Feeling Warm And Volcanic Hot In A Cold Desert

by Aditi Tripathi (India)

I didn't expect to find India

Every woman is a paranoid woman. The paranoia is such that her aloofness is too offensive and her attention is too inviting. This realization dawned on me while we were still on road, passing through the hypnotizing beauty of trans Himalayas. It was day three of our journey towards Spiti valley; we were a day late but many lessons richer. The thick deciduous forests had slowly thinned down and eventually changed to bushy shrubs-we had entered the Zanskar Range. As the mountains began to appear steely gray, naked and mightier, I said to Shivika, my companion for the journey “we should carry a revolver wherever we go now”. I spoke loudly, so that Ajay, our driver, hears it. “Yes” she replied. We had adapted to our surrounding quickly, much like the forests. Spiti valley is a cold desert and one of the most remote places on Earth. Named after the river that cuts through it, the valley bedazzles you with vast stretches of emptiness and magnificent mountains. It fudges your sense of space and scale but the silence resonating in the valley imbues you with ethereal clarity. It makes you wonder about the tenacity of human spirit required to reach and live life in such frigid isolation. We reached Spiti, and proved to have the indomitable spirit it demands from you, much to our surprise. In the past two days we had lived a lifetime. First, we suffered the utter shock and disbelief of our car toppling over twice and landing perpendicular to the ground. We, our first driver Sanjay and the biker we collided into- came out alive and unhurt. The kind, concerned, good willed humans of Himachal helped us out of the wrecked car, stood by, comforted, and helped us get another taxi to complete our journey. Being recipients of such self less benevolence by absolute strangers was strange for us. We felt safe despite having been very close to everything changing forever- but we resumed to life unflinchingly. They call Himachal Pradesh 'Dev Bhoomi' or the land of Gods, and we felt surrounded by Gods embodied as people, waiting with us. Then we met Ajay. Having lost time to the accident and a landslide, we had to make an unanticipated night stop. Ajay was over friendly, wanting to share all our Parvati cigarettes but at the peak of his inappropriate behavior he took advantage of our lack phone reception and knowledge of the place, forced his friend’s accommodation on us and then refused to leave our room in the remotely situated lonely guesthouse. The horrid anxiety of being stranded with a man whose behavior was getting increasingly untrustworthy and threatening was taking over us. Like hostages, we complied, spoke to him as he got drunk. He insisted we drink too, so we pretended. Our minds were gripped with fear and rage but like well bred women, we were still thinking. Despite repeated requests, he did not leave. Finally, I mustered all the courage in my bones, stood up, kept the bottle of alcohol away and asked him to leave. Shivika got up to too. He sneered, remained seated, as we stared dead into his eyes. I clenched the pepper spray in my jacket’s pocket. He stood up slowly and forwarded a handshake. To make him go, I shook his hand when he clenched mine tightly defying all decency. Pumped with adrenaline, I withdrew in a reflex, pushed him outside and Shivika shut the room. We didn’t sleep that night and expected the worst to unfold. We were alone but each other’s faithful sentinels, commanding our safety. Spiti was a pilgrimage. The land of lamas and gompas revealed our innate nature to us. The assurance of our bodily safety has turned us into ever suspicious, always vigilant, absolutely liable beings who have adapted their living around the dangers created by men. In a world so dangerous for women, our desire for ‘more’ adventure becomes defiance. So we become paranoid women -tight roping this sharp edge of too much and too little and our paranoia enabling us to wade through this mad world to seek its unreal beauty.