DON'T TELL THE MOUNTAINS...

CE reporter's diary notes from his recent trek to Kapamodzu Peak in Nagaland

- RONNIE KURIAKOSE

SITTING in that cozy Naga kitchen in Munirka one winter evening in Delhi, I promised the girl across the table - the one who had been slipping unfamiliar flavours into my life that I would accompany her on her next trip home. To Nagaland.

Until I met her, everything I knew of the place came from secondhand anecdotes, and none of it matched what she spoke of: a sweep of emerald hills stitched with terraces and mist. To the then-aspiring writer in me, this was the stuff of alchemy.

However, to avoid trespassing into the personal, I pitched it as an adventure for our little gang a clutch of nobodies trying to find meaning in the capital. We even started a WhatsApp group: ‘NE Chale?’

And as word spread, more unlikely recruits joined. The neighbourhood grocer’s son, whose father insisted that he see more of the world; a freelance designer who sometimes worked with our office; and the young manager of a pub in Hauz Khas.

Whatever personal vectors influenced their decision, everyone was convinced that Nagaland would have between its many mountain folds, exactly what they sought.

“Northeast chale?” we'd ask each other whenever we crossed paths in the office cafeteria, on Tuesday-night football, in the fruit mart queue at Khan Market, during long walks in Nizamuddin, and at house parties in GK.

“Soon,” the answers invariably came. Now, that was ten years ago.

The adventure we had poured so much heart into never materialised. Soon, it became a long-running joke, then a reminder of our collective failure. One by one, people left the group. She did too. Today, only a handful remain, stubbornly holding on to the dream, to the versions of ourselves we once hoped to become.

But a decade is a long time. So much has shifted in our lives that the simple act of travelling together required us to set fire to our worlds and pack with us the smoke of that anguish.

So I decided to go alone.