The Middle

 'Come on. It's a long climb to the top,' screamed R excitedly.

I huffed and puffed. Make me walk all day, I'll do it. Trekking was just not my thing.

S walked behind me. The three of us in a row. R leading in the front, as always.

S smiled at me. 'I'm walking behind because if you fall I can catch you.'

'You are too sweet paaji,' I said. I meant it. He really was one of the nicest people I had ever met.

S and R were best friends. Right now they were pumped up on adrenaline. We were making our way to their old boarding school. Memory is a funny thing. It exagerrates our emotions and makes us sappy.

R turned behind and looked at me.

'Do you know I always wanted to take you to Dagshai right? This is pretty big for me. I'm sharing my soul with you.'

'I know. I'm excited too. It's just that with my sickness and my haemoglobin hovering between 6 and 7, I get tired very fast.'

'We will try to go slow,' said S.

Twenty minutes down the line I almost fainted. I lost my breath and sat down. I couldn't go on. And now we were stuck in the middle with almost 45 minutes more to go.

'You guys go ahead. I will wait here. I don't want you to abandon this mid way because of me,' I said.

The problem was not just the climb. I was weak. And we were already on an altitude.

R held me. 

'I'm not going anywhere without you. I know what to do.'

He picked me up on his shoulders and started the climb. I was embarrassed and ashamed. It wasn't fair to him. It wasn't fair to me. For 5 minutes I let him do it. I wasn't heavy. My illness had turned me into a skeleton. I was 45 kg. But after a while he got tired.

I decided I would give it my best shot. And I climbed. We would stop every five to ten minutes. Both of them would cheer me, scream out my name and clap.

We finally made it to the top. The building was locked because of the Diwali holidays. I could not see the dorms or the class rooms.

'Imagine when it snows, how this place looks. We used to go for our runs at 5 am even in the peak of winter,' said R.

I could imagine him as a teenage boy, a faint moustache, unproportionately tall for his age, always ready for adventures.

We walked past the cemetery. I heard stories of prisoners stamped on their heads, stories of freedoms fighters, stories of TB patients that lay buried under the wilderness.

They took me even further to a cliff with a sheer drop overlooking the valley.

I lay on my stomach and looked down.

I knew this is why we came this far.

'So, this is Auberge?'

'Yes, Ma'am,' said S. They both looked content. This was their secret hideout. I felt like an outsider first. But then I realised I was no one longer one. They had included me in their Utopia. I was now the third person to marvel at the beauty of Auberge.

After a while we decided to make our way back to Solan. Climbing down was easy. Little did I know I would be back in the area in a year and discover the time warp that was Barog.

From Solan we took a bus back to Shimla. R kept imitating the locals and their funny way of talking. Then he threw up. I was expecting it. He always threw up in bus rides, especially if we were turning round and round on the ghats.

It was his turn to be embarrassed now. I got down at a dhaba and got him lemon to suck on. He put his head on my shoulder and slept.

It got pitch dark outside and we passed faint lights from huts every now and then. Shimla was still far away.

We were in the middle again. But we would reach the end together. We always did.

S tapped me from the seat behind. 

'Let's go pack some food and go back to the cabin and listen to Chris Rea,' he suggested.

'Auberge?'

'Yeah. That will be cool.'

I smiled. The journey from the middle to the end was always the best part.