Pahari Sanyal Cafe 🏞

"There is your gumti.. On that.. No.. No.. Not there, on the left side of the road.. Yes... behind that broken house. Yes."

Like this, we are instructed to our destiny. Funny thing is that we are unfailingly aware of where we are headed to but are always distracted by the journey.

PAHARI SANYAL CAFE!

Strange name.. Isn't it? It's a cafe. Umm.. Well, not a "cafè" cafe, just a cafe on the lap of an unknown hill station. It's a cocoon for runners who ran away from their homes, a gramophone for failed musicians scribbling old songs, again and again, expecting for a dash of tune, a diary for a lone traveller who is recording every sight of what he has observed over the past decade, the last leaf for a dead tree, a blue envelope for a hiding revolutionist, the last umbrella left by a customer two rainy days before, a feeling of numbness choking a news correspondent. The old man was found on the last evening stirring Maggie and scrambled eggs slowly, very slowly, on a frying pan. The cafe was quite. Customers were eating silently. Suddenly a little girl pushed the front door and entered inside. She brought a pocket full of misty fog coming down from the dark tops along with her. The old man scolded her mildly "aamu! why did you leave your bed? You are still on your fever!" The girl sniffed her nose and cleaned it with her trousers. She smiled and headed towards the counter. She handed her little pocket radio to him and told him, " Listen Daaji, your favourite song is coming on the station! Listen listen!" The old man simmered the gas and tried to listen minutely. But he could not compose the music. The signal was horrific! A man from a table near the window called out "Another cup of tea Sanyal da!" The girl raised her hand and told him that she is coming and then raise the tea kettle from the counter and went ahead. The old man coughed loudly and then along with the radio went towards the window behind. The mountain looks like a home of tiny twinkling stars or lights. Those lights belong to someone's existence. A drunk man far away on the bends of the mountain was found to be singing indistinctly about his broken shattered love. The old man standing by the side of the window listening to the radio silently. The broken radio station was only able to mumble these words "कितने गहरे हलके,शाम के रंग है छलके,परबत से यूँ उतरे बादल..जैसे आँचल ढलके.." The rest was not needed anymore for that dying evening. Winter assembled on the lap of ridges silently. 🍀