Through the haze of time, a few memories stand stark bouncing across the canvass of pleasant experiences with the pitter patter of rain, rain as it slowly drizzles down in Karachi, when summers reach their peak, gradually developing into narrow streams that trickle down the scorching hot landscape as sweat down a body on a laborious day, cooling, in contrast to the licking flames of the Sun or the agony of stressful days. It was 21st September and we had left Hunza for Naraan, confidently anticipating a peaceful stay at Naraan by nightfall, or as confidently as a man can scheme without taking the whims of nature into account. Nature never disappoints, always flourishing the card of unexpectancy. It is like always possessing the triple ace in the game of teen patti, one we played constantly during our whole trip during which if someone boasted such a luck, he would automatically be dubbed a liar, which was never farther from the truth but nature would take offense if we called it a cheat. But a cheater it was for it tricked us into a nightstay at the foot of the fairy meadows when the rain slid down the road, making it steep, a perilous route if one decided to continue travel- a land sliding on the road to Naraan. Thus we withdrew in the Shangrila Hotel when the barricades were pulled down on the roads ahead.
Shangrila hotel unlike the one we stayed in previously at Skardu had just five rooms and we were lucky to have booked one initially, for later, there was a hub of people squabbling over the other four to spend the cold night.
There is a certain joy in sharing one bedroom among ten people, all of who have nowhere else to be and nothing else to do than enjoy each other’s company, sometimes at the cost of losing a few games of Chess or becoming a laughing stock when you act deplorably on the titles of Indian movies you have never watched. Maybe the joy lies solely in the fact that no matter how pathetically you act out inane titles, there is this person who will always guess it right, at the first go- just from your hanging face as you try to think of the least hilarious way to act out the task. And there is this off note music being played on guitar outside in the garden that drifts in with the wind, and blends in as a background to the laughter of little sprites, a scene out of a fairyland sketching a place of serenity unintruded by the claims of war from India as it promised to barge in Pakistani borders through Hunza, a small city just a little stretch from where we reclused.
