A Metaphor in the Evening Sky (Satis Shroff)

A young man's tryst with his destiny and his quest beyond the snow-clad, majestic Himalayas and the blue Mahabharat mountains to seek his fortune..

A METAPHOR IN THE EVENING SKY (Satis Shroff)
     
    
    It was a glorious sunset,
    
    The clouds blazing in scarlet and orange hues,
    
    As the young man, riding on the back of a lorry,
    
    Sacks full of rice and salt,
    
    Stared at the Siwalik 
    
    And Mahabharat mountains
    
    Dwindling behind him.
    
    
    
    As the sun set in the Himalayas,
    
    The shadows grew longer in the vales.
    
    The young man saw the golden moon,
    
    Shining from a cloudy sky.
    
    The same moon he'd seen on a poster
    
    In his uncle's kitchen
    
    As he ate cross-legged his dal-bhat-shikar 
    
    After the hand-washing ritual.
    
    
    
    Was the moon a metaphor?
    
    Was it his fate to travel to Kathmandu,
    
    Leaving behind his childhood 
    
    Friends and relatives in the hills,
    
    Who were struggling for their very existence,
    
    In the foothills of the Kanchenjunga,
    
    Where the peaks were not summits to be scaled, 
    
    With or without oxygen,
    
    But the abodes of the Gods and Goddesses.
    
    A realm where bhuts and prets, boksas and boksis,
    
    Demons and dakinis prevailed.