The Lost Guide

"Don't you see," said Aziza to one of the party of mountain labourers, going to work to carry loads of felled timber, "I am returning home to Ningli Nulla along with the Seth"-beckoning the visitor with a graceful movement of his hand - "I am his guide. I've to show him Ningli Nulla and then I've to accompany him back to his Gulmarg hut."

"What will the Seth Sahib pay you?" asked the headman.

"Two rupees!" exclaimed Aziza.

The transparent faces of the sturdy labourers spoke their astonishment that a visitor was paying such a large amount of money to the boy for accompanying him for a few miles. The headman patted Aziza, who looked proud and walked on, crossing the party, along the narrow mountain path.

Aziza was a boy of sixteen, tall for his age and well-built. Tanned and dirty as he was, his face was radiant and his eyes gleamed with the light of forest-bred boyhood. Walking swiftly, he conducted the visitor along short cuts to save time and distance. Aziza tightened his baggy trousers to put off mud and slush that was raised by his heedless, bare feet. His shirt had on it the patches of poverty. Yet his waistcoat had fine red and blue Kashmiri embroidery worked on its fringes. His skull cap had somewhat inferior work. Conscious of his superior cap, he deposited it on his head at a fashionable Gurkha angle. It was this something of charming dauntlessness in Aziza that made the visitor to overpay him.

The visitor was a stray professor who had managed to have a brie holida at Gulmarg. Impelled by his trekking enthusiasm, he had already hiked to many glens and mountain lakes beyond Gulmarg. To all these beautiful places, the professor went on ponies. Disgusting, mule-headed ponies, they all were. So he had decided to have a real hike to Ningli Nulla. None of his party was prepared to foot the long arduous distance. The professor, not to be daunted, went alone.

The road to Ningli Nulla lay straight before the professor but delayed by the Gymkhana sports, he found it was already 4.30 p.m. If he must go to Ningli Nulla and reach Gulmarg back during the day, he must take a guide and shorten the distance through short cuts. He found Aziza when he had well nigh despaired of finding one. From his broken Urdu, he came to know that he lived near Ningli Nulla Nothing would be better. Therefore he said to the guide, "Name your price to take me to Ningli Nulla and escort me back to Gulmarg." Aziza fixed it at the impossible "two rupees" and was surprised to find that the Seth accepted it. To Aziza all visitors were Seths!

Their path narrowed up towards the ascent. The professor mentally revised his Shakespeare's Arden and Wordsworth's mountain poems. The boy-yea, the proud guide, for, this was the first time for Aziza to act as a guide-climbed ahead with all the grace and skill of a mountain. goat. He thought of his father and how happy he would be to have the two rupees: Aziza's four days' wages and all that big sum for simply walking with a Seth. The path grew slippery. Aziza helped the professor up narrow defiles. Now they had to go down a deep descent. It appeared impossible to the professor, but did not daunt him much. Careful steps, where a mere slip would throw him down into a deep precipice, found him at last at the base of the hillside. The noise of the babbling Ningli Nulla could be heard in the distance. A herd of forest monkeys, big, black and bulky, squeaked at their approach, grimaced suspiciously at them and then jumped away.

The mountain glen facing them, was disfigured owing to the felling of the trees there. The improvised shelters of the wood-sawyers and labourers dotted the glen. Aziza reached the shelter of his father. Running up to his father, he shouted to him, "Look, Amira, here is the Seth, I'll take him to the Nulla ahead and then back to Gulmarg. He will pay me two rupees!" Two rupees for only this much! The 'Seth', trying to look one, could read that in Amira's incredulous eye. But a shade crossed Amira's furrowed countenance, as he said to Aziza, "The bread is getting ready, Aziza. Make haste. Don't stay at the Nulls for long. The sun will set soon. You must come back by daylight." Aziza hurried away and led the visitor to the nearby Nulls.

Ningli Nulla, a beautiful mountain stream dashed down amidst towering, steep precipices, parts of which were covered with Deodars and conifers. The mountain background subtly increased the awe-inspiring charm of the place. The visitor was lost in contemplation of the foamy, ice-cold water, in which he cooled his bared feet, when Aziza broke in unceremoniously, "Make haste, Seth. You know, I've to return to this place after I leave you at Gulmarg." This curt reminder did not very much discomfit the professor. He lit up a cigarette and threw one at Aziza, who did not smoke it but kept it, for these were Ramzan fast days. Thanks to the cigarette, Aziza silently waited on while the professor, after having his refreshments, sat calm and sedate. But soon after, he shook himself and prepared to go.

Aziza met his father on the return. His father said to him, "Shall I go with the Seth? It is getting late now and you may feel afraid on your return:" Aziza, acting the guide for the first time, would have none of it.

"Father, you prepare the meal, while I come back", he replied.

"Would you like to taste our poor bread, Seth?" said Amira to the professor.

"Yes, why not?"

He took it and searched a coin in his pocket to pay Amira. Amira, understanding what he was about, said, "Seth Sahib, I give this to you as our guest. I don't sell it:" That was that. So the professor and Aziza sped on their return journey. Walking quickly and leading the way, the professor munched the baked maize bread. It tasted sweeter than the best cake. In the thick forest it was somewhat darkening now and Aziza said, impatiently, to the professor, "Seth Sahib, the time for Iftihar (evening meal during Ramzan fasts) is coming." Yes, it was, the professor thought, as he still further quickened his steps. The sun, sinking behind the Pir Panchal range, was casting a golden aroma of light on the forest-Clad copses of the nearby mountain. Clouds jealously shut away the sun and the golden hue scattered over the mountain side disappeared as at the devil's touch. It was almost dark now.

