Trip to Pakistan

I'm listening to the haunting 'Trip to Pakistan' by the Irish band, Celtic Spring, today. Over and over again. And each time, it makes me feel I am no longer in front of a computer screen, inside my home in Maryland.

I am, instead, miles and years away; sitting alone in a cable-chair, that slowly, meticulously makes its way into the valley below the mountains surrounding Nathia Gali. Spring is at its prime, and thousands of tiny and wild, yellow and white daisies dance entwined into each other in the mountain breeze. The wind touches and plays with my hair, softly, and briskly, alternately. But never does it render my light, pink shawl inadequate; a shawl whose every thread has been stitched carefully, precisely, right here in this valley. Around me, the endless rows of Pine and Juniper shed off the last traces of the melting snow; and right below, in random pockets, water springs out of sparkly rocks. Rocks that could've been stars dropped from heaven.

And all this time, the gentle, ethereal sound of the fiddle in my head evokes a burst of inexplicable sadness, and at the same time, inexplicable joy. Kind of like falling, and losing, in love.

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Photograph courtesy Mujahid ur Rehman.

The band, Celtic Spring, is six siblings who play the fiddle and step-dance, backed by their parents on the keyboard and percussion. Its music hails from Ireland, Scotland, and Nova Scotia. Trip to Pakistan is a composition from their album, Cornerstone. Thank you, Shayan, for sending it to me:).

Nathia Gali is a mountain resort in Hazara, NWFP, Pakistan.