There is no Snow on Kilimanjaro

The hills were verdant. But it seemed to her barren and desolate. The dark green canopies of the trees and the tall elephant grass rocked in the wind. To her, they seemed to be expressing violent disapproval. The wind wailed and came incessantly brushing the tall grass, bending it, coercing it before it went back to its former state. The wind then hit the hillock where she lay with a howl. She felt them like the calls of the hyena. "You raunchy slut go away, you charlatan keep out”. They seemed to howl their catcalls in chorus. The symphony that Nature played did not touch her.

Is it or is it not the state of the mind? She again began to hear the words reverberating from far away-the words that were spewed at her. And now the wild has taken up the call, “Pariah, getaway.” Nature too has a way to tell her annoyance with her for being there. Her being there – did that defile Nature too? The cold roaring wind was like profanity directed at her. It came from far over the hills. But they seem to whip her, lash her lacerated torso, piercing through the torn fabric of her dress. Even the wind, the grass, the trees, the hills, all had begun to express discomfort, disdain, and repugnance for her. Is it or is it not the state of mind?

She knew she has not much far to go. Her broken limbs were twisted and swollen. She bit back the pain, though not more excruciating than those words that come after her, haunting her ears. She laid her head on the rock and lay still, looking far above up into the blue sky. She could see no angels, no fairies but a void, not even floating fleeting clouds, just void. And the words kept resonating, “You ........raunchy slut go away.”

The life lived was not! She deluded herself and lived in the tower that she crafted, the tower which she in her supercilious and imperious living did not see was a tower in a dune of sand. The frenzied aspiration to reach the skies could only built the tower of Babel. She saw the days come back in a time machine. In these moments when they who flocked to her beck chose to forsake her and now this miserable solitude in the hills! Impelled by remorse, guilt, infamy and now having purposefully wandered afar into the wild, lost her way, she knew she will eventually surrender to the lonesome cold and life would gradually ebb away from her. Her clothes were torn and in tatter. She now has been wandering for almost a week, aimless and in trance. The leeches in the rain-fed mangroves downhill have preyed on her. The sores were bleeding. Hunger and starvation were throwing her into intermittent delirium. Brief moments when she slid into hallucination brought to her apparitions of many faces whom she had hurt, had trampled with her wickedness and shenanigans, the ones she shut out selfishly. She will gradually yield to hunger, the cold, the insects, and the predators who will feast on her cadaver or may be maul and feast on her alive. She knew she may not see the light of another sunrise. Her time of reckoning was fast nearing. She longed for darkness, for light was dangerously fearsome.

She feared going back to civilisation. Was it the fear of repeated denials- all those who once stood at her beck? When did she lose her way? She lost her way in her teens, and adulthood- to avarice, glitter, glamour, and wealth. The hubris of youth, the lust for wealth, the licentious pleasures that overpowered and intoxicated her veins, when she used and jettisoned people -men and women, she lost her way! When she decided that there was value for nothing, but the price for everything, she had lost her way! She lived and thrived in falsehood, trickery, and emotional blackmail. For pounds of riches would silence all tongues. It was frailty at its loathsome worst.

She sobbed and cried. She lay there crying until tears to the last droplet out and dried . Flies were insistently feasting on the sores that lay open.She saw the predator bird circling above. It had sensed that the time was up for the feast. “The crunchy feast on the invalid raunchy”!

She rolled her eyes towards the tall peak a little to her left. She longed to be there on top. Then she saw that it was this fiery longing for being “there” that made her tread the path that brought her to this.

There was no snow atop Kilimanjaro! She closed her eyes and slowly sensed her going down the yawning abyss to be free at last, from all she ever relished, and all that finally vowed her away. The final image that stayed in her before the last strain of consciousness slipped away was the scavenger bird circling above in patience.