A Snowy Night

The Himadri Glens had never witnessed a more terrific weather. The soul of hills was frozen. Snowfall had started a week ago but its stead and anger had no whit withered. All life was chilled save the very hardy conifers which defiantly fought the howling gales. The lone brook lost its flow beneath fumes of perpetual, waddling fog.

Amid the barren stretch of countless miles stood a shabby but massive bungalow dressed in a coat of snow. It looked like Lesotho enclaved in South Africa. A lighted window on the second storey flickered a frail visage working on some large machine. He was into something. He must’ve been a scientist, old and quite indeed. Living alone allowed him to convert most of his cottage into a home-laboratory. Without regular gas supplies, he must have cranked up a greenhouse or nuclear-powered heater. Otherwise nobody could live there and run such a big factory of ideas.

Half an hour past midnight. Sounds of welding, typing, packing, electronic testing, again typing and occasional scribbling on a large whiteboard: these went on for another hour. And then a loud, hoarse “Hurrah. It works!” It quite silenced the freezing storm outside for a moment. His equations had worked. The alignment of eight dimensions realized a spacetime transfer machine. The effort of sixty years had culminated into this “spark” of magic. The old man broke into childish tears.

Gathering himself in ineffable bliss, he took to the kitchen to prepare some cabbage soup and sandwich. The climactic adrenalin had made him forget his hunger since atleast the last two days. But health was crucial and he was an old boy after all ! And there he sat with his bowl by the same lighted window, watching nature’s fury outside. “Finally, finally I’ve done it. Sixty years and I inched up each day. I never waivered. I kept the promise”, he proudly muttered with closed fists.

The scientist had come to these mountains three score years ago for the Global Gorkha Trekking Challenge. His younger brother accompanied him all through. They were experts in mountain climbing and had been on Alps and Rockies before with much less gear and experience. So this time around, given their extensive training first at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and then at Chowrikhang Base Camp, they were in pretty high spirits. They teamed up and were the best in the lot by far.

But after more than a month of sturdy ascent, a fateful evening turned up. A sudden blizzard caught them off-guard before they could return to Camp III.