Seeing A Ghost
En Route to Khecheoperi
I came out of nowhere. I’d hiked for hours through dense, monsoon drenched, Himalayan jungle when I encountered this child and her family…all women, farming their land. Her mother and aunt held babies in their thick, tattooed biceps.
In Sikkimese culture, ghosts have pale, white skin and frizzy, red hair. She had never seen a white person before, let alone such a weird one. The iPhone was further evidence of my metaphysical nature. She had never seen herself, either.
A few hours further through the foliage I found another farm and another family. This mother had two boys tilling the soil. The boldest, was not, I think, the oldest. Likely no more than four, he wielded his sickle with authority. All business, the man of the house. His brother, thinner, taller, maybe his senior in age, assumed a less dominant role. He crouched in the tall grass while tenderly scraping a reed. How much they were helping their mother was hard to tell, but they were certainly no hindrance. Childhood hits different in the Himalayas. You reap what you sow.
