Mountain air

Sonny boy’s imagination can make me smile even at the most harried times.

This morning, the heater was not working in the downstairs bathroom, and so, shooed him to the upstairs bathroom. Now the heater there has a leak (yeah, our heaters are like that only) and so the inlet or outlet or whateverlet tap above the false ceiling is kept closed until time of use. The time of use was at hand, but us less-than-6ft-tall people cannot reach the danged thing so I had to holler for the husband to come and open up the tap so the hot water would flow…

After all that unusual activity we were running late for school and as usual something had to be missing. This time, it was the bottle of Vaseline. The blessed bottle was nowhere to be found. (Later, much later, I found it in the downstairs bathroom!) So I took the Himalaya moisturizer that I am currently using and started to apply.

"Mmmmmmm…." Sonny boy sniffed appreciatively. "Nice smell, no Amma? It smells of ..of.. hills and mountains and all that, no?"

I looked at him squarely and continued my applying. And then the penny dropped. Himalaya.
Sonny boy bent down to where I was applying cream on his toes, to get a better look at my face and see if I appreciated the mountain air as well. So I was smiled back at him

He continued.. "how do they get the mountain air into the bottle, Amma? Its a wonder, no? All that leaves and flowers and…animals... and "
So something from all those drives through Nagarhole has indeed percolated into the young man's consciousness..
Indeed it would be wonderful if they could bottle all that, Sonny boy.