The Shepherd of the Mountains

(Image source: flickr.com)

A shepherd lived with his family on a Himalayan mountain stretch on its foothill. He owned a house and a Tibetan Mastiff dog. Buddhist by birth, he often wondered about the mysteries of life, looking at the white mountains. 

A cairn stood near his house on the path leading to distant lands of Tibet and Nepal through forlorn villages hidden by snow. Each stone on the pile would remind him of the unknown passers-by. He would try to remember the faces of a few with whom he had chatted. There were villagers, mountaineers, scientists, and traders treading that trail for who knows how many centuries. 

The shepherd would give water to his yaks and sheep in the corral every morning and go to the village prayer hall. The Buddha idol there, with half-closed eyes, seemed to be fast asleep. 

“Where are the answers?” he asked the marble statue when no one was around. 

His teenage son had moved to Kathmandu to work there as a driver. His wife was ailing from the diseases she caught from the hardships of their mountain life. His two daughters were married and settled elsewhere.

The soles of his feet were hardened by many seasons. Putting a piece of hard-dried Yak milk in his mouth and chewing it slowly, the man sat with his 29 sheep on a nearby hill the whole day.

As the light began to fade, he looked up at the sky. “Where am I?” He asked that question with great pomp as if it were addressed to God himself. 

“Who was I in my previous births, and who will I be in future lives?” He asked the wind. The sun was about to go down. The light spread a golden sheet with grey borders and random black patches on the valley. 

He saw a white wildflower in half bloom, opening its eyes to the world rooted in a boulder’s crack. “A night flower,” he said aloud absent-mindedly. He saw a bird with rufous-brown wings levitating above him. 

He lay down and stroked his dog’s mane. The dog licked his face and tried to get him up. The Mastiff was hungry and wanted to go home and have his bowl of hot Yak milk. 

“Why are you so cruel?” the man asked the mountains. A white silence embraced him. 

“Okay, I will ask again tomorrow,” the man said as if making a promise. On his walk home with his sheep and the dog, he began to hum a tune but stopped before completing the first line. He was lost in thought. In a rare moment of reverie like this, no one, not even this author, can know what he was thinking.