Returning Home

 

‘A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it’

I read the above quote in a colourful magazine, and paused to muse upon it. Despite all my travels, the first thought that struck me were not that of my beloved Himalaya or the rain-drenched Sahyadri, not the infinite blues of the Pacific, not even that of Home. My brain perhaps ran faster than my own conscious thinking, and the first thought that flashed was that of Boku - almost glowing with a halo as in the medieval paintings, in absolute peace at Cite Universitaire, our temporary sanctuary in our sojourns to Paris. I had gone back by 15 years and there was no proximal bridge of thoughts that should have led to this (our whatsapp group, as happens with time and distance comes alive once in months); there has been no recent activity for which I should recollect Boku or any of the blokes but such are the vagaries of the mind - It picks up thoughts by intensity and emotion, not by proximity of space and time, even if these are decades old, conjured thousands of kilometres away.

But why that evangelical face of peacefulness, you may ask? I closed my magazine and ran through the richly treasured archives in my mind that are very neatly organized and colourfully labelled: ‘Paris.’ Those were the last few weeks of our months’ long stay in Paris. Winter had truly arrived with frigid blasts from the Atlantic, and the city of lights was draped in occasional sleet, and snow. The grey melancholy of the skies sometimes did seep into your bones and made you feel weary. But the weariness was also from frenetic travel over the past four months - Break-neck travel, criss-crossing countries and cities, that would put consulting executives to shame. In those last few weeks, despite our bedraggled souls, we were preparing to scale some more countries – Vaduz, Austria, Hungary waited hungrily and then lay the Iron curtain countries of yesteryear. For Mapboy and me, the KPI was how many more borders breached, how many more cities covered, how many more citadels conquered. As we were racing towards the finishing line, the thirst for travel still overpowered the weariness from wayfaring.

But not for Boku – he decided to not join us, for the first and the last time in our peregrination. There were a couple of other casualties from over-zealous academics who wanted to conquer not citadels but certifications, but that was not the case for Boku. He could have explored with us, but instead chose his hostel room ahead of the Habsburg empire. Nonetheless, we went ahead, Mapboy and me, and had a range of fascinating experiences – seeing a snowfall in the alpine hills of Schaan-Vaduz, even after Paris’ razzmatazz, being overwhelmed by the spangled lights of Chain Bridge in Budapest, being convinced in broken German by station-masters to not be insane to get to ghost towns of European winter, being mesmerised by Mozart in Salzburg (and Mapboy even practising his theatrics on a large podium at the shores of BodenSee) - the list is long.

It was when we returned though that we saw the other face of the coin – Boku in absolute peace and tranquillity, the calmness almost sheltering euphoria and joy, that of recuperation, relaxation, and rejuvenation. He seemed content, almost serene, at being able to spend a weekend of his own accord, just watching the sun and snow of Paris, and not hurrying to catch a train or ferry or to rush before the Pope ushered closing time for the Sistine. To our adrenaline excitement, he had his tempered abandonment; to our checklist of outer accomplishment, he had his reflections of inner reconcilement; to our never-ending aggrandizement of wanderlust, he had his concluding denouement to the final weeks in Paris. In short, while we moved, he meditated.

I wondered at that point if it was worth staying back and doing nothing, but back in time, I did not realise the importance of ‘nothing.’ For us then, we still needed to travel to pick up bits and pieces of wisdom to come home and ruminate and understand their hidden value. Boku was ahead of us, he had internalised his wisdom while we were still seeking knowledge. Hence, he was there, indoors, sipping a cup of tea, watching a slow motion of snow, ruminating all those moments of madness in the last four months, while spending time with his brother, knowing very well that after our degrees and forays into the professional world, all would change, including the value of time.

In other words, he had already come back home to find what we were still searching in our travels.

As I sip my cuppa today in another frozen bout of winter, I cannot help but smile at this realisation. I guess when we are younger, we turn outwards to explore the world, to get our share of bruises, and discover what we then perceive as riches. As we turn more sagacious, often through these journeys, we understand the value of contemplation, of inner peace, of the value of a shelter through which we can observe and understand the changing shades of sunset. But to get to that pot of nectar, we need to churn the ocean, to earn our battle-scars through the journeys of life, time and age. Perhaps, Boku had already gathered these notes while we still needed to expend our energy to fossick through the pages and books of our times. (He was not alone, remember the chapter where you don't feed the cat, at Amsterdam, where Prashant, another of our troubadours decided to encamp at hostel-haven instead of traipsing all around the continent? Years later, similar thoughts stirred when in a popular movie, the protagonist wants to wander more while his beloved urges him to sit back and enjoy the moment while watching the carmine sunset atop Mehrengarh Fort).

I guess, eventually we get there, some of us take more time than the others - the radius of exploration varies from person to person until they all converge somewhere in time.

Which is why some of us go farther and farther away, seeking the shores of remote Sees, while others smile and contemplate snowfields inside the heart of a throbbing city…

 

03^rd August. 2024