The Counsel of Strangers

The crisp evening mountain air is thrust aside and overpowered by smoke from kababs drizzling their fat into tandoors and heavy-handed currys simmering on open-air choolahs. The poolside is being prepared for an evening of ghazals and geets for Shilpa-weds-Rahul. Outside the resort, along the cemetery road, can be heard a tired, resigned jingle-clop, jingle-clop, jingle-clop. Not dancing ghosts. It’s the sound of two luckless camels brought thousands of miles from their desert homes and up into these moist hills, fungus and dancer’s bells playing at their hooves.  Even the monkeys have stopped exclaiming at this unlikely animal’s presence; they stop their chatter and clatter in the branches, and fall silent, as if in deference to the walking dead, when the two camels pass jingle-clop-jingle-clop up and down the slopes every day, with glum been-there-done-that vacationing children swaying sullenly on their backs. Today the camels have been hired by the resort and outfitted in maharajah-wear. An Eeyore-like horse, also bedecked, stands mumbling between them, at the resort gate, just across from the cemetery. At the end of the evening, they will give the groom a ride to his hotel room further down, where he and his family is housed, an appropriately chaste distance away. The next morning, he will arrive on horseback to claim his bride. This willing suspension of disbelief will allow the bride, groom and their families and friends to feel like royalty for a day.
The singer (who like the camels has been imported here from god knows where), has begun the performance. No one is listening. He sings a passable Mehdi Hassan, then  noting the absence of audience interest, tries Rafi’s love songs, then Mukesh’s heart-break ones, and then feverishly on to Kishore’s naughty numbers.  Taking account of the meager applause, he breaks out into a last ditch Jai Ho! – so that his supper is sung for. Someone claps loudly, more to wind him up than to encourage him. Now the mike is taken by a series of men, women and children. The sunset behind them goes unnoticed.

This is when the six reluctant guests, one by one, unobtrusively melt away along a path to the far side of the resort. Here a set of stairs is cut into the rock, leading on to a viewing gallery. It has strong ornate cement railings, and seems to be suspended, floating over the valley, open to the sky. The spot provides a spectacular view of the hills across, the forested valley below. A bend of the Krishna River flickers silver and gold in the distance.

They don’t speak at all. Two of them light cigarettes. The young boy drops a small stone and peers down into the forest, to watch its descent. They all look away from each other, giving and wanting privacy at the same time.

A pre-monsoon sky darkens and rumbles, dark clouds blanketing the setting sun. Out of nowhere a bucketful of hailstones, the size of moth-balls, pelts them liberally. They hold out their hands to catch some or shield their heads; there are laughs, cries of surprise. The ice breaks the ice. As if on cue, a helicopter sputters out over the tree-tops, flying low, from right to left past them. The boy waves, and someone inside waves back, a big white cloth. The elderly gentleman shouts above the noise of the blades “they’re flying into the storm, these young pups”. Now everyone is waving the helicopter on its way. The young boy shouts “go home soon,” and mimes ‘run run’. One of the ladies adds gaily into the wind: “Your mummy is waiting for you.” Someone makes “Drive faster, faster, step on it!” gestures. They are all guffawing now, and waving till the helicopter goes out of sight, waving its big cloth right back. The moment passes, and they are strangers again, but slightly happier strangers.

The sky threatens, rumbling and grumbling, but does not discharge itself. The six strangers hang back on the gallery; no one wants to go back to the wedding revelry.  Introductions are made.