The Waterfall’s Boon
A short story of grief and transformation on a Himalayan trek
Sapna woke up to her own cries, drenched in sweat. Her throat was parched. For the fifth time in the week, she was having a nightmare. She could only recollect the last part of the dream where she blanked out in the exam hall and failed a test. What test was it? She couldn’t remember.
She drank copious amounts of water from the steel water bottle by her bedside. She swept up her lustrous hair off her shoulders, in a high bun. She felt the summer breeze on her moist skin, through the half-open window, right by her sleeping husband.
She guiltily thought how nice it would have been if her husband had woken up too. She would have sought solace in his strong, reassuring arms. He was tired after a long day of work and taking care of her, she knew he needed to sleep. In the morning, they had a flight to catch, they were traveling across the country to the foothills of the Himalayas.
The cuckoos started to sing, dawn was close. She couldn’t go back to sleep and wearily headed off to the kitchen. In the bleak light of dawn, she saw the red shadow again. It had not left her in the last two months. It was more obtrusive when no one was around. She had taken time off from work and tried diverting her mind with music and reading, but the red shadow persisted. She didn’t tell a soul about it.
It started the night she miscarried at eighteen weeks. She had been visiting her mother in her remote village after getting her doctor’s permission. Laying in a pool of blood, in a ramshackle government hospital in the village, she had seen the shadow rise from the head of the stillborn child and cling on to her. It was a girl, she found out that night. They buried her by the river Ganga. In her faith, she was told they don’t cremate stillborn babies.
Two months after the tragedy, she still could not bear to look at rivers without thinking of her baby. “Why did this happen?” she had asked many times: to herself, her husband Ankur, the doctors, God. The doctors said the cause was “unexplainable, a freak of nature”.
Ankur’s alarm went off as Sapna entered the bedroom with freshly brewed coffee. She slid her feet under the summer blanket as Ankur rubbed his feet against hers. “Ah it feels good,” she thought to herself. Something worth living for.
“ You’re up early! Couldn’t sleep in the excitement of the vacation?” Ankur smiled, his strong-jawed, good-natured face still a bit puffy.
“ Hmm. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, like a log.”
“ We have a few last-minute things to pack before we leave for the airport.”
“Yes, but first, coffee, and this” He leaned over to kiss her.
As she gave in to the kiss, she felt the shadow lose its power a little. She knew it was momentary but tried to savor the moment.
Ankur was back from a stroll around the rice fields in the village. It was still early morning and happy village kids waved at him from the cowsheds. “The change of scenery should do her some good,” he thought.
They had arrived at this serene, obscure village at the foothills of the Himalayas that one of his avid trekker friends had told him about. It was bucolic, Himalayan life at its best, just the way Sapna liked it.
Since the tragedy, Ankur was flooded with guilt. Could he have taken better care of her? Should he have asked his mother-in-law to come to their home in the city instead of Sapna visiting her in the remote village? Would that have affected the outcome? He hoped Sapna felt better by the end of the trip, she hadn’t been the same since that night.
On entering the homestay where Ankur and Sapna had been lodging for the last couple of days, he found Sapna intently talking to a young guy. It looked like the guy was telling her a story. Sapna’s warm, hazel eyes were wide and lit up the way they used to on little things. Ankur joined in. The young guy’s name was Sonam.
“Yes, sister” Sonam addressed Sapna. “The trek is beautiful and not too difficult. For us hill people, it takes only a day. It will take you guys two days to reach. I can help arrange all the food, supplies and you can hire me as the guide. “
“Don’t people do the trek on their own?” Sapna enquired.
“ There can be wild animals on the way, and difficult terrains too, you can lose your way. You’re better off with a local accompanying you. You can stay for the night at my uncle’s place in a village on the way. We can camp at the summit on the second night.”
Sapna and Ankur agreed to the offer. They were happy at the prospect of experiencing local life intimately.
“They say there is a magical waterfall in the area that cures people of their ailments. The waterfall reveals itself only to some” Sonam declared.
Sapna quizzically looked at Sonam and asked “ Magical waterfall? Did you see it?”
“No, I haven’t. Most people haven’t and the few who have, can’t tell or lead others there. They seem to forget the path”.
“The guy must be telling some old folklore,” Ankur thought to himself.
They packed their belongings, and Sonam arranged for supplies. Their excitement of going on a Himalayan trek after a year was palpable. Memories of their previous treks in a variety of Himalayan terrains came to their minds. The group of three set off for the trek by mid-morning. They were a bit late in starting.
