seemed to admonish his detractors.

He looked anxiously into the sky for the traces of rain. The clouds building up around the surrounding hilltops sent down still chillier sensation down his spine. But then a look into the deep gorge across the sheer precipice carrying the track, gave him an outwardly sensation of fear and excitement mixed with a strange elation that cannot be explained in words. He saw fellow devotees struggling along the labouring ponies. These were the rare moments when one can really feel the agony of a fellow human being because you are put in the same cauldron.

The last portion of the valley leading to the shrine was still covered with heavy snow. As he walked over it, he slipped and regained control like a toddler learning to walk. ‘After all we are always God's kids,’ he had a smile on his face. A smile that was so comforting that it could outweigh hundreds of unshed tears in his eyes which they had given him. Despite all the quagmire of terrorism, he felt Kashmiri Islam to be beneficent. At no other place one will find a Hindu religious occasion being supported by so many Muslims. All the hawkers, stall operators, tent owners, porters, foot massagists and alms-seekers were Muslims. At no other place in the world you will come across a Muslim stall operator welcoming a tired Hindu pilgrim: 'O Bhole come and take shringaar for Mata Parvati' In delicious Kashmiri and warm hospitality the locals called him 'Bhole!'. And once inside the majestic cave, he just found himself lost in the divine trance of the ice lingam, Baba Barfani!

He felt safe and sheltered there. The Ice God giving him warmth that his lacerated self needed so much after all of their cold gestures and frigid petty selfishness had turned him to hypothermia, even though Delhi was burning with heat. But he had to go back to the fire. Mustering up courage he started his journey back. Back to where he began from!