White Clouds, Green Mountains Read online

  When I see the first commelina, I stand dumb before it and the world stands still while I worship. So absorbed do I become in its delicate beauty that I begin to doubt the reality of everything else in the world.

  But only for a moment. The blare of a truck’s horn reminds me that I am still lingering on the main road leading out of the hill station. A cloud of dust and blasts of diesel fumes are further indications that reality takes many different forms, assailing all my senses at once! Even my commelina seems to shrink from the onslaught. But as it is still there, I take heart and leave the highway for a lesser road.

  Soon I have left the clutter of the town behind. What did Aunt Ruby say the other day? ‘Stand still for five minutes, and they will build a hotel on top of you.’

  Wasn’t it Lot’s wife who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the doomed city that had been her home? I have an uneasy feeling that I will be turned into a pillar of cement if I look back, so I plod on along the road to Devsari, a kindly village in the valley. It will be some time before ‘developers’ and big money boys get here, for no one will go to live where there is no driveway!

  A tea-shop beckons. How would one manage in the hills without these wayside tea-shops? Miniature inns, they provide food, shelter, and even lodging to dozens at a time.

  I tackle some buns that have a pre-Independence look about them. They are rock-hard, to match the environment, but I manage to swallow some of the jagged pieces with the hot sweet tea, which is good.