Chapter 1: Part 1: The ancient hidden village of Kongur
He must be really getting old, for the winter night was beginning to hurt him. This was life, he knew, for the very mountains that had protected him for these many years, they would perhaps betray him in these years when had had weakened with growing age. This was his world. These high mountains on top of the known world were his world. These mountains protected him and his village and his people. This was Kongur.
The old man walked about on the steep crag, peacefully, as much as his body of three hundred years would permit him. This mountain was magic, he thought, and it would not ever betray him. He kept saying it to himself, again and again and again. Kongur would not let him down. He had been asked to stay back, to continue to be the custodian of this ancient and secret and unseen and unknown village, high up in the mountains of Kongur.
He had wanted to be one of the twelve pilgrims to the Sumeru. He had wanted his life to be fulfilled in its entirety in being chosen as one of the twelve who would sit at the circle of stones at the footsteps of the Sumeru. It was not to be for it was his responsibility to choose the twelve who would be the privileged group of pilgrims to the sacred mountain. Over all these years, his great grandfather and grandfather before him, and his father, had been able to be chosen to proceed on the pilgrimage. The great one of the village and the eleven pilgrims had been chosen over nearly two hundred years ago, to proceed to the Sumeru. On that occasion, he had been chosen to take the place of the great one in the village. And since then, there was none who would permit him to leave the village.
The world had changed very rapidly over these past two hundred years. It had changed even more rapidly over the past fifty years, he thought to himself. Would they be able to stay unseen for more time? What would be the path ahead? How would they stay inviolate of all the miseries of the known world? How would they be able to stay hidden in these high invisible valleys of Kongur? Was it correct to stay hidden? There were children growing up, and they would perhaps be impatient of the ways of their hidden existence. The women were patient, and they aged well, content in the climate of the higher mountains.
The old man looked at the village from his position on the high crag ledge. It was a small village, by any standards, and it had stayed safe from the snow, rain, hail and melting ice rivers over these many hundreds of years. Was it already more than a thousand years that they had settled in here? He knew that his father was more than two hundred years old when he had left the village with the other pilgrims. Some children spotted him from the village and waved at him. The old man walked back down the ledge and returned to the village.
A woman came up to him and bowed in respect, and said, “O great one, O Mirabhe, I salute you. I cannot stop worrying about those who left for the pilgrimage to the sacred Sumeru Mountain
The old man nodded in agreement. He said, “O Grinshe, you are correct. I know the feeling. I have had to face this situation each time that our men went to the sacred Sumeru Mountain
Three other women had come around Grinshe and stood quietly, listening to the great old man. One of them said, “O great one, my father, I know how you feel. These many years I have seen you allow the pilgrims to leave our village. But, this time, it was my own brother, your son, and one of them was my husband, as it was Grinshe’s husband. Will we be able to make our lives without them and will we be able to accept the way of our lives as before?”
“My dear daughters, I realise and I feel, the sorrow that you retain within yourselves,” He said, “I am as trapped as you are, but yet, you should feel the pride and happiness in the aspect that we find ourselves in. We are the chosen few, the rarest of the rare. We are those who stay alive in these mountains for hundreds of years. Even some religions are younger than us. Many a nation is younger than us. We have a different responsibility and it is very sacred.”
The old man thought back to as far as his memory would permit. It was getting difficult to remember events from as far back as hundreds of years, and to remember stories and events that had been passed on by his ancients, from an age that was primitive even by their own standards, that it seemed unbelievable. He would often wonder if he was thinking of places, events, peoples and beliefs that did not exist, and had never existed. In spite of having lived all these years in this remote village, he was no different from any other villager in the plains, he thought to himself.
He had to worry each day about getting supplies to each house in the village. He had to make sure that he would be on time to eat his meals. These menial tasks of each day seemed to be more of a trap than the hundreds of years that he had lived. Grinshe and Yarshe, his daughter, sat near him, looking at the peaks of the Kongur Mountains
“Yes, my daughters, we did come from other places. But, we chose to come here. We were given these mountain ranges to live in,” the old man replied, “We are those who guard these mountains. The sacred Sumeru Mountain
“People and religions do not know about us. We do not belong to any religion and neither has any spiritual thought been distributed by any of our ancients,” continued the old man, “We are merely here to retain the magical strength of the high mountains to talk to the skies, to talk to the clouds, to ask them to allow us to take some of their water, and to retain the waters within the hidden vaults in the mountains and below the plains. This is the only religion that we follow.”
The two women, Grinshe and Yarshe, had heard the old man speak of such tasks on several occasions over the hundreds of years that they had known him. They knew of the people on the plains and their way of life. They had gone occasionally and moved around their settlements. Some families had also been given the task of living in villages and towns in different places for some years and they had all returned, for, the joy of living in Kongur was like in no other place. The world elsewhere did not know about their village, and they had had no human visitors.
Yarshe hugged the old man, her father, for she knew of his wisdom and affection and patience, and said, “Sometimes it is indeed difficult to live the way we do, for we know of the manner in which the rest of the world lives in the plains. Is it possible that we can also visit the sacred Sumeru Mountain
The old man smiled, and replied, “Yarshe, sweet one, there is nothing that prevents the women of our village to make the trip to the sacred Sumeru Mountain Mount Kailash
“I am waiting for the two pilgrims from our village who accompanied the twelve who went to sit at the circle of stones below the sacred Sumeru. They will bring us the information that we need, of the manner of people who assemble at the sacred mountain and its valleys, of the changes that have taken place, and of the manner in which we need to guard the mountain and its waters.”
