The loner and his follower

It was a rare sight. In fact, rarest of the rare I would like to call the entire episode, just like witnessing an eclipse as amateurs and professionals hail the celestial event with great bonhomie.

At a time when everything moves at a maddening pace and you find someone leisurely taking a stroll on the central business district of Bangalore, all you can do is to notice the phenomenon unveiling right in front of you.

I clearly remember the first time I saw him near ASC Centre and College in 2008. He was standing near the footpath, smoking a bidi, and his flowing grey mane caressed by the autumn breeze. He had a fixed smile, eyes looking somewhere at a distance, where probably we “normal” mortals can never reach. He was holding a jhola bag, his white T-shirt was almost brown as layers of dirt and grime accumulated in the passage of time. Completing his overall persona with his tattered jeans, he had that look from the rock-n-roll era of 80s.

I was pleasantly surprised, finding someone in busy Bangalore so lost in his own world. I thought he was a traveller who has accidentally stumbled on the city roads. I was sure he had set out for another destination, somewhere far, as far as the Thar Desert or Antarctica. He did not look like a native. The true inhabitants of a city are always cocksure souls. Their gait and posture always carry an aplomb. They can never be so unsteady and nervous.

Sitting in the bus, waiting for the traffic to get cleared, I was intently looking at him from the window. He had clearly noticed me. But, was smart enough to avoid me.

It did infuriate me. In a knee-jerk reaction, I decided to look at him more closely, trying to get that elusive eye-contact, to further our non-verbal conversation. In those few seconds, I succeeded. He looked back and smiled at me. I acknowledged his generosity as my bus moved ahead to the cacophony of city life. I tried to keep my gaze fixed at him till I lost sight of him.

Almost a week later, I saw him again. This time we met at the ever-crowded Majestic bus station. It was unexpected but I instantly recognised him. He was wearing the same clothes, but a brown cap resting on his head was an addition. He was sitting on a bench, sipping tea from a glass. As soon as I disembarked from the bus, I wanted to go near and greet him. But the crowd behind pushed me to a corner. By the time I could steady, he had already left the place. I searched for him for a while but I was in a hurry to catch another bus for another destination. So, I left but his sight haunted me throughout the day. I kept wondering, Who is this man?”No, no, he cannot be a traveller. Or else, by now, he would have left the city. Then, who’s he?

He looked so different. But still so common, almost maintaining his anonymity in the crowd. He had that look of a lunatic man who had probably run away from the asylum. Or, is he the urban monk, the legend of which I had read?

All he remained for me was an enigma, a bunch of unanswered queries. As time passed by, and cycle of season changed its moods, he too steadily faded out of my mind just like hundreds of unknown faces whom I encounter every day and immediately forget about them.

But there are coincidences and I do believe in them. Almost two years later, what I saw again proved me right once again. I saw him, standing right in front of me, as I was sifting through the pages of a biography of a successful business tycoon on an MG Road footpath stall.

“Don’t buy this. I bet you won’t enjoy the book,” he advised.

I could not agree with him more. But, to strike a conversation, I decided to disagree.

“He is one of India’s richest men, a rag-to-riches story. I am certain, it would be inspiring,” I replied.

“If you want to be rich, money-wise, then go ahead. I won’t stop you,” he smiled.

I looked at him. I was thinking how could he know what I was looking for? As if he had caught me lying to myself, trying to ape anyone and everyone to be accepted by the society at large.

“You should read what you enjoy the most. You don’t have to be somebody else. You’re beautiful in your own skin. Now, I have to go. Have a good-day.”

Once again he left me alone, as the crowd around swelled like a huge reptile devouring me into a deep dark pit. I was blind for a few seconds. Almost blind, I could see and locate nothing, but a vast road, somewhere in the unknown, waiting and telling me to embark on. I wanted to talk, ask so many questions to him. “Who are you? What do you do? Why are you so elusive?”

But, who could stop a wandering soul, the mild evening breeze crooned to me. “Let him go. In his journey lies the answers of life.”

If he belongs to abstraction of life, my reality too is nothing short than accepting the truth. I did not attempt to run after him (which I could have easily done). Rather I let him go. But I was sure he would come back, maybe after ages. Maybe then we would talk, strike a conversation when all my queries would be answered.

I returned to myself once again, trying not to think about him further. However, waves of thoughts kept hitting me, making me wet to the skin in the process.
“There are many pressing things to be addressed in life. Does a vagabond deserve so much of my attention and time?” I questioned.

My wandering mind did not comply with any of the profoundly popular logic or reasoning. I decided to let my mind take a walk where roads have no definite destinations. After all, it’s the journey that matters, destination is anyway guaranteed. What we encounter in a journey that matters. The surprises, difficulties, pain, hidden sorrow and joy, and ultimately the calmness that embraces you as you reach the destination you have been seeking so hard.

I wanted to enjoy the process of travelling for the time being. He did keep on frequenting my thoughts now and then. At times we would converse. Mostly, I would question him with my child-like curiosity, while he answered with lot of promises. His convincing answers would even make me belief in non-existent things. Though I know the thin line bordering the wall governing the realms of reality and dream, this time I decided to surrender myself to the unknown.

A state of hallucination always engulfed me and it never looked bad even when I did not meet him after that.

But, once in a while, he talks to me in his inimitable style. He sings to me, whispers incoherently, as always taking me by surprise.

