Querencia

Spanish: safe place one draws strength from.

 

Late at night,

I found Maniram

Staring at the hills on the horizon

What was the chef staring at, I asked

 

And he pointed out a faraway light

Twinkling

Like a star on the earth’s bosom

He said one word, Meghma

 

What’s so special, I wondered

(Especially when

You were posted in Darjeeling –

Queen of the Hills)

 

Home, he said

4 hours away,

On a rickety bus, broken roads

Accessible once in a quarter

 

Was it very far, aloof, isolated -

He nodded, No cell-phone towers

Isolated, no electricity

Save for the one light in the temple

 

Did he miss it?

Did he long for home,

Just like we all do,

Not knowing it will never be the same

But here, he surprised me

He was happy at the isolation

Let it remain far from reach, he said

Let it remain hidden, unheard of

 

Even if it means

Being cut off yourself

And staring at a beacon lone

Of querencia

 

There, he said, it is still not sweltering hot

In early spring

Rhododendrons unconfused

Of when to bloom

 

The blizzards come and go in time

Just as shepherds find the sweetest grass

In the higher meadows

In the bigger bubble of time

 

Meghma is still a story

From the book of lost pages

What’s the point of finding it then

Only to see the tale ended long ago

 

I smiled:

Here was one Rama

Happy in his exile at Dandak

Knowing home has not changed

 

Even if present only 

As a distant flickering lamp

Of a Hanuman temple

While we can only stare

 

Knowing very well

Meghma cannot be ‘our’ home

Just as we cannot be a dreamer

Happy with a dot of light at night…

 

12^th March. 2025