Pravina hates trekking.

By: Shradha Rani Chhetri

Wooded Landscape with Waterfall and Approaching Storm (ca 1655) | Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29-1682)

Pravina hates trekking. Or to be clearer, she hates walking uphill. Sanu and Nima, the culprits for today’s exercise, are but two dots of blue and yellow a long way ahead. Their clear lungs filled with the scent of youth.

Pravina checks her phone. 11:37pm. No new notifications. She looks up at the grey sky, air

heavy with moisture. The humidity was one of the many reasons she did not want to go on

this “short trek”. Her father’s side of the family bore the burden of long yet untamed curls and

diabetes. The former plagued her everyday and the latter she believed would end up killing

her. The thought was enough to entice a deep sigh. She reached for her pony, unkept and

askew, removed the rubber band and retied her hair tightly.

“Oi! Wait for me!”, she shouts towards them. Sanu and Nima, or SanuNima as everyone

calls them, have stopped at a fallen tree trunk to smoke. “Do your parents know?”, she asks

the two, spurred by a vague sense of responsibility as the eldest.

“Even if they do, they wouldn’t care. We’re old enough now”, replies Sanu, handing her the

packet. “Or we can just blame it on you”. He grinned. Pravina shoves him playfully and lights

up her cigarette.

She leans against the trunk and languidly blows smoke at the slowly darkening sky. She

reaches behind her to check her bag’s side pocket for her umbrella. The familiar shape

reassures her. She glances at the boys and sees that they’ve carried theirs as well. She

takes another drag before mentioning the rapidly changing weather.

SanuNima look up. Pravina chuckles. “You guys look like frogs waiting for rain”, she teases.

They roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders. The coordinated body language always made

Pravina was uneasy but it wasn’t like she would tell them. As they get up to leave, Sanu turns

around and asks, “By the way, have you visited Yuma yet?” Pravina is taken aback by the

question.

“No, why do you ask?”

Now it’s Nima’s turn to question, “But why not?”

“I haven’t found the time”. What did it matter if she hadn’t visited Yuma’s abode since her

arrival in Darap? The deity wasn’t going anywhere.

The boys flinched at her answer. Their reaction makes her feel uneasy. “Why is it so

important? I’ll go when I go. I still have a week left before I return to Siliguri. Yuma is

everywhere, right? She’ll understand.” SanuNima nodded quietly. The atmosphere had

gotten painfully quiet. Pravina gestured to the clouds and suggested that they move on

before they’re caught in the eye of the storm.

The two heads looked up again. In sync. She tightened the strap on her backpack and

resumed walking, pushing past the two.

“You should be careful. Yuma is everywhere”, they say in unison. Annoyed, Pravina tells

herself this is the last time anyone is getting her out of the house, let alone the bed.

As she swiftly walks ahead, she doesn’t notice how quiet it has gotten. She turns around and

sees no sign of the twin. Green for miles. Plop.

Pravina shuts her eyes mid walk. Not rain, please god. Not rain.

“Sanu! Nima!”, she shouts, reaching for her umbrella. “Pani paryo! Ka chas aye?” She stops.

She knows she had checked it when they stopped for cigarettes. Plop. Plop. Plop. Familiar

panic returns to her chest. She looks behind again. The drizzle picks up pace and the moss

on the grassy path gleams in anticipation.

Pravina shouts for them again, shielding her eyes and almost half-sprinting, searches for

something, anything to hide under for a second. The rain is pouring and she’s slipped twice

on the red soil. Why did I come here? She wants to sit down and cry. The water drops fall on

her back with the rhythm of “keep going, keep going, don’t fall, don’t fall”.

As if by miracle, a large and hollow tree appears before her. Pravina dashes into the cavity

right as thunder booms and the sky darkens. Her eyes slowly adjusts to the dim light.

She tries to remember how big the tree looked when she ran towards it but now that she

looks closely at the body, she realizes it’s bigger than she had expected. She marvels at the

space as she slides the bag off her shoulders. One, two, three - room enough for three

steps. She looks up and gasps. Thick branches run sideways, much lighter coloured than

the walls of her sanctuary, blocking the rain but allowing dots of light to poke through.

A sweet, woody aroma fills her nose. All the strength in her body drains and she sits down

with a thud. The sound of downpour feels muted. She holds her knees to her chest and lets

the tears fall. She wonders why she’s here and not safe at home. She calls out to

SanuNima, panic tearing through sobs. She only stops when she finds a dozen leeches

crawling into her sneakers. After a round of panicked killing, she sits down again and

remembers her phone.

2:02pm. No new notifications. No network.

Her head feels heavy. She’s hungry. She scoots closer to the wall and on instinct, knocks on

the wood to ensure it won’t cave in with her weight.

“Aiya!”

Pravina freezes. That was clearly a person’s voice. She kneels, not daring to breathe.

Slowly, she lifts her hand again and knocks again.

“Who are you looking for?”

A deep, woody voice. Something between the rustle of branches and the gurgle of the

stream. She knows this voice. Her mother had described a thunderstorm that told her to not

leave the village and elope with a bahun. An alcoholic bahun at that. She didn’t heed it and

she never came back. The voice had now found Pravina. Did it know her?

She places her ear to the wall and trembles as she hears for herself the great humming of

the Earth, alive and breathing. Head bowed and voice shaking, she asks, “Am I dying?”

The ground begins to rumble and shake. Pravina knows that laugh. The aroma is stronger

now. PLOP.

When the twins found her after the storm, she could not guess whether she fell and met the

ground or if it had swallowed her. All she could feel was Yuma around her.