To Find Out Why the Winds Die

Word count 2500 words

Ian trudged up the snowy mountain path with tangible determination. The Himalayas rose from all around him, blinding him with their snow covered peaks. Behind him was the path he had followed to get to Osla, now just a speck on the range across the river. Ahead of him was the path which would take him to Har-ki-Doon. On that glacier he would finally reach his destination.

His journey had started a week ago. He had spent whatever little money he had on a bus ticket from Delhi, India, to travel to Rishikesh - a small town by the Ganges, a pilgrimage site for any self respecting Hindu. But Ian’s destination was further north, in the heart of the Himalayan ranges of India. That’s where he knew he would finally find the Answers.

Everyone has Questions on their mind.  When you are given a bad grade, you question the examiner’s judgment. When you choose to eat a tuna sandwich and spend the rest of the week paralyzed by a pain in your stomach, you question your choice. Similarly, Ian now had Questions. Was leaving Nigeria to come to India a good choice? Or would he been better off in his own country? Was the security of money got by selling drugs worth more than poverty and abuse at home? Or would he have been better off with people he called his own? Why did he have to see his best friend die of a deadly cocktail of drugs before he questioned his life?

Unlike you and me, Ian wanted Answers. And he was smart enough to figure out that doped out drug peddlers in the dirty streets of a city wouldn’t have the answers. So here he was, in the Himalayas looking for Shri Aldol.

He reached the glacier just after lunchtime. The Saint was clad in white robes which made him look very much like the glacier he was perched on, spotless white, fit for a Tide commercial. Ian was unsure of how to approach Shri Aldol. His eyes were shut tight in meditation. Ian placed himself on a rock to wait, and munched a couple of left-overs.

Some time passed, then Aldol turned around and acknowledged Ian’s presence with a nod. Ian scrambled to where he was, wiping any crumbs that might be on his face. Aldol didn’t look like he’d had anything to eat in a while, and didn’t want to be seen as Satan in the desert. As Aldol came into sight, Ian thought he was particularly strange looking, even for a naked guy in the Himalayas.

‘Welcome to Kar-ki-Doon. I hope you had a pleasant journey’, greeted saint Aldol in English as crisp as the air around them and an accent unlike that of any Indian. Ian mournfully thought of the heavy Hindi-to-English dictionary in his backpack.

‘I’m Shri Aldol, as you might be expecting. In case you’re looking for Shri Shri Shant, you are on the wrong mountain; though let me warn you, two ‘Shri’s in a name do not a wise man make.’

Aldol looked questioningly at Ian.

‘I was looking for you…sir.’ Ian felt unsure on how to address this strange man. He knew ‘Saint’ or ‘Oh Holy One’ seemed more appropriate, but Aldol seemed to command the respect of a school teacher more than a Mountain Loner.

‘Call me Aldol, or Shri Aldol, whatever you feel like really. So, what brings you here, Mister…?

‘Ian. Not mister, just Ian,’ he replied, searching his mind for his Questions. He couldn’t quite remember them at the moment…right now there were other Questions on his mind.

‘If you don’t mind, Aldol, there are a few other questions on my mind…I mean personal ones.’

Aldol sighed and nodded, as if he knew it was coming.

‘You don’t seem to be…you know…born and raised here.’

‘I would hope not!’ said Aldol indignantly. ‘I am a retired Officer RAF pilot!’

‘The RAF? As in the Royal Air Force?’

‘Of course. Is there any other?! I came to India in the ‘60s for a holiday. I liked it so much I decided to retire and spend the rest of my life here. Couldn’t think of a better way to enjoy what’s left of my time, really. Beautiful place, this, you would agree.’

Ian wished he could remember his first look of India. He had stepped into the country when its population was in the thick of sleep. At least the policemen were; they wouldn’t have made it into the country otherwise.

‘People may come here to meditate or to find the Answers, but little do they realize,’ continued Aldol, ‘That if only they just forgot their life for a minute and concentrate on the journey here, their troubles would seem like the pebbles on the river bed below.’ Chatty guy, he was. ‘But then I guess, people like myself would get pretty lonely up here, so it’s just as well they don’t! It’s always nice to have company. Anyway, what about you? You don’t seem to be from around here either.’

‘I’m not,’ replied Ian. ‘I’m from Nigeria. I left the country about a decade ago. I was sixteen then.’

‘Do you regret leaving so early?’

As he tried to answer, Ian could feel his back sting with the lashes of his drunken fathers whip. His mother was lying in the corner of the room, dying, crying for her son to be spared. The only consolation had been the drugs his friends supplied him with. Till he ran out of money, that is.

‘No. Life has been better here.’

It was ten years since he had fled home. The first few years went as planned; they had sold drugs to sustain their living. Ian couldn’t imagine having a better life. He had all the bare necessities of life, and more. And he had drugs. Plenty of them. He would sell a fraction of what he got for almost twice the original rate, and keep the rest for himself. Life was a blurred memory after that. He could vaguely recall some particular incidents- like the times he would wake up after a night of drinking with his friends and find the room full of ‘girls’; or the times when they had to stash all their loot in the roof of their room before the cops got to it. Then there was the day when his friend, or brother, really, wouldn’t get up after a night of alcohol and coke. That was what really broke him. He had no one now.

‘Well, life here must certainly be better than what it was, or you would have moved on. But better isn’t always consoling. It may be better to have a tooth taken out than break a leg, but try telling that to the bloke in the dentist’s room.’
Aldol had a point there.

He narrowed his eyes and gave Ian a piercing stare. Ian suddenly found himself wondering whether he had finished his homework.

‘Money is never everything.’

Words of wisdom.  He didn’t puff and pant his way up the Himalayas to hear that.

‘Then what is it that you want to know?’

