Gwaldam, April ’21

I didn’t write much while I travelled this time. I didn’t think of many things. But here is a list of forgotten sights. Things you haven’t seen in a long time, now forbidden to your eyes, as you are swamped in the flood of news of you-know-what.

Paper kite, flying in unknown hands.  
Little kid struggling with a handpump's handle. 
A Kingfisher perched on a power line. 
Young boy practicing dance steps on his roof. 
Fluorescent specks of  unripe mangoes in an orchard rushed passed.
Lone farmer, wooden plough, two cows. 
Ripe paddy being threshed.
Red-breasted hummingbird in a Hibiscus plant. 
A bunch of ragamuffins running in the streets of a village unknown. 
Grazing cattle. 
A flock of goats, and a goatherd. White turban, long stick. 
A station master with the green flag fluttering in the wake of your train rushing by. 
Dusty streets of the villages of the great North Indian plains. 
Ruined gates of forgotten roads. 
Crumbling brick houses.
Black tarpaulin on rude homes, a solitary buffalo. 
Level crossings, assorted vehicles, a man ducking under the barrier.

I won’t drone on about how I went and where I stayed. All those who have travelled know how to find their way. So I’ll tell you about what I’ve learnt. I will tell you that life is too short, and the world is too big. Life is too short to be spent away in a room, looking out at the world through a screen. Life is too short to not move, to not love, to not live. Every single day of your lives is too precious to not have done something. Can you afford to let life pass you by, flowing in time without having struck out, even once?

*The Trishul Peak, as seen from Gwaldam, Uttarakhand.*

There is so much you have to do. Breathe out, and you’ll see how much you’re holding on to. You have to live the stories that you’ll tell your children. Fall in love, get your heart shattered, once, and again. How else will you show your children how to love? How will you teach them what living is? What will you have left to show for the time you spent here? Or do you think you’ll be so very happy to have survived, going about the daily drudgery, no adventures to speak about, no one that you gave your heart to. Safe, and sorry.

You are feeling secure, aren’t you, sitting at home, but when the mind caves in, the body will give way too. A mental health pandemic is just around the corner, waiting to implode the population. Go out, and you will see you’re alive, and there’s life waiting to be lived.

There’s still life out there.