Lethal beauty

 Bhupinder loved his taxi pick-ups of senior corporate guys in Gurugram. Less work, refined gentry at the back seat and nice pay. Then Corona struck. The offices closed. The corporate guys and gals worked from home. Even after the removal of the lockdown most of the offices remained closed as people adjusted to a new work culture. So he started ferrying tourists to the scenic Himalayas. It elicited a sense of grand imagination. The edges of his aesthetic sense had been severally whetted by the sparkling vivacity of the mountains. He fell in love with the hills, their wild beauty, their untamed resplendent charm. Vow, sheer Himalayan opulence sprinkled around. With tantalizing butterflies in his stomach, his social media posts were full of lovely hilly delights and sunlit sentiments. Then the posts stopped. I missed those beautiful snapshots and reels of mountains, snows, rivers and forests. I asked him about it. ‘Beauty is dangerous. Attraction is lethal. Gurugram is far better!’ he said philosophically.

It happened this way in Kashmir. A paradise it seemed to him and the Maharastrian family that had hired his car. A happy bunch comprising an old retired patriarch, his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. They had enough education to express the beauty of the paradise in words. Then the snow-covered road tried to remind that it isn’t all bliss in the paradise as they imagined. There are risks and challenges. The seemingly paradisiacal plot is punctuated with hair-raising hurdles. The vehicle wriggled like an injured snake on the slippery ice. A deep gorge just a few feet away on the side. A paranormal proximity to death. The slightest movement of the tyres looked straight bound for the deep ravine. The soft majestic upholstery of nature turned to spiked coffin where even the corpse would feel the stingy pains of the nails.

‘My lungs dried up with fear!’ I can see plain fear surfacing in his eyes as he tells me now. The family had to get down to push and prod the vehicle through the snow. ‘That hundred meters of drive is far weightier than lakhs of kilometers I have driven in my life!’ he summarizes. The recalling of that short hazardous drive seems a long continuance of sufferings even now. Once out of danger the old man had a heartfelt pan-shot of the paradise and declared to his son, ‘Look at this beauty around. But always remember that beauty is very dangerous, usually lethal, and sometimes even fatal. It will seduce you, entice you, and before you realize you are in the pits.’ Then the old man laid to tatters the foolish blueprint of his son’s beauty-seeking scheme. The old man nailed it with luxurious precision. To all this Bhupinder agrees completely. Even with pollution, silent spring, noisy traffic, smoky bouquets, smoggy brickbats, topsy-turvy sobs and smiles, and wilting and blooming dreams, Gurugram is charming and safe. He is happy to be back in the familiar territory.