What the Hill Remembers

I have counted her footsteps for thirty-seven years the same path worn into my slope, the same pause at the thorny ridge where she catches her breath and adjusts the weight on her spine. Her daughters used to follow, small shadows learning the art of bending without breaking. Now I watch the granddaughters in school uniforms, walking the paved road that cuts through my base, their backs straight, their hands carrying books instead of bundles. But still she comes, this woman whose name the wind whispers Kamala, Shanta, Rukhmani, it changes with the seasons but the story stays the same! Dawn rising, feet finding familiar stones, hands selecting the dead branches I offer like a prayer. The forest guard has grown fat on his government salary, his radio silent now, his eyes finding other thin women to follow with his hunger. She knows the sound of his boots on gravel, knows which trees to hide behind, which paths lead nowhere but deeper into his reach. Some mornings I want to shift my stones, close my paths, keep her in the valley where children wait with empty bowls and homework they cannot read. But the wood must be gathered. The fire must be lit. The rice must be cooked. And I am only a hill, holding the weight of women who climb me like a ladder to survival. When the rains come I wash away her footprints, but by morning they return, deeper now, carved into my memory like a promise: I will rise before the sun. I will bend but not break. I will carry what must be carried. And when my bones become dust, when development flattens my peaks and paves my valleys, when shopping malls bloom where my forests grew Still, in the concrete, someone will remember the weight of wood, the curve of a spine learning to hold the world. The children with straight backs will teach their children about the women who climbed hills before dawn, who made pathways out of necessity, who left footprints deep enough to follow home.