Remembering Trishuli

Staying at Trishuli was a kind of treat in itself. I always knew I will miss the place and the loneliness and the privacy the place offered to me. It however doesn’t mean that I enjoyed living in the place. In the first month itself I was convinced that this was not the place I liked. A friend would have been a life saver but there wasn’t any. A friend would really have made me postpone the idea of leaving the place early. But then I would also have someone who would breach into my privacy. I had never known myself to be someone who would be a sadist in a way or someone who would frequently enjoy loneliness but you never know what is coming into your life, depression taught me to enjoy things that once bored me. Earlier when I used to be lonely even for a while I used to get unusual kind of scare as if I was the sole survivor in the world after the dooms day. But then I frequently started feeling really bored when people visited me, when they invited me. The book ‘catcher in the rye’ has given me one particular term that really amused me, the word is ‘phony’. So, very much like Holden Caulfield, most of the people around me appeared phony. If I saw somebody I know coming my way, I would usually escape into the ‘tea-shop’ or to any shop. My taste of tea is unusual atleast to my parents and those tea-shops never offered me the tea I liked, yet I went inside them just like that to avoid people that I had to meet. And with most of them the only thing I needed to do was throw a smile and even that was something that would give me pain. They all looked phony, many times they spoke things which they didn’t themselves understood. They talked about standards they themselves didn’t follow. They cracked jokes when you were expecting something very serious. Yes that made them phony. I avoided them. When sometimes my colleague visited me or invited me for something, I used to think I would rather die than join them but I don’t remember a single invitation I rejected or I didn’t attend. However rarely I used to accept at once, if we had swapped the places I would have easily understood that the other person was trying to avoid me and would have never invited him again. But, they kept inviting me, in spite of my avoidances. It had become my nature or a culture that I had adopted. My parents are completely different, they are really popular among our relatives and family friends. But that made me a loner. I don’t say those who I avoid are all phony because most of them were really good people. The only friends I made was my house owner’s son and a clerk from District Education Office. The first one was someone who accompanied me most of the time when I went out for a walk or for tea for no reasons. The second one was someone with whom I did most of the serious talk and someone I really liked. His simplicity and dedication was something I wanted to learn and I tried to copy but which went really futile. His great sense of humor was a compliment to his simplicity. From the first two talks I knew this man was depressed and had so many complaints with life and in those contexts to have simplicity was something that I always found really extra-ordinary. We talked about people, things and life. I always enjoyed talking to him and he became a person I never avoided during my whole stay. I used to get headache time and again. Medicine was futile and something that made difference was very strong tea or a chat with the person I referred earlier. As far as my landowner’s son is concerned he was not always welcome to join me on my unroutine walks. But I had made him accompany me at times when he really didn’t want. So, when he wanted to join me when I didn’t want, I never avoided him. We used to have tea or something by the side of the Trishuli bridge and I used to feel a different kind of comfort when I used to make the payment. Rarely I made anyone pay when they were with me, just because Trishuli being such a small place and I being a vegetarian, person who never drank and person who didn’t want to sleep with prostitutes I used to have no place where I could spend my money. May be after making the payments myself I used to feel better, that is a kind of chauvinism I suppose. Many times I used to escape from my rented room into the darkness and the loneliness of the government owned horticulture centre because I used to walk free and lonely. Think whatever I felt like with no intervention and with no concern that I would have to give my comment or give replies when my company says something. Many of those evenings are the one I miss occasionally. I have always loved writing and walking lonely in the woods gave me subjects. Many times I used to walk by the market between the hubbubs of the people watching them, seeing them laugh, seeing them quarrel, seeing them bargaining for grocery and vegetables, giggling for nothing, children running carelessly and doesn’t even taking time to say sorry after they hit you hard somewhere you never expect, boys swearing and cursing, boys talking sex and figure of girls and girls being very aware of how they look. Its not always the silent nature that I wanted to paint in my writings but I really loved observing people. I really do. I enjoyed watching the evenings painted with so many true colors of nature in the evening, the extinguishing sun and the hills that would have started looking gloomy with the fading sun. From my high school days I associated loneliness, peace and seclusion with evening but when I associated these elements of life with evenings they used to have spills of sadness in my associations. Later same elements were more of a beauty than sadness, though rarely I missed the word ‘sadness’ when I mentioned evenings in my writings. But these days ‘sadness’ are less sad then they used to be once. Then nights with the full moon in the heart of the sky with cool breeze whispering in the leaves were the real treat for me. Unlike when I am at home, no one would ask me what have I been doing so long in the roof. It was a liberty I enjoyed in Trishuli. I used to keep watching the moon as long as I wanted. I used to think even the moon is watching me just the way I am watching her. We used to do a lot of talk with each other. The voice of silence really speaks lot than the voice of sound. I could hear the rattling trishuli beside my rented house and the whistle of the breeze. I felt after there is no mob of people the living elements of the river and the breeze talked with each other. The hardly visible hills only looked like shadows and they talked with the restless river just the way I used to talk to the moon. I used to conceive really strange thoughts, sometime I used to feel all of a sudden if the river rose raising the hill, the pointed hill might pierce the heart of my moon and the whole earth with bleed red. These thoughts really scared me. When I recovered I used to feel very silly. Many times I used to sleek into the roof when all of the people in the house were all asleep or were busy in something. I used to go to the roof with a pillow and a ‘chatai’ and lay flat in the open sky over the roof watching the moon, the stars. I many times remembered the story I had read in my primary sky were the earth was supposed to marry the sky. Stars decorated the bride, it said. The marriage never took place though. I remember I had felt sorry and sad when the marriage didn’t happen. I very often remembered that story. The long slender ‘sisso’ tree with its branches hanging down made me feel comfortable as if they were taking care of me. I sometime got scared of the shadowy hills but when I used to watch moon I forgot everything. I equally enjoyed watching the trishuli river. I first visited Trishuli in June. The rain had raised the level of the river and rarely any stones were seen on its heart slowly the season changed and the huge boulders started raising their head from the mighty river. It was only then I realised how deep the river was. But the same mighty river limped when rainy bade good bye for the season. I saw people crossing the river on their feet. The same river that once swallowed the whole bus could even brush aside the might of a man to cross it. The muddy river of the rain started becoming clean and clear with the bright days. It used to be a tender experience to sit by the side of the bridge over the river. The cool breeze from the river soaked me and left you rejuvenated. I don’t want my body to be burnt when I die I wish they would just carefully put my body in Trishuli and I will just flow with it. I know that river has untouched stories from history of mankind, may be it will reveal few stories. Later I happened to read ‘Catcher in the rye’ where the lead, Holden Caulfield feels the same. When a character feels some way in a noble, story or a movie you always know the writer must have felt the sameway. That is when I felt about writing it. There was one another thing I miss about the place, the long stretches of the road that cut across the army barracks inside the curtains of trees. There must have been forests and as there still are trees and greeneries around it gives an impression as if you are walking by the forest. The roads are not busy specially in the evening. They are long with ups and downs. To walk along the road lonely with some music playing over your ear was a treat I wouldn’t have liked to miss. I really loved walking alone this road, I sometime used to feel I own the place and feel proud for that. It must have been selfish but I have never denied I am a selfish. Everyone of us is selfish however the fact is when we start thinking to own to rise everything and above everything we pretend we are not selfish. I have learnt when we care for ourselves with all genuine ways there is nothing wrong with being selfish.
Yes, Trishuli was an experience and I am proud to have experienced it.