Read it Live
dedicated to promoting budding poets, writers and bloggers

Once upon a time there was a house up in the mountains. It faced a beautiful view of a valley, spotted with little tin roofs of houses and winding, zigzagging roads running up and down its length and breath. In winters, the house would be buried deep in snow, sometimes, as the locals said, up to the roof. In summers its slanting tin roof would shine to an almost pearly white in the sun, just like the little houses that it looked over in the valley. The birds sang there in the morning, sang so sweetly that they wouldn’t let the residents of the house go to back to sleep after the morning prayers. In monsoons, it would rain so heavily that one would think the whole house, with it foundations, would slide down hill. But the house had stood there, right beside the seasonal spring where little children loved to play, for twenty years, and had undergone two major renovations. After the second one, it lacked nothing; practicality, comfort or luxury.

It was a place where everyone would go for a vacation in the summer. In the hotter months, the house would become alive with visitors. The owners, their families, their friends, even their acquaintances. Everyone who could esablish a connection with the owner scheduled to go there. Then the nights would be lit with bonfires and barbeques, uncountable rounds of cards and ghost stories, the evenings spent lazing on the veranda and watching the sun set behind the clouds and mountains and the days cherished with enjoyable treks up and down the surrounding hills. The hours would be filled with laughter and talk of fond memories from the past, the minutes taken up by sharing jokes and every second used to wish that they wouldn’t have to go back. It was a place everyone wanted to go to and no one wanted to leave.

There was a native hired to guard the house all year long. Be it day or night, rain or fog, sunshine or snowfall, his duty was to be at the house, to take care of it and to report to its owner if something went wrong. That guard was in love with the house and often wished he was its owner. He wondered how people could not stay here all year long, how people could know such a good place, taste life here for a few days and go back to their mundane city life. He occasionally asked the owner or his visiting guests when they would come again or why did they not stay longer, why they had to leave. He always got similar answers. They loved the place, if they had a choice, they would stay there forever. But life is not like that, they couldn’t afford the luxury of so much free time and enjoyment all year round. They had work; they had matters; careers, homes, families that needed attention. They would love to but they couldn’t stay.

People came and people went. The house would come to life in the summer when people could afford to take out a little time and relax, trek, read, sleep; do what they loved. In winters it would be buried under silence and darkness, craving human presence to lend it a little warmth under the blankets of snow. Sometimes, the owner would visit unscheduled to fix a gas leak or an electric circuit. At other times the house would wait, with all its beauty and luxury locked up inside, for months on end for someone to come and blow life into it.

The guard would sit there, day in and day out, and wonder at the strong will of those people that kept them locked up in their cities, behind their office desks, inside their small homes, away from this place that was literally, heaven on earth. He would wonder and be amazed and promise himself to take good care of the house because he pitied those people who were missing out on so much. Those people might or might not take out time to visit in the future.

Everyday, in the morning, he would look at the house, turn around and shake his head thinking of its residents. “RestinLife,” he would say aloud, “these people need to rest in life.”