Special Edition: Toolika Rani

Toolika Rani

Squadron Leader (Dr) Toolika Rani is an ex-Indian Air Force Officer, Mountaineer (Everest Climber), International Motivational Speaker (TEDx), Author, Poet, Assistant Professor, and was the G-20 Brand Ambassador of Higher Education Department, U.P. Government (2023). She has published seven books, out of which two are collections of her English poems, titled, The Song of the Sky and A Wild Flower, two are collections of her Hindi poems titled, Dayron ke Baahar and Hasratein. She has edited an International Anthology of Poems on Himalaya, titled, The Mountain was Abuzz which was displayed at Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival, 2024. Her book Beyond That Wall: Redemption on Everest fetched her Young Writer Award and Sahitya Shree Award. Sherpas of Solukhumbu: History and Evolution is based on her Ph.D. thesis on the Sherpas of Nepal.    

 

The Destination 

Time slipping helplessly 

On the wheels of a rushing road 

Not a moment of rest and respite

Breaths quickening, steps lengthening

Lengthening till they stretch too far 

Too far to sustain 

And break apart

Unable to move at all

A heap of helplessness!

The road, though moves on, nonchalantly 

Unfazed, unmoved. 

Picking up silently the remnants of the self 

For the first time he notices 

A quaint bench

Under a tree’s branch

With the still waters of a lake 

Stretched far 

And a line of friends peering 

Sympathetically down on the 

wounded man 

Sending their lush energy into his 

Scorched veins

Quietly reviving his agitated nerves  

By their soothing verve

And, there beams a reflection of his own

Even to him hitherto unknown

Which signals to him,

Now, you have arrived, my friend! 

*** 

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Setu, September 2024