imagine you are gone to a hill station. what will you relate with pillow, bedsheet, mattress and quilt with the natural land forms.
I will mark you as brilliant.
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Answer:
Sipping my tea, I had been observing for a while the surprising incidents taking place. In this small village in the mountains, where the tea shop was located, some clouds had drifted by rather suddenly. A light drizzle had followed even as the two mountains in the background were still sunny. Now, a bright golden daze had encased everything.
The shop where I am having tea belongs to an elderly couple. This is probably the only shop in a radius of about three kilometres. The couple, it appears, live by themselves. They say they have a farm in the village in the valley below which is managed by two of their children. Two of their daughters are married and a son studies somewhere in Delhi, they proudly tell me. Since there is no other shop nearby, this tea shop also serves as a basic groceries store. After having almost three full cups of tea, I notice the intense fog making its way towards us from behind the smaller mountains. The couple are busy with their work. I shout, “Look! The fog looks so endearing!”
They give a cursory glance at the fog and go back to work. I begin clicking pictures. Through the lens of the camera I see a small white dot. I move my eye away from the lens and see an old man walking towards us from some village down below. He is quick for his age and reaches up in a jiffy. Soon he is engaged in a conversation with the couple in their native language. So I start looking at the mountains again. It seems like someone has lit a huge bonfire right behind that small mountain, and the smoke is making its way towards us. In a short while, the tea shop and the entire village is enveloped in that cloud of fog. The shopkeeper says, “The fog has a fragrance of its own.” When I ask what kind of fragrance, he says if I lived there longer, I would know.
I realise it is five in the evening already, and I have to travel about eight to nine kilometres to reach my guest house. The thought of walking alone in the night in this forest scares the coward in me to the core.
The shopkeeper almost smells my fear and says that I could walk back with the old man. He says he lives in the same village where my guest house is located. I agree readily. I pick up my bag and wait for the old man to get up. He remains seated and asks for a cup of tea. I look at my watch. I know that the old man had casually glanced at me when he had entered the shop, after which he was either chit-chatting with the shopkeeper or staring blankly at nothing. As a tourist, you expect to be looked at; people look for reasons to talk to you and soon you get used to the attention. But this old man has simply overlooked my presence in the shop. I am beginning to feel angry now; the kind of anger I had felt when I first saw a lion in a cage. It was caged and I was standing right in front of it, yet the lion behaved as if I didn’t exist or was completely transparent. I started shouting at that lion, did some antics, but it paid no heed at all. My friends said I looked like a monkey in front of the lion.
When the old man slowly begins sipping his tea, I put my bag down loudly enough to express my anger about the long wait he is putting me through. I do not show much anger because I do not want to behave like a monkey again. I too order for more tea. The lady of the shop gives me a long lecture about having too much tea. I step out of the shop, finish my tea, pay for the old man’s cup as well as mine. He looks at me once, and doesn’t even smile; a “thank you” is probably too much to expect.
Anyway, after about half an hour, we start our journey, the old man and I. It is half past five, and the sun has disappeared. The old man is leading the way. I ask him his name. Thrice. He says nothing and we keep walking. In a while it begins getting darker. I take out a torch from my bag and hold it in my hand for a while. Then I slowly switch it on to ensure it is working properly. As soon as I switch it on, he says, “Keep it inside.” I say, “It’s too dark. We won’t be able to see the path.” He does not reply. I switch off the torch, but because he didn’t reply, I don’t put it back in my bag; I keep holding on to it. Then he says slowly, “A torch is not required here.Keep it inside. If you keep holding it in your hands, you will be tempted to switch it on.” His voice feels heavier as the night progresses. I was surprised that his Hindi has no accent. He is speaking proper Hindi. I put the torch into my bag. Had I been alone, even with a torch, I wouldn’t have been able to stand this darkness, I think to myself. At least in his company I was less fearful.