Pining for the coy queen of hills

My dearest Queen Shimla,

You still sit there — aloof in the clouds, hair tousled by the mountain breeze, draped in monsoon mist and pine perfume, just as the poets once promised. But reaching you now? That is no journey — it is a wild goose chase where the goose refuses to budge, glares back at you, and screams like the honking Alto behind me near Kandaghat.

There was a time — a smoother, saner time — when I could court you. I’d hum old and forgotten tunes through Kalka’s curves and sail past Parwanoo with nothing more than minor emotional bruising. But now? Parwanoo is not a town — it is a test of will. A km-long crawl where engines overheat and patience combusts. The only breeze is belched from bus exhausts. Himachal does not welcome anymore—it assesses, invoices, and delays.

We hoped the four-laning would change things. But what we got instead were Himalayan ambitions stuffed into undersized slippers. The road to you is under some sort of spiritual reconstruction. Boulders sit cross-legged in contemplation. Dust pirouettes like it is caught in a trance. Workers dig — not to build — but as if to unearth ancient secrets. Cars twitch, reverse, inch, and stall. So do hearts.

By the time Tara Devi rolls into sight, I have aged a decade. And then your face — that cloud-kissed, heartbreakingly familiar face, peeks out from behind a bend. You still promise all the old magic. But now, they are promises you no longer keep. The final stretch? It is not a road. It is a slow-moving gallery of the defeated. Honks layer over each other like badly rehearsed jazz. Tempers boil. Snacks are shared. Drivers become philosophers. Suffering binds strangers into comrades.

And just when I think the trial is over — Shimla, you reject me. You have no room left for me. Your parking lots are packed. Full. Overflowing. Cars cling to slopes like mountain goats with nowhere else to graze. Even your toy train, once so tender in its pauses, no longer stops at the little halt where I could once leap aboard and fall into your waiting arms. Romance has now become express. And it does not brake for yearning.

You remain your magnificent self — cloud-wrapped, pine-scented, heartbreakingly distant. But I? I sit somewhere between Kacchi Ghati and surrender, nose pressed to the windshield like a Dickensian orphan watching love through fogged-up glass.

I will keep loving you — from Google Earth if I must.

Because some places are no longer meant to be reached.

They are meant to be remembered — like lullabies, or people who once waited at quiet railway halts.

Forever jammed in your love,

Your traffic-stuck foolish highwayman from the plains

Saurabh Malik, Chandigarh