The Yellow Mountains

The rain drops splashed in the wooden windows, woolen blanket covered the legs of Armania, she sullenly opened her eyes and stared at the windows which were drenched in the heavy rain, she was starving for almost six hours without getting up from the bed, her legs started aching, the white soles of her feet badly wanted to dance in the monstrous rain drops outside the house, but her body felt like sleeping in the cosy weather, closing the body and soul of hers. For the first time in five years, she had dreamt about the yellow mountains again, after her treatment and counselling with George Peterson, the dream of yellow mountains stopped chasing her, but after five years… she had that weird dream again.  

It was a beautiful summer morning when Armania got ready for her work, she was working in a reputed publication five years ago, since her childhood, she awaited to work in “Lee and meridian” book publications. After her majors, she attended the interview passionately and joined as one of the editors. 

“What is so engrossing in this manuscript, there are so many obscene dialogues and chapters, I can’t edit this work Mauriya, please do edit this manuscript” she handed over the manuscript of “she left me alone” to Mauriya.

The manuscript talked about a boy and a girl. A boy falls in love with a “young, fair, tall, slim” woman, she marries a rich man and then she is realising his love and comes back to him. Armania  could not understand how stories like this are getting into a novel and becoming a bestseller. But unfortunately “she left me alone” became the bestseller and the publications awarded Mauriya for the best editor of 2018. 

One day, while Armania was left with so many manuscripts for editing, she collected the pages of the manuscript which titled as “YELLOW MOUNTAINS”, she calculated the manuscript would probably talk about the same monotonous love story, and turned the pages of “YELLOW MOUNTAINS”. Three hours passed, four hours passed, she got drowned in the script. The story talked about an old man who lives in the distant forest among the tribes and often dreams about the Yellow mountain where the idol of the tribe god was hidden and one day he tries to explore the forest to find the mountain.

But he was devastated when he comes to know the yellow mountain is outside the forest by an astrologer among the tribes and tribes of that forest are forbidden to go outside the forest, but for the old man the dream haunts him a lot and he becomes desperate at one point of time to find the yellow mountain and escapes from the forest and gets caught by a policeman who threatens him to tell the place where the entire tribes are living. Old man finds out that the policeman is asking this because he wants to arrest the tribal men as the smugglers who illegally transport the red sandalwood. He tries to escape that night from the policeman’s custody, but again the yellow mountain dreams haunt him but this time the yellow mountains turn into black…

While she was about to read the last pages of the manuscript, the mobile buzzed, she got message from the chief editor to attend the important meeting at eight o'clock, only fifteen minutes left and Armania hurriedly packed her things and went to attend the meeting, she was completely immersed in the thoughts of the manuscript she read fifteen minutes ago in the office, after the meeting, she returned home and slept tiredly, after few minutes of deep sleep, the dreams of the yellow mountains and Armania standing there alone woke her up. 

Next day, she hurriedly woke up and collected her stuff and went to the office, she searched for “Yellow mountains” manuscript but the manuscript was nowhere to be found, she asked everyone about the thing, but no one seemed to notice it and chief editor told he never handed over any manuscripts like that. Armania got confused and from that day onwards, she constantly dreamt about the yellow mountains and she went to a psychologist to discuss the bad dream she has every day about the mysterious manuscript and yellow mountains, after five months of treatment from the famous psychologist George Peterson, she recovered from the bad dreams. She quit her job and joined as a social worker to research the tribes live in the outskirts of the cities.

After five years of her research, she found out a mysterious tribe living in the distant forest “NIRMAN” and went to interview them about their lifestyle and to create awareness for the tribe about the plans they should utilize which government has launched for them.

She came home after the tiring journey to the forest and slept in the bed, again… the yellow mountains dream haunted her after five years, she woke up slowly and viewed outside of the window, the sky was clear now after the heavy downpour.

She went and switched on the television, the news flashed about the “Smuggling of the Red sandalwood by the tribes from the “NIRMAN” forest. 

The sky suddenly stopped its downpour and the sun rays emerged from the clouds, she watched in the distant, the mountains from her window, the mountains were drenched with the soft yellow rays of the sun, Armania increased the volume of the news channel, the stout journalist enthusiastically reported about the brave police officer who shot five tribal men from the Nirman forest. The distant mountains looked yellow in colour from the blurry windows of Armania’s room.