In an Inuksuk...

…there is warmth. It’s the Inuit way of saying “There’s someone there for you—you are not alone in your journey”. And so an Inuksuk made its journey all the way from Canada with Meenakshi and Aparna to tell us that we will always have company no matter where we go. Interestingly made from rocks from the Canadian shield, its outstretched greeting every morning is a great beginning.

But sometimes the great beginnings might have the not-so-great middles. Especially when you have a Rakhi making competition at school and are not endowed with the traditional creative instincts. All this made worse because you do not have a traditionally oriented mom who instead of gathering the mandatory tinsel, bindis, stick on peacocks and other feathered friends, hands you a pencil shaving in a perfectly turned out helix. “At least your mom did not give you different types of dal to make a Rakhi with”, said a friend encouragingly—her mother was another anti-traditionalist obviously more tuned in to gastronomic fantasies that gets extended into all spheres of life including art and craft.

So you take that pencil shaving and work it in with the other recycled materials and decide on a ‘Recycle—Save nature” theme. You love it, your friends love it and are in awe that you actually could create something out of what one would just chuck away in the dustbin. Encouraged by the adulation, you begin to hope for a prize. Just that the judges are watching out for the peacocks, roses, the shine and the shimmer and all that jazz. So they announce the first prize, and the second and the third…and there are no more prizes after that. You get off the bus with your Rakhi of the Recycled and no prize, till your mother hands you a pretty little draw string purse full of beautiful pebbles from a lake you will dream of visiting someday. “Look at the color—this one’s almost purple! Look at the lines! How old could this be? It looks so rough but feels so smooth! Thank you!” It’s a gift from a young colleague of your mom’s but for you it’s a prize you won.

So perfect are they that you know exactly what you must do with these pebbles. You sit together and build an Inuksuk. You put them together to remind you that you have what is more important—people who make you smile when you are sad and fill the icy moments of life with warmth.
We gave the Inuksuk a name. We call it Shiv, short for Shivranjini, who journeyed through the Himalayas to the Pangong Tso Lake and drew out from there the smooth, amazingly hued pebbles that became pebbles no more but a prize for an competition that wasn’t won. It will now stand as an Inuksuk from the Himalayas to remind us that there will always be someone—to bring in a smile, some cheer and a prize of pebbles from a lake on top of the world.