The open road.
A memory:
from somewhere between the Lachalung La and Baralacha La mountain passes,
from a gilded road under construction between beautiful views already in place,
from when I was about to finish the first-ever trip to Ladakh.
Somewhere between Lachalung La and Baralacha La. Ladakh, India. September 2021.
Flies crowding in Nako.
On my arrival in Nako, a village in the Spiti valley, around late afternoon on 3 September 2022, I started taking pictures of the views outside, not bothering to close the door of my room.
When I returned after a short while, the whole room was crowding with houseflies. I had never seen so many flies glued to the walls at once. As if all houseflies of the village had gathered, perhaps to welcome me, perhaps to investigate.
Did they smell on me life? Or death?
Did they know something that I was blind to?
I do not much care, for I am a fly from this William Blake poem written in 1794:
Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
The ideal life.
In this extensively polluted world, where you are living holds much greater importance than how much money you have or any other things. Not all has gone too bad yet and a more excellent life is possible in few patches of earth that have abundant nature and little to no human influence. It is now more certain that places without nature, in spite of the greatest material comforts, can only give you sickness sooner or later.
When I think about this, two facts of my life come to mind:
- A consistent and, thus, enduring memory from years growing up in cities is that I was troubled by the city life and the heat, that I was never made for it. Early on I knew too much. I remember school vacations in our ancestral village in Saurashtra, how I never wanted to come back from there.
- Now I live in the Himalaya, the most excellent place in all of India. I frequently remember about it as if to remind myself. For it’s a new life, only two years old. I spent most of my life living in the cities, where I never wanted to live. Never again — and I am more certain about this than anything else in my life.
It need not be too political.
One should have conversations on politics and similar subjects only with those who can tolerate differences of opinion, those who know well not to let politics affect the connection or relationship between you.
I like to discuss all sorts of ideas and interpretations as long as they are interesting and closest to the truth.
Our lives have increasingly become way too political in the last two-three decades. So I have become fastidious about how much and with whom I talk about politics. A life as simple yet complicated as ours should not be complicated further with what is largely futile.
It’s a game. You must know how to play it to be able talk about it in an intelligent and civil manner.
I have returned to the Himalaya after 37 days on the flatland and realised upon reaching that I had never left.
That which is extraordinary.
It all happened, all that was bound to happen — and I will not forget you like how you will not forget me.
You always remember that which cannot be forgotten, that which cannot be replaced. You know what it meant for it does not happen to all. That which is extraordinary.
We shall remember it all while others take the comfortable path of letting go — as if nothing happened.
[Originally written on 8 October, 2022 in the afternoon in Shugu, Lahaul, Himachal Pradesh, India]
Old habits die hard.
It’s a hot day and people are pouring water on the concrete roads passing before their houses and shops as if it’s earth that will give coolness.
In the old days not too long ago, they used to pour water on these very roads and a rich blend of earthy smell and coolness would rise in the air.
Days when the roads were made of soil and dirt, not concrete.
[Originally written on 11 April, 2022 near noon in Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India]
Mangoes from home.
Powerful smell of ripe mangoes in the whole room as I feed Parle-G biscuits and killed mosquitoes as bait to the ant army in my room to keep them away from the Kesar mangoes high in a box over the cupboard, mangoes that travelled from Saurashtra to Maharashtra so that I could eat them like a lunatic three to four times everyday.
[Originally written on 21 May, 2019 near midnight in Pune, India]
Two thousand rupee notes.
When the shopkeeper didn’t have change for a ₹2000 note, I asked if he could at least find two ₹1000 notes, and everyone at the shop were surprised and then laughed.
A clever joke that briefly made them question reality and memory at once.
[Originally written on 8 June, 2019 near midnight in Pune, India]