I have no idea how long I lay there, but I know that I sound a little filmy in this statement.

“Wake up, wake up, have some food, you are fine, we are fine, look.”

I opened my eyes, they pained in the ridges, vision still blur, I could still feel my cloak and see the blue peeping out of heaps of quilts. I sensed my arms, painful they were, then my legs, one ached and throbbed. The other seemed to pain like my arms.

“Wake up, you are fine.” She chirped her white tooth emanating one by one as her smile grew into a grin and then a broad grin.

“I will call all.” She sprung up and slithered through the dim door into the open bright light.

I heard her beautiful voice ringing through the corridors and slowly, in some time, small heads popped in, and then bigger heads.

A smile illuminated the room, a smile so bright that no darkness could touch it, so soft that it was softer than yak cheese.

She spoke for 4 days with my family using my mobile mimicking my voice, and then I spoke as usual.

It was hard but she did a great job.

I had never been in a place where people did not notice or die to find a fault with other people, even the most serene ones I had been to, but this was different. None of the eyes oozed any inclination to do that act. The nuns became friends, I spoke with my zongpa whom I had known for long, he had come down. I still don’t know where I was, since we were driven to Alchi in the night by one of the nuns and an old monk. This compassion healed me, years of tiredness which I acquired in the days I spent in troubled lands. Choden still lives, so do I, so does everything and everybody who, mattered to me on the trip. She has no mobiles and we talk rarely, twice in two years, or three years, since we don’t share our struggles, all we share with each other is our peace and immense respect for each other. The nuns had taught us telepathy which is nothing but the state where no thought persists except one that I want to raise strong and long and more often it is Choden who is on the other end, when I try now.

It is build on faith, the faith that we would never give up on each other, even though we may never meet again, since she has many higher places where she lives and I have not climbed any higher since I left. The wholeness I gained helps me survive till now, how long more, I do not know. And, then, I might have to journey again.

“Faith is a knowledge within the heart,

Beyond the reach of proof.” Kahlil Gibran.

On the way back, as I asked her, “by the way, who is the pessimist here?”

She winked and chirped, “Of course, you. Who else?” She shrugged.