Saturday, February 28, 2009

the Really Big Upside-Down Bowl

I have friends in the mountains now, at Binsar. They left on thursday morning and changed buses at Almora and heard about the leopard who kicked the sanyasin on the foot and is dead now (leopard or sanyasin? don't know yet) and walked their feet off.

It was very hard to see them go, i love the mountains. it took upto last year to start going again/ and now i keep wanting to go. Its more than wanting actually, sometimes it gets to be a need/ sometimes you can and sometimes you cant/ but nevermind about that.

City person that i am, mountain nights always seem to be a little unreal/ like i got dropped into a world that has no resemblance at all to the world i know. It sounds, smells, looks, feels/ wraparound unfamiliarity/ and the only response is to just float in it, and fear it wisely/ to stand at the border of light and look out/ into all that you are just too insignificant for the universe to inform you about.

The night sky in the mountains is an extraordinary, humbling, mesmerizing thing. I was sitting here in Delhi and thinking about it, so i sent a message to one of the boys at binsar. It said 'your phones off. i was going to ask you to take it out and describe the sky to me'

He messaged back '...Orion is moving from east to west along with the rest of the galactic arm. Above Almora a solitary wisp of cloud, or vapour hangs like a signature. If you stare long enough at a particular patch of sky you can make out nebulae and star clusters thousands of light years away. And, of course, see shooting stars, the most surreal of things...'

Thank you.
Good Night.

1 comment:

Beq said...

Hehehe...it got you didn't it? I was hurting like crazy, close to a fever and it was deathly cold outside. But seriously, what a sky!
By the way, the leopard Licked the sanyasin's feet not kicked (and we changed buses at Haldwani for Almora, and took a cab at Almora for Binsar, but that's just me quibbling). Beautiful post :)