What do you really expect when you travel instead of your objective of the visit to be achieved? Adventure, excitement, sex, a new love, feeling of being important, loneliness, independence that makes you free to roam along those strange streets and of course some shopping without any time keeping companions, lit a cigarette and feel it from the very corner of the heart assuring yourself how relaxed you are, enjoy the nature around you, observe the people who speak that is totally unknown to you and yet to find that they are so close when it comes to body language or just be closed in your hotel room sleeping whenever you get a chance and enjoy the luxury of a Bacardi or an expensive red wine you bought from a duty free shop when you were coming out from the airport? The list can be everlasting so it is good to focus on a few out all that can happen to anyone.
While it is an absolute joy for some people (to be away from all those life dilemmas that are on their shoulders, still want to cling on though), traveling for some people is a kind of obligatory (if you are given a chance you will be definitely stay back at home with your family) and yet adventurous for both the kinds as far as you have traveled much and know how to change the situations from dull to cheery. You may work hard, you may roam around and even end up doing nothing but have you ever thought what it really matters when it comes to make you feel good about everything? Offering a smile with a small greeting to a stranger passed by, feeling a small water drop that has been set on a grass leaf shining as best as it can, admiring the tiniest flower among those grasses you are passing everyday, saying “Hi” to those joyful clouds that are trying to be filtered trough the misty silk cover above the singing earth, being so nice to everyone you meet during your stay and work …what makes you do all these things?
It’s Love…
It’s as simple as that. It’s the love to your closed ones who are missing you somewhere, any corner in the world, love for your own self, love to the world, love to the nature and most of all the love you have with in you. It’s the love surrounded you as those small windy flows make you feel fresh unconditionally. The universe is filled with love of nature as well those vibes added to it by every human being at all the times they love.
As many times in life, I am convinced this when I am walking towards a royal looking old building of the institute we are having lectures. I am followed by fourteen cheerful, live women souls who can not hold their surprise and joy over what they are experiencing in this misty morning wrapped with cool breezes. They are far away from their rural villages of the small island in the Indian Ocean and are thrilled to be at last being able to attend their first overseas journey cum academic training that helps them to reach their dreams. A massive tree spreads its branches over the sky looks at us with such a pride that it holds many bunches of bright yellow flowers. If you really want to feel or see all these things you must be in love with nature and the people. They may not notice perhaps, (of course the nature does) yet your vibes may occur that will go through their minds and awake them.
Wandering along the streets you meet people with different shapes and ambitions in colorful costumes but as in any place of the planet, they run for work, school, bank, hospital or somewhere that helps to continue their social routine that was created as a result the very word, civilization. The temples are crowded asking help from gods wearing fabulous clothes along with loads of jewelries. The temple area and the roads are full of glamorous flower garlands sold by men and women sitting on the pavements. Women are searching and bargaining for bangles and cosmetics in the small shops convincing that irrespective the geographical area how similar are the people. Instead, you can visit those royal palaces built in centuries ago and wonder about the majesty created by so ordinary poor for few members of the royal family who by the time being have become wall pictures and will be remaining there staring at you forever. Lingering your feet on that marble floor tiles, if you carefully listen, you may feel the wetness of millions of secret tear drops shed by those virgins kept by the king and of those who desperately begged for justice from the powerful. As the sun is disappearing somewhere behind the mountains, cold wind starts to dictate the atmosphere hurrying you to the hotel leaving you to read a book, write some notes, make phone calls, have an early dinner and miss your beloved till the sleep comes.
As the days go on, you meet new people, new faces, greetings and so many new learnings but you have to know that it’s the usual experience when you are a visitor or new comer. People come to know each other; some very slowly but some so quickly using their talents. You find life has been always hard for good people especially those who are extremely live and amazingly appeared with their friendship, knowledge and humbleness. It’s again about love as well as pains and sufferings people go through. The sufferings of those individual lives as they keep smiling; continue routinely work; tries hard to concentrate; all these are part of the picture that is beautifully painted with the splendor of these water drops, cool breezes, surrounded mountains and flowers from high end flowers from down to earth.
Behind those freely born laughs and cheers, you find the life in its diverse forms as a soul of a mother who is worrying over her children, her past that has been ruined by the cold hearted, revenging type husband or as a firm hearted genius who tries to recover from the death of his beloved left him with children in this changing yet lonely world, through a completely cheerful way, or as a brilliant brainy scientist yet lost his sleep when he thinks about his beautiful educated daughter abandoned with a child by her husband for she wasn’t received enough wealth from her parents at their marriage. In a break at a laboratory or work your wandering thoughts are disturbed by a cleaning woman who wants to come and tell a stranger about her educated children which is the highest joy in her life and the discussion goes on back to her childhood. It also may be a street vendor boy who does his best to sell a head massager (that is what he calls it for god’s sake) who starts to message your head with an alien shaped wired something without even before you noticing it, feeling you annoyed or a beggar at a temple, completely pitiful by appearance yet changes 1000 rupees notes when the surrounding vendors ask for.
Gradually, amongst all these you start silently but strongly feeling something inside in a form of a dialogue with yourself. First, it starts as vibes then develops to imaginations, words, arguments and finally to deep analyses. Apparently it will all mixed up initially with others’ ways of living and your past but it slowly becomes clear as a muddy water gets clearer if you leave it for a wile. All those years passed by through the fires and meadows begin to reflect in your mind with more and more details which sometimes makes you ask yourself “Why did you do it” or “it was exactly the way you had to judge the moment”. When the silence is deeper the more you converse; the more you converse, more you understand. Right at those conversations the entire universe seems like holding you up, by its all strength-to understand the purpose of your living, mistakes made again and again for ages, many good people in life you have forgotten for so long, opportunities yet to be found, love to someone never expressed for the fear of loosing the person forever (considering it to be told after all), losses of loved ones yet understanding of the meaning of death or separation, that people never leave, vanish or harmed by death but they are rather happy to be transformed to something else or to be speckled in the universe so then we can remember them forever.
As the time passes by, the deep conversations become less troublesome but more comfortable (in the beginning of course they are even painful and even dramatic than they are expected to be-but it depends on the individual). It saves you from the eternal worries over the unchangeable life matters; lighting a dazzling spark that gives you much relief. You feel clearer about your own self and start feeling how you are being filled with love. Even the tiniest raindrop on the grass leaf is loved.
Now you see that you can do any evil or end up with doing nothing but still even in that you can’t escape the conversation within you. The more you travel you find it is more easy to come to the relaxed stage sooner than the previous time and it enriches your normal life as well. For traveling can make you ‘refreshed’ and turned back with a smile and a heart full of love.
6th November 2011
Mysore-India
