My Mother Was Right (But Don't Tell Her)

Creative Nonfiction by Tania Gupta

A woman’s decision to go trekking in Matheran becomes a powerful journey through grief, cultural expectations, and personal transformation, as she challenges both her fear of heights and the “good daughter” archetype in modern India.

By

Tania

— The Twenties Girl

The rock face loomed above me, nearly vertical, its top shrouded in mist. Rain slicked the stones, which were now slimy with algae, and my feet struggled to find purchase. 

My mother’s face flashed in front of my eyes. 

“Damn it, Mum was right; this is dangerous.”

I slipped as if on cue, and my heart skipped a beat. An endless column of climbers stretched above and below me. As the minutes ticked by, the gap between me and those ahead grew wider. This did not bode well—who would help me if I got stuck?

“If I die here, Mum will kill me.”

Gingerly, I took another step upward.

---

You may ask then, how did I end up in the middle of a mountain, cursing my recklessness and regretting every decision that had led me there?

Fear and I share a relationship of mutual avoidance. If our eyes were to meet on the street, we’d have a brief, unpleasant moment of recognition and then we’d look away, each of us scurrying as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

I cannot fathom those that put themselves in harm’s way through activities like bungee jumping, or skydiving—and derive some perverse pleasure from it. Not me! I choose the safest rides in the amusement park–ones that don’t involve being thrown several hundred feet into the air, and thrown back down. Like the merry-go-round. Or the cups and saucers. And if peer pressure should, God forbid, force me to go on one of those beastly roller coasters, I grip the safety bar, squeeze my eyes shut and think to myself: why did I sign up for this torture?

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The previous week, I’d booked tickets for a monsoon trek at Matheran (a tiny hill-station near Mumbai), organised by a well-known adventure group with a friend I’d met through the local running club. A cursory glance at the itinerary on the website told me the trek was classified at “beginner to intermediate” level,  deemed for those under 35 only. With no frame of reference for what that meant in trekking terms, I assumed it would involve long walks and the occasional climb.

My parents were displeased.

For days I fielded disapproving phone calls from Dad (who insisted the trek was too dangerous), and terse questions from Mom, who couldn’t believe I had gone behind her back to book the tickets. She couldn’t fathom why I wanted to upend my life with her and seek out a dangerous experience (in her eyes). Was I unhappy at home? Did I not want to stay with her? Our conversations spiraled in circles, like a cat chasing its own tail, until neither could hear or understand the other anymore.

Why did I want to go? She might as well ask.

For the last three years, I’d poured my heart and soul into a job that felt more like a mission, sidelining friends, hobbies, and a healthy social life. It had consumed me and become the anchor of my identity. And so, when I quit and moved back with my parents, the world I had built so laboriously collapsed like a house of cards. The colleagues I’d considered close friends slipped away. The phone didn’t ring anymore. My messages went unanswered.

I lay in the silence of my parents’ living room, in a city where I had no roots, wondering—was this all that remained of three years? Did no one care I was gone?

Returning home only deepened the ache. For all its comforts, home was stifling, a place where I constantly negotiated my freedom. My parents were good people who, for the most part, let me make my own decisions. But every choice required justification—social outings vetted, plans defended, and even the smallest decisions scrutinised. Beneath it all loomed the image of the “good daughter,” a standard that I believed stifled the dreams of many bright young women in India.

A good daughter didn’t challenge her parents, speak her mind too boldly, or venture out alone. She stayed at home, took on domestic duties, and spoke softly and respectfully. A good daughter sought education, but only for social validation—and only up to a certain point. By her twenties, she married a suitable groom chosen by her parents. A good daughter always conformed. And should she even catch a whiff of risk or failure in the distance, she turned tail and ran.

I had spent all my adult life trying to escape these constraints; making a vow to myself at 15 to carve out a different path. Coming back home seemed like a betrayal of that vow, a step backward that deepened my sense of failure and intensified my grief.

As it turns out, grief is a hot stream of lava, searing through old habits and comfort zones, leaving devastation and disarray in its wake. Grief changes our world, permanently shaking our foundations.

It leaves no room for hesitation. Or, at the very least, it makes you stupid enough to not Google what the beginner-intermediate level for trekking entailed.

So, I went.

---

Marching through forests with carpets of dead leaves and water dripping from the leaves overhead, I finally found refuge from the thoughts that had been bleeding me dry like a thousand paper cuts. The repetitive, soothing pace of walking, the need to watch out for roots and rocks, let me focus on the silence and stillness of my surroundings.

The forests ended suddenly, and a meadow appeared out of nowhere, beautiful and serene.

Wind blew through the trees and tiny white flowers peeked out from the bright green grass. I watched as the drifting curtains of clouds descended to the meadow’s edge, transforming the scene into a charming theater–the clouds parting now and then to reveal the valley basking in the sun. No camera could have captured this timeless play of mist and sunlight.

