It isn't the place where you are that defines you, but it is the place that your imagination can fetch. All these months in the capital city of India you have been in a room; more than an oven in the harsh Summer of the city, and in Winter always wrapped in a sleeping bag. You weren't ready for the latter after having lived in hot and humid places for years .
Mind wanders off to the sight of warm climate, not so hot, and the white sandy beaches their ends marked by lines of palm trees, people in deckchairs, and the noise of the ocean waves rushing gently and ending with mild slaps, mildly rocking the moored boats.
Only a while ago the whole place was bright, each part revealed, the chatters of people heard in near corners. The golden disc over the glistening wavy water seemed to have cast a spell. No life was visible on the beach, the folded parasols and the abandoned deckchairs wore a despondent look, but the place was alive with the sound of the waves, louder, each sound more clearer. But it was the sea that prevailed, nothing could pervade, nothing looked mightier. If one wanted to be courageous he would have to try that in the water. If one were to look beyond that would be beyond where the sun is sinking.
How easily it belittled you; a millions which were chattering, exuding the cries of happiness, creating nuisance , could all be under it. When mind ventured farther and began playing out what wasn't physically feasible: the Conradian scenes came alive. But Lord Jim belongs to another time of the same place.
Oh! What a struggle it is to get back to this world of your creation, being able to stop by each character, each object ,so that can probe and probe till you are pleased, an opportunity one hardly thinks is missing, as though one' senses are placed upon the constantly vibrating surface of a drum. To try to tune in for a while to know is human curiosity , but to cast one's self into it is to lose his entire self.
It has got to be a withdrawn observer sitting below a large tree, on the edge of a sprawling football field, watching a possessed crowd jumping and screaming; those girls in felt boots and tight tops below bright jackets would never have been like this, had it been another setting; here the happy and harmless them have come out, and they would be easily notice a sad soul.
Why this self of yours has to be like this?
With a fifteen-kilo pack and some good tobacco in pockets you found yourself at the foot of a mountain which featured in some travel book. Before you arrived you had thought about those posted pictures of smiling people in thick clothes in front of their tents. But you were all alone with the pack and when you put it down to fix a smoke, only when started puffing at that cheap pipe of yours and began probing the ground and eyes staring at the thick forests, then it dawned upon your mind that soon you would be hiking through the unknown woods.
There was this self that had been nagging you for so long to tear yourself away from what you had been subject. What you had observed, what you had come to your mind didn't arrest your wanting to get to the unknown top. There could be a place for a tent, may be not, but just like life, that hike seemed to have so much in its disposal.
The height and the monstrosity of the mountain didn't make you shrink; just before the last puff had come the swimmer's spirit to run and take a plunge deep into some unknown water came clear, and it was with that the pack on your back you got into.
This charged up aloof-looking self of a person which is always so actively involved with intense consciousness is the self which is on the move to strengthen every faculty. What's life after all for?
So, does the heat of Delhi batter you? The minute souls in big cases? The popular stories in tabloids? They don't matter, as long as you live below this eternal roof with a reconciled self trudging with an ego the size of a mountain, upon which lives could live and grow, an integrity, with a beacon, as strong as an iron pillar with inscriptions on it. Let it be the harsh Summer, for it won't be everyday, be it be chilled Winter, for it will be for a few months.
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