Sonam, being the local, trekked much faster than the duo. It had rained the night before and the path was slippery at places. Snow-capped mountains of the middle-Himalayas played hide and seek through the thick foliage of Deodar and Pine. The Rhododendrons were in full bloom, painting the gorge and valley in shades of red and pink. A roaring stream called Tambi gushed by the trail. Sapna looked at the stream and thought of her baby. The red shadow cast its shadow on the river, infusing its color to the water. Sapna tried to focus back on the trail.
After Sonam guided them through the tricky part of the path, they all agreed it would be better if Sonam proceeded with the supplies to his uncle’s place and started dinner while the duo took their time to climb up to the village by sundown. In a few minutes, Sonam was out of the couple’s sight. Ankur was happy to be alone with his wife. They took a break under a Deodar tree by the stream. There was a tiny village in sight. Their destination for the night was still three hours away.
The scream reverberated in the forest. Sapna dropped the paratha that she was about to eat and searched around for the source of the scream. She spotted her, a girl of about five in the gushing stream, still close to the shore. The girl was a few meters upstream from them and was being rapidly hurled by the force of the water in their direction.
Sapna knew what to do, her mind was suddenly clear. She swiftly pulled out the thick nylon rope from her rucksack that they had packed for crossing fast-flowing streams: standard practice for trekkers in this terrain. She tied one end around her waist in a swift knot and handed Ankur the rest. Ankur had seen the girl too but seemed at a loss on what should be done. For a fraction of a second, they looked at each other, and then they nodded.
Sapna jumped into the water to get hold of the girl who was still a bit upstream while Ankur started tethering the other end of the long rope to a Deodar trunk. It was their only hope to not get carried away by the stream. The stream took a sharp turn right beyond the tree and Sapna was soon out of Ankur’s sight.
The next moments were a daze for Sapna. She remembered the ice-cold water, her grabbing the girl, the girl’s desperate panic-stricken attempt to hold Sapna, Sapna trying to free herself and grabbing the girl’s hair to pull her safely to the shore. Sapna was a good swimmer but it was almost useless in the face of the current of this glacier-fed, wild Himalayan stream gushing in its full glory.
After she pulled the girl to the shore, they both were out of breath, coughing and gasping for air. Sapna propped the girl against a tree and bent her forward while patting her on her back to get water out of her stomach and lungs. In a few moments, the little girl could speak feebly.
“How do you feel? Can you breathe okay?” Sapna asked with concern as she feverishly massaged the girl’s cold hands.
“Yes,” the girl mumbled.
“What’s your name?”
“Romi…la,” she said as sobs came out of her.
Romila shivered from the shock of the accident. Sapna put her arms around Romila to comfort her. “It’s okay, you are safe now” she murmured in a soothing voice.
Romila told her she was six and was from a nearby village. She was playing with her elder sister Dawa when she had accidentally slipped into the river. Romila struck Sapna as a quiet girl. They saw a girl of about ten running towards them, calling Romila’s name. “It must be Dawa,” Sapna thought. Ankur was running just behind Dawa.
The sisters left after crying in joy and relief. They hugged each other and then Sapna. They had insisted on taking the couple to their village but the duo declined, saying they had to catch up with Sonam. In the end, Sapna agreed to visit their village on their way back to the basecamp.
After the sisters left, Sapna heard it. They both did. The sound was like a symphony of the seven notes mixed with the sounds of water. They alternated between a high-pitched tune with the effervescence of life itself. They hadn’t heard anything like it before. It was coming from behind them, in the forest. They were compelled to follow it. Sapna was already drenched but she didn’t care. She had to get to the source. They walked for some time, not sure for how long.
There it was, a huge waterfall. It was gentle despite being mighty. There was a rainbow encircling it. The water droplets seemed to be floating around like little bubbles. The music of the waterfall engulfed their souls. Ankur and Sapna couldn’t speak for a while and stepped inside the water to take a dip. They felt one with the waterfall, one with each other. No thought, good or bad, appeared in their minds for a long time. The water was warm, not ice cold like the stream. After they were done with the dip, they somehow ambled to the trail, still in a daze.
They changed their clothes and walked the rest of the path to Sonam’s uncle’s village. Warm people and a homely dinner welcomed them. Sapna and Ankur slept like logs through that cool night.
The next morning Sapna woke up to Ankur rubbing his warm feet against hers, under the thick blanket. She could see the snowy peaks above the verdant green of the mountains through the window, straight from their bed. Birds were chirping, as if in a symphony.
She realized the red shadow had left her since the incident the day before. Also, didn’t Romila’s face look a lot like hers? “She must be safe in her mother’s arms now,” she thought.
