Marcus Tullius Cicero etched "Dum Spiro, spero - as long as I breathe, I hope".
I chanced upon Cicero's above quote while reading a book. I have often observed, as a kid, annual family holidays concentered either transversing to hills or beaches. Usually after a Saturday vegetarian lunch or a Sunday brunch of luchhi and kosha mangsho the family holiday meeting sessions kicked off with a fervour that lasted till late evenings over a long forgotten snack of tea and samosas gone dun and soggy. The sessions were multiple, often family friends included, budgets chalked out, the trains and lodges booked in advance, the cursory bedding and home-made snacks bundles' to be toted and tour attractions and local conveyance mapped out in an effort to save time and avoid being tricked off by touts in a distant land away from home. It was customary to ignore the whims of the children, as elders played the pivotal part in all parleys - monetary resource being the premier, and so we were herded to the holiday destinations often as a bale to be photoengraved for life.
For my family and our family friends, places surrounded by hills or mountains had always been presaged. As a child I followed my elders' footsteps yearning for the lush palisade, the lithic landscapes - the bulwark standing tall. We were not so fortunate to be born in times when camera phones, camcorders or digital cameras stood might and main before our eyes and brain. Every family owned a film reel camera though which did not rotate hands and often the family breadwinner was the sole custodian. We children had to rely on the magnetic sensor of our eyes.
I have been fortunate enough to lay eyes on Himalayas not once or twice but for times unaccounted for. Lost are the times too, when the anticipated annual holiday trips to distant lands chimed in our tiny hearts gladdening our souls. These are the e-days when places and pictures can be visited and shared with kith and kin via tablets, laptops and iPhones.
Even this day the impregnable Himalayas read my inner soul loud -
When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first splendour, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang
"Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!"
Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore
Eminence, robustness, placidity, extirpation, ruggedness, pastoral beauty - I usually run out of words eulogising those moments captured as a child. The beauty of experiencing the awe-inspiring majestic mountains lies not in text or images but by living it.
Imposing as it is it draws out human relationships, individualities of characters to the core in Satyajit Ray's 1962 film Kanchenjungha where Ray uses excellently the billowing mists and the circuitous paths of the range, that people walk on as they meet and part, to show confusion and finally when things begin to resolve the mists slowly lift and the setting sun sets the mountain peaks glowing.
I believe the Himalayas enunciate the truth and wisdom and the monastic life of Swami Vivekananda is well reflected in his collection of works - Lectures from Colombo to Almora -
"...As peak after peak of this Father of Mountains began to appear before my sight, all the propensities to work, that ferment that had been going on in my brain for years, seemed to quiet down, and instead of talking about what had been done and what was going to be done, the mind reverted to that one eternal theme which the Himalayas always teach us, that one theme which is reverberating in the very atmosphere of the place, the one theme the murmur of which I hear even now in the rushing whirlpools of its rivers — renunciation!".
Imposing as it is it draws out human relationships, individualities of characters to the core in Satyajit Ray's 1962 film Kanchenjungha where Ray uses excellently the billowing mists and the circuitous paths of the range, that people walk on as they meet and part, to show confusion and finally when things begin to resolve the mists slowly lift and the setting sun sets the mountain peaks glowing.
I believe the Himalayas enunciate the truth and wisdom and the monastic life of Swami Vivekananda is well reflected in his collection of works - Lectures from Colombo to Almora -
"...As peak after peak of this Father of Mountains began to appear before my sight, all the propensities to work, that ferment that had been going on in my brain for years, seemed to quiet down, and instead of talking about what had been done and what was going to be done, the mind reverted to that one eternal theme which the Himalayas always teach us, that one theme which is reverberating in the very atmosphere of the place, the one theme the murmur of which I hear even now in the rushing whirlpools of its rivers — renunciation!".
The melting pot of human race defying religion, colour, creed or nationality - the omnipotent Himalayas weds spirituality and philosophy is born out of this wedlock. The exalted landscape and the charming panorama, the inhabitants of the Goliath rocky range, the foot hills, the flora and fauna, the platonic enigma, the esoteric sages and depth of their cave hide-outs, the serene purified air and the gushing torrents, the austerity of the omneity pressing on us is what we need to glorify.
The sharp druthers inked on my soul for the vast expanse of this mountain range puts me on the reposing route to Cicero's dear hope -
"All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days
and summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings
of my busy life will I place before him
at the close of my days
when death will knock at my door."
Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore
