The poem describes the author's experience reading poems to Swami Anand, an 89-year-old nearly blind man, during her childhood summers in Kosbad, India. When she reads a poem using the Himalayas as a metaphor, she feels ashamed to compare her imaginary mountains to those Swami Anand had walked through. However, he encourages her to continue reading. Later, while climbing hills together, Swami Anand shows he does not need assistance, and when asked for suggestions on improving her poems, he simply says "continue."

1. The Himalayas Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmadabad in 1956, and grew up in Pune. She emigrated to the United States in 1968. She was professor and writer-in-residence at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, in 1992. She received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award. Sujata Bhatt

2. The Himalayas In Kosbad during the monsoons there are so many shades of green your mind forgets other colours. In Kosbad* during the monsoons there are so many shades of green your mind forgets other colours.

3. At that time I am seventeen, and have just started to wear a sari every day. Swami Anand is eighty nine and almost blind. At that time I am seventeen, and have just started to wear a sari every day. Swami Anand is eighty nine and almost blind.

4. His thick glasses don’t seem to work, they only magnify his cloudy eyes. Mornings he summons me from the kitchen and I read to him until lunch time

5. One day he tells me ‘you can read your poems now’. I read a few, he is silent. Thinking he’s asleep, I stop. But he says, ‘continue.’ I begin a long one in which the Himalayas rise as a metaphor

6. Suddenly I am ashamed to have used the Himalayas like this, ashamed to speak of my imaginary mountains to a man who walked through the ice and snow of Gangotri barefoot a man who lived close to Kanchenjunga and Everest clad only in summer cotton.

7. I pause to apologise but he says, ‘just continue’. Later climbing through the slippery green hills of Kosbad, Swami Anand does not need to lean on my shoulder or his umbrella. I prod him for suggestions, ways to improve my poems.

8. He is silent a long while, then, he says ‘there’s nothing I can tell you except continue.’