CHAPTER
ONE: FIGHT WITH REASONS
Why do I travel? What do I achieve by
travelling? I was living in valleys of Uttarakhand for last one month, where I
used to have to walk 16 minutes uphill to get to a café or any shop, now I get
down from my 16th floor apartment to do so. Yes I am back to Mumbai,
and then I was struck with these questions. Such questions used to strike me
when I was travelling too. I had decided to finish a big chunk of writing that
I was planning to finish for last one year. I was not really successful in
finishing much, though I am satisfied by whatever I’ve completed. When I used
to have a dull day, I used to think about these questions. Why am I travelling?
Am I achieving what I set out to achieve? I used to think a lot about these
questions, used to spend whole evenings pondering over them, sipping chai and
watching the valley changing its colours from yellow to orange to blue to dark
grey and then complete black. But then star used to start twinkling and moon
used to paint the valley again in a soft glow. I didn’t used to find answers to
my questions, but those were the answers right in front of me.
The word and concept of travelling has
suddenly become very popular in last few years. The meaningful quotes of
writers about life pasted on a beautiful landscape, the 20, and 30, and 40
things to do which will transform your life, the survival kit list, the travel
couture, hotel deals, travel blogs of 20 something sharing their experiences, new
and newer hashtags on instagram related to travelling, the follow project, the
unfollow trend, the changing definition of coolness and addition of backpacking
to the list; it all brought ‘travelling’ to the paramount of social media
discussions. There are even many blogs
and opinion pieces that say how travelling in your 20’s instead of focusing on
your career is the most stupid thing you could do. So basically there are every kind of extreme,
good looking, logical reasons floating in the cyberspace that keeps on
diverting my thoughts to travel, to wander.
These external factors titillated my inner urges and made me restless.
It’s cooler to be someone who does not belong here right? Though the ‘here’
changes with the surroundings and eventually encompasses everywhere. I went
through that transition, I swam through that tide, and realised that maybe
that’s not the case I want to wander. I was not sure why, but I knew for sure
that it is not a hipster, millennial thing. Again these generalisations of
hipster and millennial thing have resided in me through the trollers of the
almighty Internet. So yeah I shouldn’t have said that. You see where am I
going? This was exactly what I was thinking. Things, even though new and path
breaking, are packaged in attractive wrapper, marketed riding on the newest
trends, and served on a platter to the very gigantic niche audience like me. There are more moulds that people. Even
though each mould was unique than the other, the problem is very few users
actually make their own moulds. It’s satisfying and assuring to fit in your
moulds perfectly, but I was thinking a lot about the generalisations. And also
that I’ve used the word mould too many times here. It sounds weird every time I
say that word now, I’m not going to say, write that word for a while. Okay one
last time- mould.
Yeah, so I was completely clueless why I
wanted to travel again. For past few years I’ve made sure that I was travelling
at least for 30 days in a year, not at once but all together. So it was not
like I was taking a big leap or anything. I can pack my backpack under 10
minutes now.
The other thing was validation. You know
validating your every action by someone. I thought my sense of judging my own
work was getting rusty. A friend once sent me an article, which said that,
rather than excellence, mediocrity is required to survive. I read again about
mediocrity in a Murakami’s book I was reading on my train journeys. I needed a
perspective again. The earlier one was fading off. I was proud of my work, but
I knew for sure that most of the work was just a notch above the satisfaction
level of my client, and sometimes not even the client but my immediate boss,
whoever s/he might be. I thought that level should have been the level zero. I
want to realign my zero co-ordinates again. Which ideally should be independent
of generalisations and validations. But idealism can very well be a hindrance
to the flow. Whatever, I thought I should at least be sure of the position of
the zero co-ordinates.
So I finished whatever I could finish of my
work, and left the rest incomplete, rather unprofessionally under the pretence
of getting fed up. Which was not right.
I packed my backpack with warm clothes,
basic cosmetics (hair gel, moisturiser, and deodorant.), ipod (yes, packing
starts with the creating a good playlist), laptop, battery packs, camera and
lenses, and few other things that I found out was in my backpack while
unpacking. I went to shop for some essentials and to fix my wristwatch, after
my mother insisted. I came back to find out that both the lifts of building
were not working. Remember I mentioned, I live on 16th floor? I took
a deep breath and started climbing the stairs. Your counting abilities go for a
toss when you are running out of breath. 7th floor came twice, 10th
floor thrice and I was stuck at time loop while crossing the 15th.
But I climbed up to my apartment in 2min 40 sec. Not bad start. I was just
getting used to climbing up and down for my rest of the journey. I reached Bandra Terminus after saying goodbyes to my parents and my wife. My mother was trying to know when I was going to return. My father advised not to be too adventurous when alone. The train, one of the slowest on this route, was going to take me to Delhi, and I had a window seat for that journey. Train left exactly on time, 00:10 hours on 2nd March. But my mind was still thinking about the plans, and daydreaming about the adventurous time. Your regular traveller daydreams. I was still going to get used to the present. But I had time in my hand.
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