Nishabd-6 ( Final)

Rohan picks up the bag and opens it. There is a lot of mud inside it and also there is a green pollybag inside. He opens it, There are some photographs inside the pollybag. The photographs contain some pictures of mountains and most of them seem to be taken twice. There is a piece of paper also with something written on it. He can’t see pictures clearly and can’t read things written on paper either because of diminishing light. Old man has come closer. Jesse seems frightened. Rohan looks at old man now and asks with respect, “Baba, aap Aaabha ko jaante the kya?” Old man has tears in his eyes and says, “Chelee” and points out towards Jesse. He says nothing else. Jesse wants to ask more questions and get some definite answers but Rohan asks her not to do so. He seems to be very different today. He touches old man’s feet and pics bag up and starts moving toward Asgoli. Jesse is suprised but now she has partially understood that hills are capable of playing trics.


They soon reach Pradhan ji’s house. It has stopped raining now. There is a Rainbow starting from a distant hill and seems to be ending at Asgoli. Jesse is clearly amazed by the beauty but today she has other things to think about first. Pradhan ji opens gates and asks them to come in. He is surprised seeing bag of Aabha in Rohan’s hand and he can very well read something very different in Rohan today. He asks him about the bag and soon is aware about whole thing from Jesse’s dreams to Old man to Nishabd. He asks Rohan to open the pollybag . Rohan opens it and brings out some pictures. Every picture seems to be having two copies. Then there is a piece of paper too with something written on it. Rohan reads it to Jesse and Pradhan ji. It contains some directions for “Parvat Jagran” newspaper, the newspaper which Aabha was working for. The letter says to compare two similar looking photographs. And it mentions some big names from Almora districts saying that they were commiting a big crime.


Only one photograph that does not have a similar looking copy is that of Rohan. This photograph shows Rohan standing by the tree on which Nishabd is imprinted.


Rohan and Pradhan ji can not understand anything. But Jesse has understood what Aabha meant. She asks for a magnifying glass. Pradhan ji does not have it. But he immediately asks his servant to get it from science laboratory of Government Inter College nearby. While servant is away, Pradhan ji tells Rohan that Aabha was not his child. Rather he had found it on the steps of Doonagiri Temple. There was an old man there who had told him that the girl was daughter of hills. And that girl was going to be protector for hills. Pradhan ji did not have any child so he had brought girl with him to Asgoli. Now things are becoming even more clear to Jesse, because she has a clear Idea what she is going to find comparing the images.


Soon Magnifying glass is available to them and Jesse compares two pictures. She asks Rohan to have a look at them with Magnifying glass but he could not find any thing. Even Pradhan is not able to see anything peculiar. Now she explains that two pictures show difference in density of trees at any place. If they cleary try to count number of trees at any particular section of picture, one set of photographs had reduced number. Jesse was an environmental scientist, she had done a lot of research in this area and knew that this was one of the methods that could be used to cut trees without bringing it in to notice. She explained that in this method, Trees are marked in the way so that after cutting them the overall change is not noticable. This marking has to be done in a very large area and then before actually cutting the trees the trees are made dead using some chemicals so that there it looks that they fell due to some natural reason. After Uttaranchal had become a separate state and forest officers and conservationists had become more active, it was a smart move by person involved in the wood business to use this method to cut down trees. After effects could be very distastrous, as area which was affected was large could cause a lot of damage to ecology of whole hilly region. Chemicals those were used could effect environment of hills badly.


Aabha had found it and was going to send report to “Parvat Jagran”. Her report might not have reached news paper or it might actually have. Now Rohan had understood it, hills were playing trics with them because they wanted the cause of protection of their ecology to be carried forward. The old man knew it already and also knew that Rohan and Jesse were going to find it soon. Jesse and Rohan were choosen by hills because Rohan was connected to “Aabha” and Jesse was an environmental scientist. But some questions still remained unanswered: What happened to Aabha? Was she still alive? If not who killed her? Why did Jesse saw a little girl and a Masked man in the dream? Jesse had anyway decided to send this report to Professor Bhowmik so that they could collect more data and then findings could be brought in to attention at national stage and in big way. But what about Aabha? Soon there was a knock at the door. When Pradhan ji opened gate, they found old man outside. He remained outside only and said something in Kumauni, which only Pradhan ji and Rohan could understood. Old man went away soon with a smile on his face. He also gave some Gadmahals to Rohan to pass them on to Jesse. He saw Jesse and said “Chelee”. As old man is gone Rohan tells Jesse that old man was saying Aabha will be their next child. Jesse has tears in her eyes, she comes outside and looks at distant snow laden Himalayan peak and says,”Thank you”. Colours of Rainbow seem even more brightened now.