The cragged edge of a rock where the evening sun rests its
last secrets in silhouettes, what should we call it? When the cows return back to their homes in
hills, the rhythm of the bells
resonating with the swinging heads in unison; when the crows call their
colleagues to share the food you have left in the memory of the dead (Shraadh),
what do you call it?
What do you call the sound a rivulet makes, when it is
trapped to a hole on the way to the mighty river, and slowly pours in anguish
to fill it; what is the buzzing of the honeycomb in a remote hill’s vertical
cliff, when you sit by a brook to rest your legs.
What do you call the
small crevasse between the mountain and the snow, which grows darker and
deeper, but on whose ledges you notice a mushroom harvest?
What is the swinging of pine trees in a blizzard called,
what is the spontaneous smile of a forest guard called, when he looks up from
his wooden guard cabin and hears the swooshing sound of mountain trees, and
then notices a few dry leaves scrambling towards him, their backs making a slur
tap to the broader breeze carnival?
Not everything we need to share or recall has names. What is
the signature of the Falcon in the sky as it takes off from cragged cliffs atop
Mukteshwar hills?
What is the name given to your first feeling of vast expanse
at eye-level, when you stand at the crumbling edifice of Gilbert’s trail at
Kasauli? What is the name appropriate for few frozen river falls on the way to
Maktouli top at Sunderdhunga trail? What is the torn edge of the fluttering
cloth stitched inefficiently many times over called, when your Porter emerges
in it from a curve above the windy Roopkund trail near KaluVinayak?
Why we have not named what matters, and have named all that
don’t?
