WAR

Dixon, Shrijan and I, during our victory party

When I was little, my cousin Sasha and I used to have rotten fruit fights.  Lemons and oranges, and maybe some mud.  Several years back, Jeff and I and some neighbors had rotten apple fights when we got an early frost that killed the harvest.  The same neighbors we had lime fights with.

Today was war.  Only it wasn’t rotten fruit this time - it was very unripe fruit, about the size of a paintball, with a remarkably painful impact.

We’d gone for a Sabbath afternoon hike up to the tower.  The view of the Himalayas, or should I say Himalaya (singular), was spectacular, and I pretended to be a tourist guide pointing out the renowned sight everyone had read about in books and paid lots of money to come see.  (They are starting to understand my sarcasm!)  We climbed down the outside of the tower instead of taking the stairs, and climbed trees as if we were monkeys, and fell out of them when we tried to show off.  No, that wasn’t me, thank you for asking.

I earned the name Mama Monkey, and I played along, affectionately calling Dixon my Babu Monkey (Baby Monkey).  He’ll probably never lose that nickname as long as I live.  Bikram, Shrijan, Dixon and I made our way down the hill, discussing whether or not we’d end up in a mental institute if Bikram were related to us.  Suddenly, we were accosted by Abrik and Sunil, who had gone down ahead of us.

Bikram quickly deserted us and joined their forces, leaving Shrijan, Dixon and I at the top of the rocks with no source of ammunition.  Below, Bikram scrambled up the lollygrass tree to throw down all the fruit Abrik and Sunil could ever dream of.  After a few attacks, we began to gather up and reuse their ammunition.  Fortunately we had an advantageous position on the top of the rocks, and I kept envisioning the Battle of Gettysburg.

After numerous rounds of attacks and retreats, Abrik’s entire platoon was in the lollygrass tree picking fruit, and our squad was directly underneath, collecting the hoards of castoff ammo.  We occasionally got beaned on the head by a fruit, but mostly each side only threatened the other about the intensity of the next battle.

After only a small skirmish as they climbed down the tree, Abrik, Bikram, and Sunil disappeared down the hill, and we were left to continue picking up ammo.  Once our pockets were stuffed, we went ahead and had our victory party, complete with a video on how we defeated those monkeys like little old grandpas.

It was starting to get dark as we headed down the trail, just waiting to get ambushed.  Instead of ambushing us though, they had set up camp in a nice open spot.  Funny, until we realized it was right next to another lollygrass tree, lucky them.  We initiated the attack, and it was complete chaos after that.  We ran in and out of the rhododendron bushes, jumping out from behind trees to pummel each other.  At one point, our entire team was trapped, and I got beaned on the left temple from about 8 feet away.  That explains the enormous goose egg currently on my face.

We continued in this fashion down the hillside to the creek and into the rice fields, getting completely separated, and in the end, I was left faking more ammo to scare off my attackers.  Turns out, they were faking too.

In the dark, we climbed over the wall into the hospital compound, and ran to eat Spaghetti and french fries over a campfire and a movie at Uncle Lincoln’s, like we do every Saturday night.

Three hours later, I walked back to my apartment. I’ve been struggling lately, but God knew I needed a day like today.  I said out loud to myself, “I am so blessed.  How do I forget?  How do I forget?”  

At the tower: Sunil and I, squashing Dixon and Bikram in the middle.