After thoughts of travelling for a month- Chapter two: REASONING SE AZAADI, (YES THIS IS AMBIGUOUS!)

CHAPTER TWO: REASONING SE AZAADI, (YES THIS IS AMBIGUOUS!)

Delhi is a selling ground. That was my first impression. I reached at Nizamuddin railway station early morning. As soon as I came out of the train station, taxi and rikshaw drivers hounded me and started selling me my journey to the destination, a room in a hotel, a good restaurant, and even a call girl. Not a single one was going to charge me as per the meter. I wanted to have tea first, but they didn’t even let me have my morning cup of tea in peace. They were lurking around and waiting for me to finish. A friend had suggested cheap hotels in Paharganj or Majnu ka tilla. I’ve been to Majnu ka tilla couple of times, so decided to go to Paharganj this time. New sets of judging eyes waited for me there. My friend and me needed a room to just keep our stuff, get cleaned up and leave to meet other friends. But my friend happened to be a girl, and people started judging her, and me and we judged them back. It was fun. Thankfully as suggested by a Delhi friend we checked in a backpacker hostel called Zostel. It is a casual and clean place packed with backpackers from different parts of the world. After getting ready, we left for Connaught place, which was walking distance from our hostel. Again people on the road started selling. Breakfast, drinks, hotel rooms, travel tickets.  And obviously we witnessed the infamous Delhi ogle. Travel is equally about the people as it is about the places. I used to think that how people from a certain city get their stereotype, why Delhites are considered as lechers, how they got stereotyped as a bunch of sex starved males? Well, I guess it’s got to do with the definitions of normalcy a certain society sets. Obviously every person doesn’t fit the stereotype of a citizen of that city. But then where do they draw lines of what is normal is about in the same zone. Because society decides normalcy, right? Anyways we spent almost the whole day in the campus of JNU. Met a friend after more than a year, and he showed me around JNU, the protest site, small hills, different departments. It’s a cool place to hang out at, and a vast patch of green on otherwise dry Delhi. It was the day when Kanhaiya Kumar got bail, and was about to return to the campus. News crew were ready with their cameras at the gate, hoping for the usual entry shots. We couldn’t see the cameras recording, as he came after we left the campus. That’s okay, but I was happy because after so many days I talked about topics from, obviously, azaadi to old monk cocktails, and psychedelic drugs, to psychedelic writers. From 50’s films, to 60’s film songs, and from hallucinations of Mohammad to forms of dance; as the day slid from JNU to Hauz Khas to the party at Zostels’ terrace. 

During all this my phone ran dry. I would have usually panicked, but I didn’t. That was the start of the journey. I needed my phone to search random stuff I was thinking about or to check if the taxi driver is taking me by the nearest route. But I didn’t crave connectivity. After every couple of hours I was meeting new people and was having fairly long conversations with them.

When I was travelling to Delhi by one of the slowest train running on that route, I was caught up with my professional commitments, trying to be relevant. I mean, it’s not like in a day I dissed the ability or urge to be relevant. But I used to rely on internet on my phone for keeping me busy, entertained, pampered, interested. But I was travelling, again the question ‘why am I travelling?’ was ricocheting in my mind. Another answer for that was to be in peace with yourself without any technological assistance. Technology is important and necessary, and only a stupid will curse it and abandon it completely. But I think technology brings things/ desires/ emotions to us even before we feel the need for it’ and after that we just get addicted to the need without even realising it in the first place. There always been the fight between the want and the need, and need is losing that battle in urban life. We want things. We want to stay connected, we want to click selfies, we want to travel, and we want to write. We were sitting on a big rock in the highest point of JNU, and my friend was reading poems in Marathi to another friend who does not understand Marathi. But he was interested in listening to those poems in Marathi first before we could translate them. Because when you read or listen any kind of literary creation in the language that was originally written, you even get to feel it’s rhythm, it’s rounded and pointy pronunciations, and even its aroma. 

These are the things I want to feel, and that’s why I needed to get out of a structured Mumbai life. This is where the definitions based on wants and needs get blurry, this is where one get to realise not just why to travel but why to live. My favourite writers, my favourite, artist, my favourite discoveries, my favourite crafts, my favourite thoughts; these are the things that puts weighs on me. That keeps me balanced and steer me away, help me define things. But when we get used to a structured, channelled out life, we cant’ be steered away, I can’t do that. I’ve seen many people doing it very effectively.

When I reached Delhi, I felt that people were judging me; they were lecherous towards my friend. Basically I was judging them back, generalising them unconsciously. I consciously realise that I judge people unconsciously. Mostly it’s seen as a negative thing to do. But as humans we need to classify things that are going around us, to process them better and basically move ahead with our lives. And we intuitively base our judgments on experiences when we encounter things similar to some that have happened in the past. But when I encounter something new I tend to enrich that experience based on the things that have put weights on me. That have expanded my senses when I was not actually travelling, the books the music, the pictures, the movies. Travelling is beautiful when we can place our new experiences harmoniously with these weights and our intuitions. Of course it doesn’t happen on the go. It is happening to me after I have completed my travel. That doesn’t mean I was just absorbing experiences when I was travelling. But now I can see things in perspective more surely and clearly.

How do you remember memorable things happened to you? Is it through words, dialogues that we spoken there, or by visuals, spiked with smells and touch. How different directors treat flashbacks in their movies always fascinates me. When one character remembers something happened in the past.  I find it weird when the directors show the scene just like any other scene. How can main characters whose memory we are seeing be in the frame? S/he can at most remember what they have seen. Those flashbacks must be in first person in visual sense as well, just like the first person voice over its usually accompanied with.  Why am I talking about this? Because I’m writing something based on my memory, a travelogue. But with the images, and instances I’m also trying to remember what kind of thoughts were going through my mind, and the thoughts definitely cannot be seen and or recorded. When I’ve experienced even my visual/sonic/orifice memory failing and painting something completely different, then how can I trust it with remembering thoughts. So yes, I will state the instances, but all the other things may or may not be what I felt and thought and that time. This is interesting, because it means the journey is still on inside me. Journeys of thoughts of the thoughts of other journeys are also still travelling inside me. Memories and feelings are beautiful things. It can paint a same event differently in the mind of every participant of that event. It should be that way. Memory of a live concert attended by thousands of people must be different than each other. But when a need to tap a larger group of people simultaneously, one has to generalise things and seek shelter in adjectives to keep it conveniently ambiguous. That’s why I’m writing this. I started with conditioning and generalising of minds but I want to document my experience of this month as personally as possible. I want to remember things. It’s not that I will forget them if I don’t write, but by that logic I can even not experience them in the first place. These thoughts come to me between the silent places of any conversations. I’m sure it happens to everyone. There are number of minute, ethereal layers of conversations floating in everyone’s mind when we are conversing. Only if these layers have colours, textures, aromas; how beautiful every conversation can be felt and remembered.

We had an early morning train for Kathgodam from New Delhi station. Even though the station was just five minutes away from Zostel, we had to run with all our over packed bags to the platform. Train left the station five minutes after we boarded it. Guess, we didn’t have to run. It was a Shatabdi express, a chair car, and coach attendants started treating us with food and beverage as soon as we settled. Finally I was going to the mountains!