By Aura Pandey, Class X A
She sat with half her body on the boulder staring at the mountains. How different the same scene had felt when she had last been here three years back! How every chilling gush of wind that went past her seemed to invite her towards the mountains and more eagerly each time. Mountains forever married to serenity had made her divorce with her own peace.
Today, the same sight couldn’t do any more than just dig up the old memories that she had learnt – if not to overcome, then just to put aside. Would she ever be able to forget that day? The day she didn’t just lose her legs, but also was robbed of her peace of mind and peace with her mother.
The memories of her first trekking experience with her mother were also still fresh in her mind. The first mountain they climbed together, the trekking shoes her mother gifted her on her birthday. Oh! How she wished for those days to return. But her crutches, hard against her hands always threw her back into reality. Living with her mother reminded her not only of the pleasant memories but also her harsh reality. This made it all the more difficult for her to face her disability. Not a single day had passed between her mother and her in peace since that day.
She never understood ‘why does that woman never give up on her?’ She had made it very clear that she didn’t wish to live with her, but she not only didn’t leave but also made her accompany her on all treks. Doesn’t she realize how it hurts her? She looked at herself again with disgust and desperation. She thought she would escape the limitation of the crutches that chained her spirit and flesh to a never-ending slavery and jump into the ad infinitum of the valley. She did not believe in the ‘healing power of the mountains’ – nonsense of her mother.
A non-living stone on a lifeless boulder – that’s what she is. No more. She moved dangerously close to the cliff and decided to plunge.
One last look ahe cast at their mountains… Oh! They did seem so alluring. They won’t in a moment. She would not take the pain any more. Off she jumped, letting herself fall into the chasm of death.
She felt the free fall but no fear of death. It was so thrilling that she thought she would want to repeat it over and over again. The thought itself was so powerful that she began looking for something to cling to in order to check her fall.
As the fall gained perilous speed, she seemed to become more alert and alive. Her shoulders rubbed against the stone wall of the cliff and moments later she found herself hanging from a crevice. Each cell in her was burning ecstatically. With great difficulty she climbed her way back… to find her mother waiting for her beside her crutches. She took her in her arms and said, “I knew you wouldn’t give up. I just knew you wouldn’t die, at least not by jumping off a cliff. I love you my darling. I believe in you.”
She too held on to her mother and let her tears wash away the pain of three years.
