Tragopan

 

For a few minutes, we are all transfixed -

A spotted tragopan on the bush

Looks back at us with its scarlet plumes

In the early morning Himachal sun.

 

I don’t bother to grab my camera from the car:

By the time I will adjust the F-stop,

It will have flown away –

I watch it through the only lens that matters

 

One jagged movement of arm from my friend

And the tragopan has disappeared

Such is the transience of beauty in the hills –

Snowy peak or satyr pheasant, teach the same lesson

 

Does Amar Singh realise this as well?

Huddled within himself, scarf rolled around his head,

He looks around, at lofty mountains,

The deep ravines of Sutlej, and of course, the tragopan

 

Till yesterday, he hated us for trickery:

Dangling the carrot of Shimla, we had dragged the poor driver

From the confines of his comfortable Delhi

But had broken our words in wanderlust

 

We had moved him to scale the dusty roads

To Chindi, then even worse, to Jalori

Broken serpentine roads, dust galore

Altophobia, not meant for his city’s sedan

 

We had dragged him to the Badlands

Whoever comes here, he alleged, to Kullu?

The gentlemen of Delhi stick to Shimla

And return to Adarsh Nagar after a whiskey’s night

 

But we are shameless scoundrels,

We keep going where we see the meandering Sutlej

We live in lonely starlit camps in bear-ridden jungles

And we stop the car to spot a carmine tragopan

 

That has flit away long ago, but we

Are still mesmerised of the early morning sun

And the endless blue mountains disappearing

With the rising morning sunlit glare

 

No one moves, no one in a rush

To head back to the honks and cries of Connaught Place –

2 extra rupees per kilometre  - I had promised Amar Singh

And bought his silence, to listen to the hills

 

Endless blues of the Dhauladhar –

A babbling turquoise brook far below

And crimson feathers, nowhere to be seen

That stopped us to hear the cicada’s mountain call

 

For a few minutes of redemption, we are all blessed

Then it’s time for Delhi’s smoke

The birds of Pan are left behind in Kullu’s bush

Spotted scarlet memories in satyr dreams

Then we turn back to babus who deceive simpletons

Like Amar Singh, but he says no longer a word

He complains no more of the hills

Baptized now by the tragopan’s call…

 

19^th Feb’ 2025