Shortcut is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from part seven, which deals with death and how people face it.
Here the friends group from an earlier story, Bhushan Banmali, is on the trails in Himaalaya again, this time with a vehicle and a driver from Delhi. There is much to deal with what with roads only sometimes good, and this being not the best of affairs - when the roads are not raw paths they are likely to have uncertainty of whether the next stretch would be good, and more. Then there is cold to deal with and vehicles breaking down, even before one takes into consideration the volatile nature of the mountains where a landslide might occur any time at any place.
Himaalaya is rising steadily with Indian plate pushing and this makes the whole region, from Himaalaya down into Indian land - and this does not mean political labels of the day but the land that is referred to since antiquity by that name as far as those outside the land are concerned - and perhaps the most volatile is still the Himaalaya, which again refers to the whole sum of the snowcapped mountains that form the northern boundary of the ancient land from westernmost to easternmost edge, whatever the divisions and new nomenclatures ascribed dividing the mountains into several names and labels during last couple of centuries by those not of India.
The story here proceeds to let the reader experience travel along those small roads and a short cut along a smaller one taken by the writer and his friends so they might arrive sooner than way past midnight to where they might rest, while they see a small car passing them along the way with speed possible to small and powerful vehicles. There is the Yogi and local expert who can tell sitting in his ashram (literally, place of refuge, usually in the spiritual sense) at Hrishikesh that it seems to have snowed at Joshimath (originally named Jyotirmath), which is several miles up the road to Badrinath.
Then the shock of the driver stopping the vehicle and descending to see more - there is a huge rock right in the middle of the path, and one knows without being told that it has fallen recently, and that it bodes ill. Indeed the rock has a wheel and an axle of the car that had overtaken them more than once, and they all step out to see if anyone is alive. The car is turned turtle way deep down below the road due to having been struck by the rock fallen on it from above, and the driver is dead.
He has indeed found a short cut, comments the driver.
The writer attempts to induce some poetic descriptions in his usual convoluted style, but this is a huge mistake, for at least two reasons. For one if one has been anywhere near Himaalaya and even seen the peaks at a distance, the grandeur, the beauty can only be experienced, and the simplest way of describing it brings it home, especially if one has been to those places. For another this attempt to induce one's own two bits seems pathetic, and one wonders why he is unable to perceive and open up to it in silence, rather than trying to paint his usual convoluted descriptions - here, simplest ones would be the best.
Saturday, April 5, 2014.
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