Clouds drifting to the edge of the mountain; shrouding the valley below in mist

Alas, I was unaware of what was to come. There was actual climbing to be done—especially on an intermediate-level trek; this became painfully clear as we came face to face with a simple-looking conical mountain that we would have to scale to get back to our stay. 

How hard could climbing this thing possibly be?

---

Strong winds battered the climbers as we ascended. Behind and above me was the slate gray sky, threatening to engulf me should I make a single mistake. To make matters worse, halfway up, I realized there were no well-defined grooves to step onto. Instead, I needed to rely on my feet to “feel” their way to stable footholds. Can feet even feel??? I was about to find out.

Apart from my terror and the wind, I also did battle with an army of intrusive thoughts threatening to paralyse me during the climb.

“Help, we’re stranded!” screamed one thought.

“Wow, Mom and Dad were right, this is dangerous,” another reflected.

“The ground seems so far away!” 

“Why the hell did I come here!???” 

and my favourite - “What do you think would happen if you jumped?”

I zeroed in on the one thought that screamed— “STAY ALIVE!”—and made a humongous effort to shut down others.

Fear has a remarkable way of sharpening your focus. I rapidly developed a Stay-Alive strategy, forcing myself to focus on one step at a time—and then the next. Don’t think of the path ahead. Don’t think of the people below you, and for goodness sake, don’t look down. 

Trekking is not a lone wolf activity. You’re often forced to rely on strangers to get through sticky situations, and this was genuinely terrifying for me. What if they didn’t like me? What if they refused to help? A quick little shove, and I would be history. Yet, in that moment, my terror of slipping into the abyss overpowered my distrust of strangers, and I found myself reaching out to strangers with abandon.

And so, this was how I made it to the top—lifted over the fence by a man who stood at the summit like a guardian angel.

---

Sitting at the peak with the other jubilant climbers, I was raw and exposed. On the way up, I had stumbled several times and lost my balance. At one point, I had no idea if I’d make it. Something dislodged within me afterwards, like a boulder crashing down a mountainside. I realized that my deep-seated belief-that I was someone who could handle any situation calmly-was no longer true. The weight of this realization left me deeply unsettled. 

In contrast, my younger companions—some barely out of their teens—seemed unaffected. They, too, had faced fear; they were still climbing when the weather took a turn for the worse. Whereas I was with the early climbers and had avoided the heavy rains. “I was praying all that time, but it was fun!” one of my teenage friends later told me with a huge smile. Fear had not shaken her as much as it shook me.

Do we lose our ability to cope with the unknown as we age? And if we don’t have a clear path or immediate answers, do we become anxious and ready to bolt?

Maybe that's why most people who had signed up for the trek were in their teens and early twenties—an age when you think you’re invincible and life seems to stretch out without end. 

I didn’t magically become a skilled climber after this. In fact, I remained fearful of heights throughout the trip and faced several more daunting climbs on the second day. However, the way back on the same route was much easier than the initial journey. What had taken me three hours on the way up now took half the time. At least, I was pleased to note, all those months of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions in my living room had paid off.

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Back home, no one mentioned the trip again. There was no, “Good job on proving us wrong!” or ‘“Tell us how you did it!” or the much needed “We’re sorry for underestimating you and making you feel awful for wanting to take trips on your own!” Instead, life slipped back into its usual rhythm. Mom asked me to chop vegetables for dinner. Dad reminded me to call the bank. At dinner, our neighbors chatted about the latest celebrity gossip, and no one seemed to notice the person I had become—or the fierce personal battles I had waged.

Not long after, I found myself at one of Dad’s office parties, bored out of my mind, closely monitoring the waiters weaving through the crowd with food platters. Nearby, a man stood next to my dad, boasting about his travel adventures. He was peacocking, and I could tell that Dad was only half-listening, nodding politely at appropriate intervals. But when the man mentioned trekking, Dad perked up. “My daughter also likes trekking. She recently completed a trek in Matheran,” he added, with something akin to pride in his voice.

And that was as good an acknowledgment as any.

I had spent my first month at home feeling sad about the past, blaming myself, and consumed with worry about the future. I had questioned my identity without a full-time job. Without work and without my friends, who was I? Did I even have a right to exist? What if I’d made a mistake in pursuing higher studies in this terrible job market?

But the mountains had taught me something invaluable—how to focus on the next step, and then the next. This kept me going when I was afraid, and got me out of bed when I couldn’t see the point. If you keep going, step by step, you’ll find yourself at the top, even if you didn’t believe it was possible when you started.

Who was I? I was a vanquisher of mountains and a demolisher of grief. And for now, that was enough.

About Tania

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