A Walk with Gustav

The silence of the mountains at night can instill one with a sense of unnerving purity. Even at day time, the birds, bees and an occasional dog barking in a distant village are the only sounds one hears. The sheer lack of any noise somehow tends to refresh my memory.

I am here, in the only place that offers a surreal calmness and yet, I am torn up within to sighs behind this façade of normalcy. I think this is the true definition of ‘life’.

I can keenly feel the transition into adulthood, into boredom, into mental stress that presses upon you, creeps into the crevices of your soul, as eerily as mists and clouds passing across hills. A slow yet steady and dampening catharsis—of impact, ideas and irony.

Gustav too, does not understand my pain. He’s always had a cheering effect on me, helping me alleviate sorrow, blocking away the memories that come as suddenly and as heavily as cloud bursts.

I decide to walk with him amidst the lonely mountains, free birds and a humming breeze drenched in pure snow.

The silence deafens me to a numbness of the mind that veers close to abysmal insanity. I am lost—in every definition of the phrase.

Gustav, however, is rock solid by my side. He looks away when tears fall helplessly from my eyes, onto the rock-table below. He tugs at my hand and pulls me toward the local tea-shop, silently saying, ‘Time to eat’.

While I peck at a plate of noodles and milky, sweet tea, Gustav regards a group of young men with caution. With a slight hint of aggression.

He ignores their bickering and maintains his poise, waiting for me to finish my typically hill station meal.

Gustav and I are more than friends, in one short walk. It is a love that, unspoken, says everything.

Gustav is a white mountain dog. And I am a dusky city girl. The universe works in unusual ways—I learnt and experienced love most keenly, not from or with another human being, but from man’s best and perhaps oldest friend—a dog.