Suspended

She sat on the edge of a small fort that adorns one of the peaks of the Himalayan mountain range. Looking over the stunning lake and a manicured golf course dotted with patches of pine tree forests from the Pari mahal, the abode of fairies, she was transfixed. She slipped into a daze -- eyes that went still like an evening without breeze.

I had seen this many times in the three days that I spent with her.

"I was here at this spot," she whispered against an evening breeze that made the words resonated in her mouth. She cleared her throat and spoke again,"It was 16 years ago". It came as a surprise as she stayed just about over half an hour drive from this seemingly unreal and stunning Mughal Gardens.

She wasn't in the mood to talk using too many words and explanations. This wasn't her style anyways. But she seemed to be talking to an old friend as she looked deeper and scanned the treetops and the lake that filled the entire view as the sun slipped away.

"This place was accessible to us; the army took over as insurgents started attacking with greater frequency. The civilians were stopped from getting here and many other places of 'ornamental value'." She was back speaking the greying landscape once again.

I turned to two of our other friends who had accompanied us. Both doctors, working with trauma victims in the villages of Kashmir. They too had come here after a decade.

I tried engaging with them, with my NGO mind. About what it meant being separated from one of most beautiful memory. They all had both come here as school kids, when the valley was not resonating with guns.

Each conversation that I had with them carried imagery of past or at best rare optimism about the future, while the present remained paralysed.