The evening star shone bright up above the heaving mountain line.

At Darin, a mountain hamlet situated in a wide, forest meadow, the boys in a Bahak (Gujar temporary mud and timber shelter) recognised Aziza and came running towards him. To them Aziza narrated his wonder tale of 'two rupees'. A Gujar dog, restlessly kennelled, barked at them. Aziza almost ran now, telling the professor, "Seth Sahib, leave me here. I must return now, for it is getting late. You can guide yourself from here to your hat, which is only a mile ahead. There are no more short cuts now and this road goes direct onwards."
"Yes, yes, I quite remember the road. You can go now:" And, offering him a piece of Amira's bread, which he had not eaten completely, the professor added, "Have this. You must be feeling hungry."

Quite nonchalantly, Aziza replied, "Seth Sahib, you look, a Hindu and yet you ate our bread. You seem to have no religion. I can't eat that left piece, especially during Ramzan."

Appreciating that, the professor took out his purse to pay off Aziza but he found that he had a fiver as the smallest currency note on him and he had very little change. A professor, inadequately remunerated, he thought, he was already extravagant in paying the two rupees where eight annas should have done the thing. He could ill-afford to pay him a fiver. He told Aziza what the matter was and Aziza had willy hilly to come up to Gulmarg where a ponywalla changed the professor's fiver and he paid off his guide with a Bakhsheesh added on to it. With that in his hand, Aziza salaamed him and turned back to go to his father's shelter in Ningli Nulls.

The sun relentlessly hid itself behind darkening, silver-linen clouds. Twilight was fast fading into darkness, in the forest, as Aziza wended his breathless way along the road which would first take him to Darin, wherefrom he would take to short cuts. When he reached Darin, his friends came out again to greet him, saying "Aziza, break your Roza here and rest at ours for the night."

"No, no, my father must be waiting for me. I'll take tire short cut up the mountainside and in half an hour I shall reach my shelter."

The disappointed boys, on hearing this, went back to their Bahak and Aziza, preoccupied with his own thoughts, did not even look back at them. For the first time, enveloped in the overwhelming darkness, Aziza felt ill at ease. Never before had he been alone like this in a jungle. Oh, never mind, boy, he heartened himself. By the faint starlight, as much of it as pierced the thick foliage of firs, spruces and pines, he discerned his short-cut path. At a twist of it he felt uncertain for a moment. His bare feet, though bruised all over by now, did not seem to recognise the path that he took. But he must be right in such a small matter, he reassured himself.

As he climbed up, his feet increasingly told him that he had taken the wrong path, which perhaps was only a goat track. No, he must go on, for this would take him to the short cut. But what was that? A crashing sound, followed by a thud and then, absolute silence, broken at intervals by the monotonous humming of the chirping beetles. Was it a monkey or was it - the fear harrowingly crossed him - a bear or a leopard? His heart pounded fast. He walked like a man in sleep. Dark earth appeared to be sinking before his swimming eyes. He had acted the guide for the first time and he was himself lost now. Oh! he was indeed the lost guide. Another thud, immediately followed by the unmistakable snorts and growls of a bear. Not knowing what he was doing, Aziza instinctively climbed a tall fir with the alacrity of a forest monkey. Scrambling up the fir he almost reached the tap, which swung to and fro. He clung on to It like a leech. Resting his burning head against a branch of the fir, he sank into unconsciousness for some time. Coming to, he groped about in the darkness. The Mars above mercilessly looked dawn at him and revealed to him the heaving conical breasts of the tops of surrounding firs and pines. Strangely enough, their faint outlines against the starry heaven reminded him of Fati, the shepherd girl, whose meek glances spoke stories of love to Aziza even as he recalled them to his feverish mind. His father had found them together when she was tending her flock near Khellanmarg. He had understood … The fond reverie was broken by a horrifying growl of the bear, who was nearing his tree.

Aziza could even hear the close sniffing of the bear. The bear was picking his trail, he understood that all right. In his usual clumsy way, the bear gave the fir on whose top Aziza precariously dangled, a rude knock. The bear's weight and force shock the fir and shook the nerves of poor Aziza. His heart sank to his bare feet. But his feet were fast clutching the foothold. His hands were firm round the tree like the hunter's steel glove round the neck of his prey. His lips were sealed with a grim determination to stand the ordeal, come what may.

The jolting of the fir made it horribly clear that the bear was scrambling up the fir. Soon he discerned the woolly outline of the damned beast as it climbed up step by step, breaking branches and uttering fierce growls. Aziza went as far up as he could go. The bear reached up the fir to a distance of about two yards below Aziza. The fir shook right and left. To throw Aziza down, the clever bear shoo. the fir to and fro, itself climbing down to a safer perch. Aziza clung to the fir top for his very life. He was only conscious of the fact that he must hold on and that he did. The bear again gave the fir a shaking. it then came down and fell down on the turf with a thud. Aziza took some time to realise that he was out of danger. Still he dared not move for a long time.

After sometime, the lost guide cautiously groped down the fir to about its middle where he could stride over the interwoven branches and rest his splitting head against a branch. Then he knew how terribly exhausted and nerve-shattered he was. Pangs of hunger made his misery more acute. He must rest like that for, he could not tell, hose long a time. After all that he again heard the familiar humming of the beetles. An owl ominously hooted somewhere. Was Amira all right, thought Aziza? While he clutched a branch tight, merciful sleep overcame him.