For the love of Mountains
Rakhshinda Shakir
And if you are among the ones who haven’t spent life in the mountains, then my dear you miss the real taste in life. Belonging to the mountains means belonging to nature, simplicity, beauty, sincerity, hospitality, generosity, sky blue rivers flowing between plateaus, soil made rough and breathtaking roads, hanging risky wooden bridges, cattle raising and rearing. This belonging to the mountains means knowing the real taste of mountaineering. No metaled road ever will be inspired enough to venture you to zigzag roads taking you to lush green valleys up high in snowcapped peaks. Finally, reaching upon a destiny at a distant from little villages in a place full of moonlight and bright stars and burning lanterns in simple muddy huts, mountains will vacate you to yourself. Can you feel it? It’s like pin drop stillness away from eventful piercing automobiles movements, away from busy official and individual private programs, away from parties and every kind of dramas, away from anything and everything, but close to your own self.
A place remote enough to cut you off from internet 4G network, away from face book traffic, email sites, isolated enough to display your hypnotic beauty without having you goggle it. Do you feel goose bumps; yes dear its cold up there. Want to have tea made out of goat milk? Do you want it to be salty or sweet? Salty?? Seriously how do you drink it? Just like you drink sweet tea! Yeah, keep gazing at the sky; you see a bed of stars up there. Okay so if you see a star falling down or breaking, close your eyes and make a wish. I am not sure how many percent the probability of the wish coming accurate is true, but we feel amity in gazing the stars and even if the wishing thing is not true we don’t much bother to complicate things. Unless that doesn’t harm you, but pleases go for it man. I mean, does it hurt staring at brightest stars when everything around is silent and dark? Isn’t life very simple in mountains? At this instant that science says, trees are unsafe at night for carbon-dioxide is secreted, but during my entire life in the summers my bed gets fixed under big tree but I am surviving renewed and strong. Nothing ever happened to me.
Moving on to our adolescents, no its not any branded blush on they wearing on their cheeks its naturally red and yes that hazy eyes are priceless. Why don’t there is much talk about branded stuff and fashion? Well, I guess they don’t need it. You see that group of girls and boys crossing that narrow bridge over the river carrying bags half fixed with different colored threads? Yes, they are students carrying branded books to the only available school in a valley called Unauch Yarkhoon. At six am their journey starts towards school, after like two hours of travel on foot school comes and do you really think they have time for makeup and fashion and artificial look. Their curly hair, hazy brown eyes curious enough for seeking learning miles away from their residence. When it floods in summer, these very bridge washes away, leaving us isolated from the rest of the village where our only primary school rests. . This is when students can’t walk to school. What do you see in people belonging to the mountains? It means even with broken Urdu is talking and listening to you, it means making you feel special, it means offering you the best food available in their houses, it means, feeling honored to welcome you. Don’t you see passion, struggling life, yet happy and beautiful faces in us? Does not belonging to the mountains mean belonging to oneself, belonging to our problems and each other’s problems , belonging to face hardships, belonging to grow strong, belonging to be welcoming, belonging to be modest and humble, but yet beautiful, belonging to be peaceful and gorgeous inside out.
Rakhshinda Shakir is studying Political science, Philosophy and Economics at Asian University for Women Chittagong, Bangladesh
