She called it peaceful.
I called it suspicious.
Somewhere between the rain that fell too straight and the silence that felt too deliberate, I began to realise that nature, the one we romanticise from behind city windows and YouTube soundtracks, has a sense of humour.
This short story about Trekking begins with mud. It escalates quickly.
My foot slipped. “Ah!,” I exclaimed. I looked down.
Yes. Another lump of wet mud. For the last two hours, I’d been enduring this torture. Waves of pain rose from the soles of my feet and traveled right up to the tips of my fingers.
Why only fingertips? Because I was soaking wet from the top of my head right up to my waist. This was the first time I’d seen the rain fall straight. Ramrod straight, very unlike the crazy Bombay Ki Baarish, which always flew about in all directions. Sometimes even crisscrossing.
This rain was gentler, more relaxed. Understandable. Life in Bombay was fast, always running around. And just a few hundred kilometers away ,in this sleepy village, it was slow. Even the rain understood the difference.
But the rain was not the irritant. It was this crazy, muddy path that I was on. No, scratch that. The irritant was my friend Tasha, who’d convinced me to come on this wretched trek. In a moment of insanity, I agreed. Now here she was, skipping ahead, looking like a Bollywood heroine in the rain.
Think Geet from Jab We Met. I meanwhile? I panted hard and wiped the sweat that appeared on my skin despite the rain, or was it the rainwater? I don’t know. I was beyond caring.
I was breathing so hard, it was all I could hear. Anyway, there was nothing else to hear. No sound at all.
No vehicles, no hum of electricity, and no noisy people.
I noticed the absolute silence when the trek began.
Tasha called it peaceful.
I called it unnerving.
We were on a mountain, for heaven’s sake. Okay, a hillock, if I’m being honest.
But where was the bird’s song? Why was there no gentle stream flowing by, filling the surroundings with those soothing water sounds from the YouTube videos I fell asleep to every night? Honestly, I think it’s better that there were no water sounds. I’d hate to become drowsy on this mountain. Okay, okay, hillock. If I did, I’d fall and roll down in the mud.
I looked down at the path again.
The moss, the pebbles, the overgrown roots, and the worms.
Oh my God, the worms.
Ew. They were crawling all over my shoe. No, they climbed on my leg.
I could feel the hundreds of worm legs creeping up on my body. “Get them off, get them off, Tasha!” I shouted.
“Priya, Priya, wake up.”
I opened my eyes. No. There was no way I was accepting her invitation.
No moment of insanity can make me go trekking.
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