Snow Beneath Her Feathers

The snow came quietly, as it always did in Ganga’s village — not with storm or fury, but like a prayer whispered across the Himalayan pines. By the time the first bell rang in the temple valley below, rooftops had already turned white, and the mountain looked like it had exhaled peace.

Ganga stepped out of her wooden home with her old paintbrush wrapped in wool. A blue scarf, fraying at the ends, covered her grey hair, and in her arms she carried a flat stone — already smoothed and ready. The villagers said she had a hundred of them stored inside. Some said a thousand.

She knelt by the old shrine under the deodar tree. And then, like she had done every snowfall for the past fourteen years, she began painting a peacock.

The strokes were sure — the head, the curved neck, the flare of feathers. Cobalt blue for the body, green for the tail, and a thin rim of gold along the crest. She always painted it dancing — as if the cold had become music.

Far down the road, a woman in a thick red parka paused, taking photos. Her name was Emily Ross, a British climate researcher from the University of Glasgow, in the mountains to study the retreat of the Gangotri glacier.

“This can’t be real,” Emily muttered. She had expected charts, frostbite, and reluctant interviews. Not a woman painting peacocks in the snow.

“Ganga Devi,” said the village schoolteacher beside her. “She doesn’t speak much. But she’s known here.”

Emily tucked her hands deeper into her coat. “Why peacocks?”

The teacher hesitated. “It’s a belief… when the peacock dances in snow, the mountain is about to cry.”

Emily raised an eyebrow. “Cry?”

“Flash floods. Avalanches. The kind of weeping that takes homes.”

That night, Emily couldn’t sleep. Her heater sputtered, and the thin walls of the guest hut did little to stop the wind from singing through. But it wasn’t the cold. It was the image — the peacock on stone, its feathers alive against the whiteness, the painter’s silence.

The next day, she visited Ganga again. This time, alone.

The woman was arranging her painted stones in a long curve around the shrine. The peacocks looked like a frozen parade.

Emily crouched beside her. “They’re beautiful.”

Ganga did not reply. Her eyes remained fixed on her task. But something in her jaw softened.

“Why do you paint them here? Not in your home?” Emily asked gently.

Ganga tapped the ground. “This... was my home.”

Emily blinked. “Here?”

Ganga nodded. Then added, “Before the water came.”

The silence after those words was heavy. Emily had read about it in the documents. The flood of 2013. A cloudburst. A glacial lake bursting. A wall of water swallowing homes in minutes. Many lives lost.

Ganga lost everything.

In the following days, Emily kept returning. Not with instruments, but with conversation. Slowly, words began to form between them — some in broken Hindi, some in English, some in gestures.

Emily learned that Ganga was once a schoolteacher. She had a daughter named Asha, who played the sitar and sang to the snow.

“She was sixteen,” Ganga said once, eyes fixed on a pebble she rolled between her fingers. “The water came when she was singing Raag Megh.”

Emily didn't know what to say. So she just sat there, sharing the silence.

Another day, Ganga told her how the first peacock had been painted with a broken blue crayon her daughter had left behind. She had found it weeks after the flood, buried under silt.

“I painted so I wouldn’t forget her face,” she said. “And the peacock… she loved it. Said its feathers looked like the night sky had eyes.”

One morning, Emily’s phone buzzed. It was a message from her institute:
Final report due in five days. Push for relocation interviews. Include visual evidence of erosion risks.

She stared at the message. Her report had numbers — snowmelt rates, glacial shifts, vegetation loss. She had graphs and drone footage. She had captured landslides, riverbank collapses.

But she didn’t have Ganga’s story. And she didn’t know if she had the right to tell it.

That afternoon, she walked to the shrine again. It had snowed the night before. Ganga had painted another peacock — this one mid-dance, wings outspread, tail like a fan of stars.

“Do you ever want to leave?” Emily asked quietly.

Ganga paused. Then said, “Where would I go?”

“The government can relocate you. Safer ground. Better access.”

Ganga shook her head. “My daughter’s voice is here. Her memory is stitched into the snow. If I leave… I won’t hear her again.”

Emily felt her throat close. “But if another flood comes—”

Ganga smiled faintly. “Let it. I will paint until the water washes me away too. Maybe then, people will notice.”

On the final day before she left, Emily brought a gift — a thick roll of canvas and professional paints.

“For your peacocks,” she said. “So they can fly beyond the mountains.”

Ganga touched the canvas gently. “No,” she said. “These stones… they belong here.”

But then she lifted one painted stone and pressed it into Emily’s palm. “Take one. Let it remind someone, somewhere, that beauty can exist even where loss lives.”

Emily left the village the next morning.

Months later, an exhibition opened in London’s Southbank Centre. The title was simple:
“Snow Beneath Her Feathers: The Memory Stones of the Himalayas”

People walked through a room filled with high-resolution photographs — each of Ganga’s painted stones glistening against the snow, captions narrating stories of folklore, floods, and the resilience of forgotten villages.

In the centre was a single stone — the one Ganga had given Emily. On it, a dancing peacock with a golden crest shimmered beneath the gallery lights.

At the bottom, in delicate lettering, the quote read:

“When the peacock dances in snow, the mountain is about to cry.”

But perhaps, it was also beginning to heal.

Himani Usha Tripathi is a writer, mentor, and theatre artist whose work spans education, sustainability, SDG advocacy, and cultural exploration. A Delhi University alumna, she has collaborated with the UN allied organizations, mentoring students on SDG-driven initiatives. Her writings appear in national & international literary magazines, newspapers, blogs and websites. In May 2024, she published her book Crossroads of Cultures: The Impact of Cultural Diffusion on Society. With experience in media houses, marketing agencies, and publications, she continues to contribute as a creative writer, focusing on stories that inspire impact and cultural reflection.