Time

This post was written by Parul Shankar for Asian College of Journalism.

Parul can be reached at dreamsnlife@gmail.com 

The sky turns a tinge of red, a flock of birds flies home, past the deep purple of the mountains. A slender figure bends over the sprawling fields. It forms a shadow against the world that now seems to be a somber painting.

The Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand have always been a home to Pushpa Rawat. She has seen the Sanade Valley change over the forty-seven years since she was born. No, not only seen it, but she has been a part of the change, an active agent.

A smile crawls up her face as she watches her granddaughter rush into the house of dark wood at the edge of the hill. It is six-thirty, the time when the eight-year-old Shiva returns from Sandhya Kendra, the Evening Education Center. Pushpa remembers a time when the entire village had called her a witch because she had spoken against the village school master, against his routine of coming drunk to the school. Being a widow had made things tougher. Yet she had stood firm through everything, she knew there wasn’t another option. Sometimes rebellion is the only solution.

But that was a long time ago. How things have changed since then.

Pushpa looks towards the west; her eye takes on the last gleam of the evening sky. Walking with the fresh, intoxicating scent of the monsoon on the mountains, she slowly disappears into the warmth of the house by the edge of the hill.