Epilogue
It was the same autumn in the Uttarkashi. Poplar, sycamore and ficus trees around the small ancient temple on the mountain were golden yellow. Time-to-time air shook them and a burst of leaves flew in the air. Dry or yellow leaves were lying on the ground. Pine and deodar trees were still green, but their cones were dry and empty of their seeds. Time to time a pinecone crashed on the ground with a cracking sound and once a while someone visited the temple and rang the bell.
Rishi lay on the temple’s concrete platform in his favorite Buddha reclining position. He was not thinking but gazing in the valley at the holy river. It was beginning of the Himalayan winter and wind was cold but still bearable. River was sparkling in the noon sun but its noise was not audible because of the hissing of the wind.
Vinita was sitting cross-legged on a piece of rag next to the platform. Tears fell from her eyes.
“When I was poor I was in sorrow,” she said, “Now, I am rich of the richest I am in sorrow.”
He stayed silent; he was watching the flight of a vulture. It was climbing up gracefully with the rhythmic strokes of its wings and then it glided effortlessly but lost a little height.
“When I was poor at least I was not lonely,” said she. “But I am lonely today.”
Valley was gradually heating up with the noon sun of the winter and vulture entered into a thermal. Draft of warmer air was lifting it in an invisible large spiral. It spread its wings and started rising effortlessly in a large circle.
“I am the victim,” said Vinita. “Rishi, You used me. It was your setup.”
He was still looking at the vulture; it drifted out of the hot current but stroked its wings and joined the pattern again.
“There are three things,” said Rishi, “One: what we ask God. Second: what we have in our mind but fail to ask God.”
“And what is the third,” said she, “because I know only about the two you said.”
“Third is the Inshaah Allah or the Wish of the God. We don’t ask for it but we live with it effortlessly.”
Vinita tried to comprehend what Rishi said and suddenly her resistance dropped.
A sudden wind came with a whistle and a mass of leaves flew from the trees.
Ecstasy entered in her mind. She saw a poplar leaf drifted with the wind, and flew near her. She saw its veins, its yellow color and sunlight reflected from its glossy surface for a moment. As it drifted near her slowly, she saw, a small brilliant red insect was also sitting over it; leaf went past her. Her eyes stayed on the leaf till it disappeared in the space.
Vinita felt like she was a leaf in the wind. Burdens of her mind dropped and effortlessness visited her. Her ears were filled with the sounds of the creation; she felt the fragrance of pine and deodar trees. Air was shaking the trees and she heard the crackling of the trunks. She heard the humming of a bee. A pinecone fell on the concrete surface, her whole body listened its cracking sound. She gazed in the valley at the sparkling, dancing and playing Holy River. Someone rang the temple bell; she heard and felt the ringing in her ears as well in the whole body. Her whole body became the vessel of the creation.
She smiled.
Vinita rose, she took Rishi’s hand and kissed it, she turned and left.
Rishi watched her leaving.
As she was below him, he shouted, “You didn’t say me thank you.”
“Who will say thank you to whom? There is only Ganga Mai.”
End of Epilogue
End of the “Roger goes to Himalayas"
