My tribute to those hills

They are a long stretch of Eastern Ghats, which are located six kilometers north to our village. They are huge and daunting figures, arising curiosity and instilling a streak of confidence in their admiring watchers. I used to ask myself sometimes this persisting question that what might be lying behind those mighty hills. My surmises would go on imagining a dense forest consisting of an assortment of flora and fauna, a tribal dwelling, a river valley, a long cline of hills, a big lake, giants, remains of the alien and the extinct creatures or remains of an ancient fort or something like that. At first my desire was to climb those hills and to see for myself what’s behind there. Of course that never happened but one day I had an opportunity to unravel my curiosity and that brought the curtains down on my fantasies. But I was not disappointed because, though what I had seen behind those hills was different from my crazy imagination, what I had experienced there was an ecstatic immersion in pure bucolic tribal beauty. The birds, trees, streams, huts encircled with little gardens, loughs, and small bridges all combined and presented an all-pervading serenity, silence and freshness to my existence.

Great hills they are, and I am forever in debt of them, for they stayed there.