Queen Of The Hills

Chapter III

 BACK HOME

After an enjoyable stay at Mussorie, Simmy came back home to Dehradun, to find her gleaming father welcoming her with a warm hug. Both shed tears of joy and relief. It had been almost eight years since she had last stepped inside her home. She had left home at the tender age of fifteen and now she was a young lady of twenty three. It was almost as if a bad dream had just ended, but the scars would remain.

Though she was fully familiar with every nook and corner of her home, yet the unsavory incidents which had occurred years ago, stood as an obstacle, to her embracing her home and its happy memories, with open arms. Something ...stood in the way! The more she tried to tide over her negative thoughts, the more it returned to nag her, like a thorn in her flesh. Tired, she gave up on her resistance. Let time do the healing part. She would not let unpleasant memories stand in the way of her enjoying her five days stay over here.

Her dad had got her favourite cake, a walnut one, baked fresh from their bakery. The old domestic help, Madhu, who had been with them, right since the time she was born, stood in the house, grinning from ear to ear, after wiping tears of joy from her eyes. She had almost been like a mother to her, familiar with the most trivial of her needs. Simmy embraced her with all the feelings one reserves for a very close family member.

Madhu and her father had prepared a very delicious dinner for her. They enjoyed the meal in silence and then Simmy retired to her room for the night. She was surprised that she was still so familiar with her room, even the smell of it... her very own den. Her father had kept her things the same way as she had left them so many years ago. A wave of guilt swept over her. How badly her father must have missed her in all those years. Now she would make it up to him. She would do everything she could do, to make her old man happy.

The following days passed happily. On a few occasions, Simmy visited her father's bakery shop in Dehradun. The shop had been renovated and had a modern look about it. Business had flourished manifold, showing that her father had fought his loneliness, by devoting all his energies to the expansion of his business. The shop now made many varieties of cakes and other pastry items, which were kept neatly arranged in attractive counters. And he had employed good young hands in the shop to cater to the needs of the shop, including home delivery. She felt proud of her old man. He had raised this bakery business to something big, in spite of facing so many adversities on the personal front.

'Which accursed woman would not be proud of such a wonderful man?' she wondered.

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In the coming days, Simmy paid a few visits to her school in Dehradun. Her school looked like a picture postcard, amidst its tranquil settings. There were those blue hills visible in the background, adding to the charm. In keeping with these soothing environs, were the smiling faces of the teachers and the taught.

When a person is born and brought up in a beautiful city like Dehradun, where life moves at a leisurely pace, and then that person has to live his life in a large bustling city like Delhi, then in the beginning, the small town person may relish the change in his quarters, for it is inscribed in the genes of a man, to constantly seek change for the sake of change. But after the initial euphoria blows away, most of the persons, will inevitably see behind the facade of the glitter and glamour in a metropolis, and discover a deep chasm, a chasm in which his identity, like the identities of all commoners like him, is lost.

The man finds that all the while he has been a Rip Van Winkle, getting up every morning, and then moving like a mechanical toy, synchronized to perfection, in fulfilling his 9 to 5 duties. It's as if that were the sole purpose of his life, day in and day out. He is fully aware of his job, knows his workplace, but is not aware of himself; one in a multitude, he wears himself down for a better tomorrow, never for a moment pausing to think that he is losing his countless and certain todays, amidst traffic snarls, unpleasant sounds and angry crowds: all for an uncertain tomorrow, which he aspires to cover with gold.