Bottled in Suru, Money Back Guaranteed
I’m on my period. I got my second shot of the covid vaccine this morning. I am running through fields of tall grass and leaping over small streams. My companions are a bunch of 8 to 12-year-olds. We left on a mission to see where criminals were hanged up on a hill. The kids believe there are spirits there after dark. We walked through the village, past the fields, and some way up a hill, where my 34-year-old body tried to keep pace with a boy of ten. I pause for breath. There’s a place where someone could’ve been hanged, but there’s no trace of that history. It’s a hole in a rock. The sun is close to setting.
The silence is filled with fear mongering for fun — spirits, wolves, and bears. The kids start insisting that we get back on the road quickly. On our way back through the fields, we stop to climb a big rock. I struggle, the kids haul me up. And then soon wolves are back on their minds.
We are running and leaping even faster now. It is dusk and we are in a field of really tall grass. Baneen, who is eight, says ‘look at me’ and falls into the grass, Mohadissa follows, then Batul, and Asiya, and Asif. I fall too. We rise and fall. The sky is a gradient of colours.
On the road again. They ask me what I would do if wolves cornered us now. There’s still a bit of light in the sky, and the fear of wolves is exaggerated. There are wolves and bears in these parts, but like most creatures, they try to avoid humans. The kids are testing me I think. I don’t know what I say, but they like me. We are friends of a sort.
I am in a village in Kargil’s Suru Valley. It’s called Taisuru, part of a breathtaking landscape. Surrounding Taisuru are tall mountains, a constant sound of gurgling yorbas (canals) cut into the fields from the river that rushes through here. On this particular evening, I feel a joy I cannot fully describe in words. Will I remember this? I write it down so I do. I hope I do.
You should be able to bottle up some memories, when you release them, you can inhabit them again for a while.
Written in August 2021. The title is borrowed from Arundhati Subramaniam’s poem To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn’t Find Me Identifiably Indian: “I long for a nirvana / that is hermetic, odour-free, / bottled in Switzerland, / money-back-guaranteed.”