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I met Arshid for the first time at the parking lot of
Jammu Tawi railway station. It was early morning and thin fog embraced the
horizon. I watched him lead us down the rubble strewn alley of the station yard
to his maroon Xylo car. In the cool shade of dawn flickering through the leaves
of trees, I saw him help himself to the roof of the car, as he loaded our
luggage on the carrier.
Arshid seem to have just the right built of a mountain
resident. Strong, lanky Kashmiri, with carved features etched deep into his
fair skin. Hair parted from the center and thinly cut nose that rose between
his eyes like a steep hill. Unruly beard, speckled with twigs of grey, tapered
down like a cone till his neck. There was a smile in his eyes and like most
Kashmiris, it had creases bleeding from the corner. The way roaring streams
erupted from the chest of mountains. Arshid's eyes burst into rivulets, every
time I joined him in a talk about the gorgeous terrains of Kashmir.
Riding with Arshid, was riding the mountain air. We
leaned with our praying hearts into every blind curve, as he sped past the
green valleys. We held our breath with every rise and fall of the mountain
slope. It was scary. But it was only some time before we got accustomed to the
ways of the man, who loved his life, just that way. At the edge. And we let our
fears drown in Arshid's acquaintance with the mountains. In his long, skilled
years behind the wheel, cutting through precarious roads.
Exhausted from the overnight train ride, everyone had
already hit the snooze button. Sitting right at the front beside Arshid, I tried
hard to keep my eyes ajar. But such dreamy was the chain of mountains and the
calming touch of winds, that I couldn’t help drift to sleep. When I opened my
eyes, we were racing into a mountain. Arshid was hard on the accelerator and
the car was flying into the rocky walls, with a fountain cascading down it. I
clenched my teeth in terror. Everyone looked traumatized in the mirror. I
turned to Arshid, hoping he hadn’t lost his head and before I could manage a
word slip through my feared state, I saw the landscape slow down. The car slid
to a halt inches away from the mountain. And the gushing fountain bolted down
hard on the bonnet with a shudder. Cold water flew in through the window and
lapped against my cheek. I was quick to slide the window up. Arshid went out
into the rain of fountain and opened the hood. The fountain thus poured into
the engine room and thick smoke erupted out of it. That was when I in my numb,
feared state, came to know about Arhsid's way of cooling the car’s engine.
He came back drenched. His white cotton shirt stuck to his back as got behind the wheels.
“Ye hui nah baarish…” He smiled at me, as the
creases deepened around his eyes and ignited the car. I was stunned and
awestruck at the calmness he perceived at the edge of his life and in the
thrill of losing it in the next second. Arshid was someone, who lived and died
for the mountains.
He took us past adobe of pines that danced in the wind,
high up on the frozen slopes. Across streams tumbling over rocks. Over bridges
that vibrated with the breath of mountains. I rested back, watching the
landscape zoom past on my window and played music from the 90’s. That was where
I felt we bonded the best. I watched his wrinkled eyes lit up as a love song
hit the speakers. Those were my songs, reeling out of my playlist. They say, a
person’s choice of songs, speak a lot about them. With Arshid lending his heart
into my songs, as we meandered between quiet valleys, it was perhaps our own
sad memories associated with those songs that held us together.
Close to evening, while we stopped at a Dhaba for some
tea, watching the sun lower in the valley from my seat, Arshid came and sat
beside me. He played one of the many songs in his phone that I had transferred
to him. We did not exchange any words. There amid the sea of quietness brooding
around us, the twilight reflecting from the snow, we let the song guide our
love struck heart across the mountains to that one person in our lives, who
mean everything to us.
By - Sobhan Pramanik
Beautiful!!!
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