The Ridge is not a range of hills. It is a spine.
It is the calcified backbone of a primordial titan that fell into a dreamless sleep two billion years ago. Long before the Himalayas were a thought in the earth’s mind, this quartzite was already old. It is the first architecture of the world. Each jagged outcrop is a vertebra; each hidden cave is a lung that still breathes the cool, damp air of the first morning.
We are the ants crawling over this sleeping god. We build our nests of glass and steel against its ribs, thinking ourselves masters of the height. But the stone remembers. It remembers the weight of the first rains and the silence of the first stars. It knows that we are only a fever, a passing heat in the long, cold life of the rock.
O Bird of Time on your fruitful bough
What are the songs you sing ? . . .
Songs of the glory and gladness of life.
Of poignant sorrow and passionate strife.
And the lilting joy of the spring ;
Of hope that sows for the years unborn.
And faith that dreams of a tarrying morn.
The fragrant peace of the twilight's breath.
And the mystic silence that men call death.
O Bird of Time, say where did you learn
The changing measures you sing ? . . .
In blowing forests and breaking tides.
In the happy laughter of new-made brides,
And the nests of the new-born spring ;
In the dawn that thrills to a mother's prayer,
And the night that shelters a heart's despair,
In the sigh of pity, the sob of hate,
And the pride of a soul that has conquered fate.
— Sarojini Naidu
