A Swing, By The Pines Poem by Hindukush Ojha

Every winter, in that quiet forest,

Where I happened to be on time

Mute, like giant bearded hermits

Stood ancient Cedars and Pines.

In thousands such brushy clones

Painted the sky with clouds and mist,

Silent and stoic, all the while

Rooted to rocks without a choice;

Facing the winter's vagaries

With just a faint sigh... of a breeze!

For when rooted to rocks,

One has no choice...

Even while trying, to relieve that itch

Of unloading the snow, down in heaps,

But be weighed down…eternally,

With fresher snowfalls - that season...

Just so…





In a cottage there, dwelt my folks

In a better comfort with heating stoves,

That sent out puffs of grayish smoke

Into the sky, like smoke signals

That is seen around for miles.

Heating was needed up till March

A bright sun then, dispelled the dark,

With flowing streams and thawing ice...

Though short itinerants to a cottage life -

We would be cooped up from November end,

When visiting home during the snows,

With the closing of our boarding schools,

At another, equally, cold hill town...

Chilly there, yet not quite so!





It often snowed for days at a stretch...

Up to the shoulders and five feet deep,

In that remote Himalayan nook,

The valleys- a rumbling thunder shook!

With the cawing of a mountain rook

Quite used to sudden avalanches of snow

Inevitable when the sun is hot,

Hurtling down to the river gorge,

To slurry the river with mud and rocks;

And tourists avoided such noisy places:

Requires guts, to befriend a beast,

Or sometimes, the undertaker!

But for a youthful rider, on a heavy bike,

Or an odd official, in a government car

In adventure on the border road,

Would zigzag, up the isobars…





Or in wavy blue lines, touch...

International boundaries of survey maps,

Those often like a cascading river

Cut through the boulders, at soapy gaps,

Polishing them like billiard- balls,

Though, oddly placed and imperfect...

To placate perhaps, the troubled minds

Of the families divided on either side,

Their common ancestors and a pedigree

Mattered not, to its meandering stream.

Such foreigners, of our modern times,

May be blood relations at their core

But those who dwell beside the rivers

Accept all this with a bitter nod!





The ubiquitous theme of love unrequited

Like of Nehru with Zhou Enlai,

And a slogan, like the crumbling tree

Of HINDI CHEENI BHAI BHAI...

Hollowed by swarms of the Red Army;

They ran us over at Aksai Chin...

And tugged harshly the Mc Mohan line,

Like a sister's pigtail in Arunachal.

All this ended in a bloody fiasco,

Those humiliating winters of 62!





Do you remember that brave Indian soldier?

Who like an orphan, had no snow boots!

With a hairy balaclava though,

Supplied by his Ordinance Unit

That during the war, also issued him

A metal helmet, with a strap at the chin

To prevent his bloody brains oozing…

Outside his cold and shattered skull,

That the enemy lead had bludgeoned to pieces

While he patiently aimed his empty guns,

As the last man at the border bridge...

No point, retreating with frozen feet

But, a hand to hand combat with the Chinese!



Between the branches of two giant trees,

Like middle aged twins these had been born

From the winged virile germ of a single cone,

My folks had a massive pole, wedged in…

And a large wooden plank,

Roughly hewn and strung by a rope

Thrown around it

Served us, for our lofty throne.

This hung silently to wish away

Certain boredom and a melancholy

Of those cold and clumsy afternoons,

When over active, companionless kids

Are at a loss, as what to do next?





The snow outside could render blind,

A careless drifter with open eyes..

The corneas hurt by the cryptic harshness,

From natures own studio lights.

It could also imprint, upon a mind

A framed photograph in black and white

Of that mighty sling shot aimed up high

Towards, the smiling clear blue sky!

Beyond the terrace of rocks and trees

Was a flurry of furry white flowers beneath

Which smelt like a mom, who sings you to sleep!

Through the snow and just as white they would peep

And if one believed in the local lore

Their smell, could a la Rip Van Winkle...

Make drowsy, if one inhaled greedily

Their summer pastures sweetened breeze!





Afternoons saw us two kids,

In wool caps, coats and mitts

As a biting frosted wind blew by...

Clambering up a rocky ridge.

There, between two frozen ropes,

Made from nylon, for climbing rocks

Our wooden plank did oscillate

To welcome us to this magical place!

Of course, we billowed right up and above

Taking turns to sublimate.

But we would descend to the trough, at last,

How so ever high we stretched to the crest...

That was just above the snow

Muddied with our boots and ploughed!



We sliced the air, in pendulum sweeps

While down below the ground did lurch.

Tenaciously, we gripped the rope

And how we squealed light-headedly

Disturbing at work...

An odd woodpecker!

This hammered holes in the bark for a meal!

And, when the dark ominous clouds,

A silent snowfall would announce...

The sun, in a sudden reversal of mood

Looked, like a sullen dog all screwed,

Its glory now, but all extinguished...

A wet tail wedged between its feet!





Of course, as we swooshed up and down

We reached out in vain, with open hands

For a singular pine cone with a fading smile,

Rejected aloft, during the harvest time...

When in October, for their precious seeds

The plucking of the mature cones is done

By calloused resinous hands greedy

In throes of work in the autumn sun...

When men, women and older children

Collectively work, to win their bread.

The local women, who all looked tanned

Had oiled tresses below square wool caps

Embroidered bright and psychedelic,

Unusual to notice, that not one was fat!





With sun burnt, wizened, but happy faces

They evoked empathy and a respect,

Like roughened effigies outside their temples,

Carved out from logs, seasoned well,

While floating past and bumping by

The massive boulders, of the briny Sutlej!

And outside their double storied homes,

With a smoky smell of burning wood

The bottom floor, an animal pen

And wooden floors and slate stone roofs

And wooden beams with flattened stones

Yak dung with husk, cementing them,

Like a fruit of labour, inside squirrel holes

Lay giant heaps, of pine cones.





When pried open, like a child's clenched fist

That perhaps, reveals a mystery...

Their multiple sections had wooden capsules

Hidden in each, like a shining penny

Was a glistening white oblong seed.

A pungent oil gland at its tip

Could make the taste buds sing,

Or on a witches broom of pine needles

Send your soul out for a spin.





Such the memory of the pine trees

And how we swung up, higher to see

What lay beyond our immediate view

No need to mention the Chinese...

But then the rook and the avalanche

And the cottage chimneys' smoky dance

The sadness of the lonesome soldier,

Who, with a rifle, still guards at our bridge

And the climbing ropes, without carabineers

That held us, above the snowy ridge...

And the story of the lonely kids

With the lullaby of the Edelweiss

Makes one remember a certain winter

Spent in the midst of those beautiful trees!