RUNAWAY ROAD

I have no predetermined plan to where I’m driving, but instinctively I’m listening to the welcoming calls from the mountains that encircle our city. At a distance, they appeared pristine, with a green canopy and grey clouds swirling around them and visibility was vague as the white mist settled among its peaks.

As I’m driving up along the winding path to the mountain top, I slowed down noticing an earthwork in progress. There was a narrow track with enough space for my car to roll on, loose granite stones lining it. I barged in expecting something wondrous on the late winter Sunday morning.

It appeared like a gravel road in the making but on the closer look was an embankment for hundreds of acres of fly ash yard generated by nearby coal based thermal power unit. The other side of the ramp was a steep slope where the grass grew luxuriously saluting to fresh waves of wind. Standing on the slope, I could take in the mist-clouded mountains on one side, the huge white desert like yard on the other and freshly watered fields gradually merging into the cityscape. The whole locale looked like an untouched painting in a museum.