At
Himavant
The unknown effort, as well as the time
lapse between their dive into the Ganges, and their arrival at Himavant had
left both Shankara and Burak exhausted. The fruit of the skies invigorated them,
and at the same time, made them drowsy as well. They had just rested their
backs on the rock by the side of the blue Ganges, that they dozed off to the
realms of sleep, to be woken-up only in the evening, by the distant tinkling of
bells, as if from the small tinklets tied on the neck of the cows.
Cows?
There would be no cows here; maybe just the yaks. They would use the Yaks as
the cows, maybe.
The sun was setting over the mountains
behind the Ganges. It was just these folds of the earth everywhere around them.
Visible in layers over layers, towering over one another. Burak turned around
to Shankara.
‘There must be some humans there as well.’
‘Yes, let us see. We need to move and find
a shelter soon, or the night would kill us of its cold even if the wild animals
don’t hunt us.’ Shankara answered.
Both got up and turned around to the
sounds. The tinkling was not from the vicinity, but from a far off place. As
they moved on, the sounds got a tad louder each moment. These were not the
tinklets on the necks of the cows, but actually the bells. They kept moving to
the direction of the sound, until, in the midway, the sound just stopped all of
a sudden. Among the mountains, they weren’t even sure, from which direction the
sound came, now they were left entirely clueless.
‘ Let us just walk straight. Let us hope
we reach somewhere.’ Shankara said with a sigh.
They walked ahead on the snowy track as it
started getting darker. It would be night in another hour. As they walked, they
hit a summit and saw a valley down the peak. Burak turned around to look at the
expanse around him. The sky was crisp and the air was fresh. A sight suddenly
caught Burak’s eyes. A little down the peak, there was a wooden structure. He
quickly turned to Shankara, who faced onto the other direction, and patted his
back. As Shankara turned around, Burak pointed his finger towards the building.
Shankara’s eyes widened for a moment, and then he spontaneously fell on his
knees in prostration towards the structure. As Burak looked ahead, he saw a man
appear on the way to the structure, and as Shankara went down in prostration,
the man faced the building and went into a sajdah. Shankara, got up and pulled
Burak’s arm to take him ahead, as Burak watched the man in green robes go down
into sajdah again. By all means he was into the namaz, except that he faced
opposite to the quiblah.
