I step out into the porch, tiptoe, further onto the grass; and hell breaks loose. The cicadas raise a warning in piercing trills, as the daystar urgently climbs the hillcrest and illuminates this scene of crime in our mortal world. Acting on orders of the central command, a dove perched high starts a drill. Tiny bees and .300 calibre-sized wasps buzz and threaten about pomegranate and the two bottlebrush trees by the front entrance, bottlebrush whose bristles bristle bloody red that might have come brutally tackling offenders like me. A black Himalayan Mynah guards my escape by the shrine behind the house; it bobs its head, challenging me to a duel. Sparrows clandestinely set up a communications control network along the array of apricots and spring onions, blocking my exit by the water tank. Even a fleet of Bulbuls now show up – late comers to the scene of my subversion – and block my escape down the fields; their plumage seems to have changed from fluorescent green of the day before to pastel gray today, behaving like a threat meter – “things are not okay”.
Then a last blow from the hammer, when a whiff of something familiar shoots up my nostrils and forms a noose that drags me back inside to Ma who stands in the drawing room holding my cup of Uttarakhand Chai. She, too, had been a part of this conspiracy all along.
Hence I couldn’t trek to China Peak today.
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