October 23, 2011

My dearest,

There are the days when the big city life gets to be too much. All the noise and the smog and the madness of a million rats running a race without any real direction – how could so much mean so little? We buy and we buy and we work harder to buy bigger houses to keep all these things that we buy. Yet we have not the time to enjoy them. Do we even need so much?

Time to simplify. Time to get away.

It’s less than an hour from the city, our friend tells us. Come away for the weekend. You’ll be among friends, she says, and you can leave it all behind, even if it’s only for a couple of days. Why not? we ask ourselves. The last couple of weeks have been less than kind; time for some time out and space to unwind.

So we pack our bags, lightly, and we head out of the city, up into the hills and the highlands. It’s a sunny drive – the incessant rains of the past few days only a memory – and we climb and we climb, through narrow and winding paths, gravel crackling under the wheels of our car till we are finally there. A gentle fence made of logs and an open doorway, welcoming us.

There are trees and bushes and flowers and all manner of plants – of both the domesticated and jungle variety – surrounding us. We hear real birds chirping, singing songs or mating calls and simply greeting us. There are no mobile phones ringing, no buzz from the deranged masses. Only this. A sense of timelessness and of tranquility.

We have forgotten what it felt like to have an empty with which to think – or, better yet, not to think.

It’s not silence, not quite, but it is quiet. Serene.

There is a lake, where swans and ducks swim and feed and call to each other. There are gardens and grasses and herbs and spices growing. Somewhere there are fruit trees – mangoes and rambutans and durians and more. There is a sweet scent in the air, a heady mixture of lemongrass and ripening fruit. Delicious.

And there are more enticing aromas still, as lunch is served, even as more of our friends arrive. A small group, which is for the best, for we can play and laugh and socialize, then retire to our own suites, our own little worlds and spend an equal amount of time simply being quiet and alone.

We are in the middle of the hills, the jungle, the kampung – so what better food to serve than authentic kampung fare? These are dishes any Malay village would be proud to offer their guests – the sweet spiciness of ayam masak hitam, a salad of fern leaves, and another of raw, unripe mango, shredded and tossed in a light dressing of lime juice, some sublime fish curry and savoury oxtail soup.

A local delicacy finds adoring fans in all of us – a sweet sambal made from macang (horse mango) grown on the premises. We could eat this on its own, or with plate after plate of steamed rice, served piping hot. We remember what the children in Enid Blyton adventures always say – it’s not a holiday unless there is food (and very good food, at that).

This definitely is a holiday.

Let’s not sit down after such a heavy meal, you tell me. Let’s walk. And so we do.

What better activity could we enjoy than simply walking around and taking in the best that Mother Nature has to offer? Beauty is all around us, and it envelops us in its rejuvenating embrace. We feel more alive – from pondering on a fallen hibiscus flower, crimson and defiant against a harsh carpet of gravel stones, to the hidden corners and the treasures they hide, waiting for us to uncover as we continue to explore.

Maybe this is a good analogy for life itself – a series of surprises waiting for us to discover. Some will be more pleasant than others, but we’ll never get bored. Not if we walk with our eyes open. Not if we remember that we are alive and how good this feels.

Eventually we retire to our rooms. We undress and walk on polished stones, gingerly, and wash ourselves under the warm blast of a giant rain shower, with a skylight above our heads so we can watch the clouds shifting and the limbs of friendly trees sheltering us with their leafy shade.

We have books – new ones we have been meaning to read, and old ones that we have read countless times but can’t help returning to. A holiday is about words and getting lost in them. Stories spun to capture our imagination even as everything is still. So quiet, so very quiet. Nothing but the whirr of the ceiling fan and the gentle howling of some distant monkeys.

We turn our pages. We read.

We hear our friends calling us; they are going for a swim in the river. We can hear the river too, it’s loud roar softened by the trees to a murmur. Do you want to go, you ask me. I shake my head; it’s okay, you can go join them. You shake your head in turn; you don’t want to, not really.

We can still read, till it’s dinnertime. Till it’s dark and we can join our friends again at the dinner table and eat and drink and laugh and joke and play games and swat at hungry mosquitoes. Till then, we don’t have to do anything. This is perfect, we smile. A holiday. This means we don’t have to do anything, really. We can just read.

And that’s what we do, turning our pages over the murmur of a river that will have to keep flowing, keep rushing, without us.

Yours, ever and always.