The rest of the journey to which I was to continue was through the desert which was in a way my first experience of that sort in life and about which I was slightly afraid and since I did not know any other means to avoid it, I thought I would continue it. After all, this is an experience in life I could not postpone taking into consideration the present state of things. I wired to my reverent friend in the city about the development and seek further assistance. In fact, it was his journey and not mine, and without his precious aid and thoughtful suggestions, I was in no way equipped to complete it, however skillful I am in the matter. I had only one adventure of this sort, that was in my early youth, as I was in a group of youngsters, who wanted to climb a mountain somewhere in the north as the Himalayas boasted some of the best peaks highest ones in the world. I tried the great Kirat Chuli or Tent Peak but left off the climb in the middle.
The first ascent to the summit was made by Ernst Grob, Herbert Paidar, and Ludwig Schmaderer in 1939. Kirat Chuli name in the Limbu language meant God Kirat and is believed to be the habitation of the goddess Yuma, believed by Sammang of Sikkim Limbu People. The effort is worth it and to climb apeak will be a lifetime honor for me and my clan and it is a matter more of pride than sheer adventure. These are some of the fallacies of youth. We cannot do a good action if the element of pride is not mingled with it. Our peers will constantly question it, the girls will question our aims. They cannot foresee the worth of good things as such if the life is not faced with some disaster, personal ones or some disaster such as sickness or accident that might happen to our dear ones. Life is quite a relative equation, there is no perpetual heaven to be sought after among the world of things that are constantly changing, our body and mind, and even our heroes of a time cannot continue their heroism, and often plunge into bathos and we recognise by a shock that we are all human beings, and our strongest convictions are within the framework of a changing body and mind, truth now, falsehood later unless we cannot connect to our fellow human being perpetually on an equal footing. Here may lie a great touchstone for our values……
From my life, I can at least give a simple example- When I saw an English film for the first time in my life, maybe I was fifteen or sixteen, with my friends , I saw the hero and heroine engaged in kiss of might, locking, each other’s lips, I thought quite odd or vulgar, or in fact doubted such a thing existed on earth, an idea of kissing like that, because, in my world, I had not seen it and thought it as villager. But see later we know that is another culture and it is perfectly alright to do so and we also do like that and it is, after all, a very good experience to do so if the basic idiom of love is there. In other words, it is an expression of love, one among the myriads of expressions of life, shows us to choose, to reach a very important thing here and now, the immortality of things in the world of shadows…
And I was waiting for the call of my friend and it came only in the afternoon as the lines were not connected and proper and there was a problem in the communication system and though late the reply came and he gave me additional information and clue for the continuance of the journey. Blessed be my friend- Then I tried to contact my professor who was also my mentor throughout my life, but could not do so, and his daughter told that he had gone to his first son’s house and they had gone to Mahabaleshwar, a hill resort 260 k.m. away from Bombay and could not be contacted…..
And here my ride starts. I have got a camel an exchange for the horse from the camel dealer I met in the inn when we the camel dealer, chess player and the friar met in the inn. The exchange was quite propitious or timely and I relished it, and that was a good deal after that memorable mentor. The chess player wanted to accompany me in the further rides of this great journey and promised me that he will teach me some good moves meanwhile, and when I discussed with my friend, the latter vehemently opposed the idea and so I did not accept the request of the chess player. Life is after all not a game of chess, and her the winner is the most innocent and not the cleverest. That is an idea we learn slowly…..
--[From a work of FICTION in progress]
