Girls of the Blue Mountains.

                                                           Girls of the Blue Mountains

     I stand on the upper balcony of my cousin’s house situated on the outskirts of the town and look up at the road near the woods on top of the mountain.  A never ending stream of tourist  vehicles flow into my little hill town.

    “When I was young, only village route buses and farmers’s jeeps and vans traversed this road. Tourists never knew this part of the town existed,” my cousin tells me. His daughter, Guna,  joins us. My cousin, a hardworking man and a voracious reader too, has lived in the same village since a boy.  The strong ultraviolet rays of the sun have tanned his face like it’s sunburned.

    I point to the road. “On Sunday afternoons all of us cousins used to walk that road to Marlimund Lake, a reservoir that supplies water to parts of the town and villages,” I tell my niece. “The road was almost always empty when I was a child. We swayed zigzag across the road or played hopscotch and giggled as we tried to finish a game before a bus or van came.  If we wanted to get back home fast or eat plums from the trees in the fields, we’d jump the terraced fields and run along the narrow, rocky and slippery pathways.”

      “Wow!” Guna looks at me in awe. She is shocked. “I have never jumped the fields or thought you could play on this road.”

     We are relaxing after a lunch of fried pompfret, coconut rice, chicken curry, goat fry, and a dessert of almond milk.  This is one of the delicious menus our family has served to guests for generations. Today I am the guest visiting after several years.

    “We can’t go into town with all this traffic, but we need medication for mom’s cough.” Dad leans against the railing and looks out into the wide valley.

    We can see our house at the bottom of the valley. The mist rises like smoke from the chimneys of the scattered houses on the hills. The air is fresh. This part of the Blue Mountains remains pristine and green.

    Dad is deep in thought.

    I know he is wondering how to get the medication for Mom. He is not the same Dad I left fifteen years back when I moved to America. He is more concerned about Mom than I can ever remember. Or maybe I was too young to notice back then.  I see how carefully he treads now. He  has gotten a lot slower.

    I go over to him and give him a hug and kiss. “We will both go into town. It’s okay if it takes time.”

    He knows I can’t drive in India. You drive on the left side. Two wheelers come right into you and then swerve away, like they are teasing you. Huge trucks, called Lorries, drive past you just inches apart. You need to navigate these as well as the huge pot holes and the speed breakers that have no warnings.

    “I can drive Appa to town,” my cousin says.

     “No, I’ll drive you, Thatha.” Guna volunteers.

     She can drive and swerve around safely and is not deterred by the lawless traffic, where you can be pushed to the edge of the ravine. This young girl knows not the beautiful roads and traffic of the west I’ve known for fifteen years.

    Guna’s never jumped the muddy terraced fields or played hopscotch on the local highway. But we both are girls of the Blue Mountains.