The Himalayas

Sujata Bhatt

Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmadabad in 1956, and grew up in Pune. She emigrated to the United States in 1968. She was professor and writer-in-residence at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, in 1992. She received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award.

The Himalayas

In Kosbad* during the monsoonsthere are so many shades of greenyour mind forgets other colours.

In Kosbad during the monsoonsthere are so many shades of greenyour mind forgets other colours.

At that timeI am seventeen, and have just startedto wear a sari every day.Swami Anand is eighty nineand almost blind.

At that timeI am seventeen, and have just startedto wear a sari every day.Swami Anand is eighty nineand almost blind.

The Himalayas

In Kosbad during the monsoonsthere are so many shades of greenyour mind forgets other colours.

His thick glasses don’t seem to work,they only magnify his cloudy eyes.Mornings he summons mefrom the kitchenand I read to him until lunch time

One day he tells me‘you can read your poems now’.I read a few, he is silent.

Thinking he’s asleep, I stop.But he says, ‘continue.’I begin a long onein which the Himalayas riseas a metaphor

Suddenly I am ashamedto have used the Himalayas like this,ashamed to speak of my imaginary mountainsto a man who walked throughthe ice and snow of Gangotribarefoota man who lived close to Kanchenjungaand Everest clad only in summer cotton.

I pause to apologisebut he says, ‘just continue’.Later climbing throughthe slippery green hills of Kosbad,Swami Anand does not need to leanon my shoulder or his umbrella.I prod him for suggestions,ways to improve my poems.

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He is silent a long while,then, he says‘there’s nothing I can tell youexcept continue.’