At that moment, Ian was so relieved that he needn’t say everything out loud, that he didn’t think it strange that Aldol could read his mind. Saying things out loud made them final, there was no turning back then. Or perhaps it wasn’t so strange that a Saint in the Himalayas could read minds.

‘Why did it happen?’

Ian didn’t shout or whail or lament as he asked the Question. He had passed that stage too long ago. It was matter of fact, like a mother asking her son if he wanted dinner.

Aldol merely shrugged his shoulders in reply, as the child in the above example would.

A familiar feeling of frustration and helplessness began to take over Ian. He had come all this way for his Answers. What if he didn’t get them? He had not even thought of the possibility. Would he go back, and try and suppress the questions, and live what was left of his life? Would he be able to go back to the dirt and filth of the city streets and city minds? How could he live? He had no money, nowhere to go. Where would his life take him? Would fate be kind and have pity on him, or drag him unwillingly as she had always done?

The Questions sounded more hysterical and high pitched as they ran helter skelter through his mind, bumping into each other, gaining momentum. 

Aldol placed a wasted, shriveled hand on Ian’s quivering body.

‘Ask me what you want to know,’ he said.

‘I thought you know…You seemed to know!’  Ian couldn’t ask the questions out loud. If Fate hadn’t thought of the games she could play with his life, he was not giving her ideas.

‘If you want Answers, I need Questions.’

A silence fell on the two of them, as it falls before any moment of consequence.

‘Fine. I accept I know the Questions. However, you need to do me a favour. There are some Questions on my mind too, you know. Not of the philosophical type, but more scientific, in a way. I wish I could have the luxury of Googling them, but for obvious reasons, I can’t. I need you to answer them for me.’

There was another silence, but this one would be called Shocked, if it had a name.

‘I don’t think it works this way,’ stuttered Ian.

‘It’s a bit unusual, yes. But hear me out. Often, as I sit on this very rock, a strong gust of wind blows. It howls and cries through the mountains with life. The next moment it disappears and the mountainside is calm again, as still as death. 
‘As you know,’ continued Aldol, not letting Ian interrupt him, ‘I have not lived here all my life. I carry some memories with me of my previous life, as I call it, to this day. Especially those of my mother’s stories. What wonderful stories they were! She had one for every time I was upset or angry or disheartened. I remember the details of a very few of them, and have forgotten most of them completely. However, when I am sad or disheartened today, I am able to recall them vaguely, and derive a sense of comfort from them. It is almost as if they are somewhere near me, very close by, to come to my rescue when I call on them.
‘I have always wanted to find out why the winds die, and where the stories go. I do not expect you to find the answers, but merely point me to the general direction. I hope it’s not too much to ask for. Please,’ Aldol added, as an afterthought. 

Ian seemed to have lost the power of speech for the moment. This was not turning out good. He had reached the top of Har-ki-Doon with his Questions and hope for Answers. By the looks of it, he was heading down with more Questions than he had come with, fear of never getting Answers, and an added burden of actually answering Questions which seemed like a Saint’s idea of a joke.

But Aldol had said ‘Please’.

‘All right. I’ll try and find an explanation. Hope you are not expecting too much, though. It’s getting late now; I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll see you then. Goodbye’.


Ian strolled up the same path he had followed the day before. Everything was exactly the way it was the day before, except that the burden on his shoulders was lighter, and the one in his heart, much heavier. He had spent a sleepless night trying to find the ‘direction’ of the Answers, and now felt like a student going to school without doing his homework.

‘A very good morning, isn’t it, Ian? I am so pleased, and, I must confess, a little relieved, to see you here. I thought you may have decided to take off, like so many others!’ Aldol chuckled at his own joke, while Ian managed a weak smile. The thought had crossed his mind more than once, the night before, and it had taken every bit of will power to ignore it.

‘So what have you got for me?’ asked Aldol, settling himself on his usual rock.

‘Well, I thought about your Questions. A lot. And the more I thought about them, the more I felt the answers eluding me. It was as if the questions were wrong, like they didn’t have any answers. The wind does not “die”. It just moves on, to another place. It may seem to us that it has died.
‘The stories don’t “go” anywhere either. They get stored in our sub-conscious I guess, which is why we remember them. Other than this, I got nothing.’

To this, Aldol smiled, his smile as radiant as the sunlight, as proud as that of a mother when her child hands her the ‘Best Behaved Child’ Award.

‘Well done, Ian. You needn’t apologize at all, you are absolutely right.’

Shocked silence returned to the mountain, accompanying it came Puzzled looks.

‘You asked me why your friend had to die and where life would take you. I asked you to tell me why the winds die and where the stories go. The Questions seem strikingly similar, don’t they? So are the Answers to them.
‘As you realized, the Questions were barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. The wind is merely moving air, rushing from a region of high pressure to low, to maintain an equilibrium. It is not separate entity, but a consequence. The same way, life and death do not exist as separate entities. The absence of life is called death, a consequence. Life moves from earth to heaven to balance the cycle of Life; because we are stationary, it appears to us as death.
‘The stories, as you said, do not “go” anywhere, but stay in our hearts and minds, which ever it appeals to more. It is not about where they go, but about where we take them. Our lives are much the same; they lie within us. We choose to live them through out hearts or minds. Life does not “go” ahead, dragging us unwillingly along. We live it, we direct it.’

Ian listened to Aldol, taking in the pearls of wisdom bit by bit. After Aldol was finished, Ian noticed that the Questions were gone. He wasn’t quite sure if he understood all that had been said, he had always been a slow learner.

Ian didn’t suddenly see his future clearly, nor did he see his friend wave to him in the distance as a final goodbye; but he felt about as good as you feel when you climb into a warm bed with a good book after a long days work.