“Your nomad is discovering new lands and places, and meeting lots of interesting people. I am sure you would have liked them too, like I am enjoying now. Do join me sometime. And yes, don’t be sad. I am here only, right beside you. The other day, when you saw the elderly man sitting in gay abandon in the empty bus bay, lost in his own thoughts, I was there too. I saw you, noticing the old man keenly. By now, I know you well. Your love for unnoticed and unattended things is quite profound. Perhaps that is why you have found me. Generally people don’t notice me, even when I stand right in front of them. You in a way discovered me in the midst of a crowd. Before I met you, I almost started believing that I have become non-existent, like the invisible man. You gave me visibility, and I am sure you too have re-discovered yourself once again through my prism.”

(If anyone of you ever comes across the wanderer described in the above post do inform me. I am desperately looking for him.)

Musings of a lonely traveller

It was unlikely that I would have embarked on a journey that I had not planned for in my wildest of dreams. But, you’ve been adamant. You wanted me to travel across the space -- alone and lost. You planned and packed everything for me, and bade me goodbye, saying that it was my journey and you cannot accompany me.

Deep inside, I wanted a company, the horror of travelling alone and touching upon unknown destinations in the midst of strangers are experiences I would love to forget. So, I wanted you to be with me. I wanted you to be my travel mate with whom I would have shared silences of mysterious distances. Distances as experiences suggest are mostly long, tedious and bereft of any familiarity.

Once in a while when you’re intoxicated with the idea of adventure, it is fine to be alone and travelling. The sense of adventure touches the crescendo, and your gregarious self becomes unabashedly shameless. It does not even bother before interrupting love-struck couple engaged in deep conversation of hearts to show them the ugliest pair of high heels you have bought from a flea market during your last vacation stint.

Of course, such efforts do manage to hold two seconds of glances laden with astonishment from strangers. But losing meaning to absurdity should be avoided at times. One should not stoop so low that your innocent act of attracting attention is construed as stepping into someone else’s privacy. That is actually bad, I would say, really bad.

That is when you realise that travelling alone, that too often, subconsciously affect your psychological bearing, which in turn turns you into a neurotic, to be mocked and ridiculed by unknown faces with whom you try your best to build a rapport. Such attempts do not work often. After all, most of the times, your co-passengers have partners to share the jig-jaw puzzle ride of a journey.

After a while, all you do is end up praising even the most moribund of landscape, dry and barren, as the most natural and rustic beauty you have ever come across. Such is the fate of loneliness that you don’t even think twice before blurting out the dumbest of comments not often associated with normal human behaviour. Insanity? Yes, insanity of unparalleled match that builds and grows every day in your mind and heart when all you have for companionship is loneliness.

I detest that perversion of loneliness. I don’t express my opinion often in regard to people like us who are abandoned in the embrace of loneliness. That is why in a bus jostling for space is often so silent that even human groans are perceived as usual playful acts staged by your stomach after a heavy meal? That is why perhaps, pain and its nemesis called happiness are measured in equal contempt. We all have become so immune to emotional outbursts that silence is what we encounter in every destination.

Otherwise, how could it be possible that even after travelling together for hundreds of miles two strangers leave each other as unknown faces at the end of the journey?

However, if you consider the same situation in a slightly different way there lies another beauty. Isn’t it good that after travelling together for several hours in the same train compartment, surreptitiously sharing glances, even if not sharing mundane details like your respective destinations, you both leave each other without ever expecting to meet again in another journey, to cover another distances?

There lies the thread of linking strangers. They are generous people, and set each other free from any bond. So, at times, I feel more strongly for strangers, as they don’t force upon me any session of questions and answers.

In my latest journey, which is your gift to me, I decided not to try hard to befriend any stranger whom I am mostly likely to stumble upon. I, for sure, would meet many people. But, I am adamant and to be the most stoic of strangers during the entire journey. I am going to give a tough competition to other stony strangers whom I am going to meet on my way.

Even if the elderly gentleman holding a newspaper, sitting next to me in the bus expresses his disgust in regard to latest “porngate” scandal rocking Bangalore, all I would do is give him a cold blank look. That would obviously silence him till he covers his entire journey. Or, it might happen that from next time onwards whenever he boards a bus, he would maintain complete silence, as a mark of respect to his co-passengers.

After all, city buses are meant to cover the annoying hours of life in Bangalore. They are no social clubs to befriend people. So, such pervasive silence thickening the red, blue and brown (or is it something else)-coated walls of buses is a well-established rule.

I am saying this with hell lot of confidence, which only a veteran like me of many bus journeys across the length and breadth of the city could ever possess. But then exceptions do happen, and I too have been blessed with befriending men, women and children, when they have opened their hearts to me, and shared those secrets which they perhaps cannot share with their loved ones. After all, they knew that I am just another co-passenger like several other thousands of them whom they had encountered in a bus, guaranteeing them not to meet again.

It is just that I carry secrets of a few strangers whose names I had never bothered to ask.

That is why I love big bursting cities, the anonymity they give you. Even the ice-layered Himalayan ranges from childhood memories had shared their names and addresses with me. They often used to visit me in my courtyard and my mother was always generous enough to offer them chai and biscuits. When you are a resident of a valley surrounded by mountain cliffs, all you have for friends are the mountains.

In small towns of India, a stranger is only a prisoner, kept secluded behind the walls of a mini jail, manned by the lone policeman, whose son is again a friend.