I sat there, in the dark, crying.What have I done? What had I done to my life?
Why was I struck here?
Why am I the way I am?
How did I reach this stage in my life?
I had screwed up big time.
I kept telling myself that I was special, different from the others, but the fact of the matter was that I was a big time loser, who could never fit into this society. I was a runaway kid, a kid nineteen years of age, who had no idea what he wanted to do in life, who had an ego as big as the earth itself.
I will never survive here. I am a loser. I don’t deserve to live. I would do myself and this world a huge favor by ending my life.
I sat there for half an hour, crying. I just cannot tell you how I was feeling at that moment.
Some moments just cannot be described. You have to live those moments yourself to understand them.
I used to be the top ranker in my class at school. How did I ever get myself into this situation in life?
At that moment, something extraordinary happened. Something inside me stirred, and I could hear a voice in my head.
‘What are you doing, boy? How can you ever think like that?’
I was in a trance. I could not feel anything, just the booming voice in my head.
‘You are here for a purpose. There is a plan for you too. You are part of a larger master plan. Don’t give up now, boy. Good things are in store for you. Just keep walking. You will get there eventually.’
I never believed in God. I mean, I never showed any disrespect to God, but I never asked anything from that supreme power. I trusted my instincts more, and believed finally I would get what I wanted.
I wondered if this voice in my head was actually God.
I had no answer. But something in me had changed. I stopped crying. I felt a new fresh surge of power in me.
I had no idea what I was thinking, or what I was going to do. I just knew that I should not give up now. I had to keep walking.
Yes, that’s what I will do, I will keep walking. I will reach somewhere.
I looked into my wallet. There wasn’t much cash left.
I got up, and started walking towards the train track.
I started walking beside the track. The full moon in the sky helped. It made it less scary.
But I was still scared. Sacred of the dark, scared about my safety, scared of the future.
‘Being scared is a good thing, boy. It tells you that you still love yourself and worry about your welfare’ the voice in my head boomed again.
There wasn’t even a light in sight. There was darkness as far as I could see. The cries of the insects and the animals in the jungle caused goose bumps on my skin. The cold weather too did not help much either. And I had left my jacket on the train.
I kept walking.
Don’t ask me how long I walked. I don’t know. I didn’t have a watch to tell me what time of the night it was.
I just kept walking, as if I was under a spell.
I felt no pain; I was not tired even after walking for hours.
Damn, if you ever felt the way I was feeling at that moment, you would forget pain and all.
But you have never felt like that, ever, so you will never understand from where I got the strength to walk that far.
Have you ever felt like if you don’t do something, you are no longer going to live? Like when you are new to swimming, and your instructor throws you in the middle of the pool, you know you just have to keep on paddling, even if the cold water enters your moth, your nostrils, and the water reaching your lungs. You just have to keep on paddling to see the light of the next day. You had no other option.
That was my situation then.
Anyways, I kept walking, and after what seemed eternity light dawned in the sky.
It had been years since I saw the sunrise. At the hostel I used to go to bed only hours before the sunrise.
It was beautiful, the way the dark slowly gave way to light, as if the giant screen at the movies was being lifted, to revel the more beautiful and delicate things behind it.
I finally saw a man far across the paddy fields, coming out to do his morning business.
I was never so happy to see another fellow human being ever in my life. All my hatred and feeling of superiority over other humans just evaporated. It was like I had seen someone after being marooned on a deserted island for years.
I waved and shouted at him, laughing and jumping like a mad man. He saw me, but felt he needed some time alone for his private business early in the morning.
I wasn’t angry with him or anything. I felt like a changed person. I was happy. I was excited about the journey ahead.
I decided to get off the rail track. I jumped into the field beside the track. The thick thorny bushes hurt my skin, but I was still happy. It was like I was intoxicated, and felt no pain, only ecstasy.
I walked slowly across the field of thorny bushes. Finally I could see the road now.
I climbed out of the field, brushed myself, and got on the road.
It was like I had just been released after spending years in the jail.
The weather was fine, and I felt hungry now. But I still could not see any hotels or anything.
I kept walking, with my tummy growling.
There was still no sign of anyone on the road, no man, no vehicles.
I kept walking for about an hour more.
Far away in the distance I could now see the outline of a man. Something near him glittered in the sun.
I smiled to myself, and walked faster.
It was a man. An old man. And his bike.
A blonde man, maybe a European. He was an old guy, maybe around sixty.
He was wearing a pair of shorts, and a shirt thrown loosely over his body, just like all Europeans dress up when in India. He had a pony tail tied behind his head.
He was sitting on the ground beside his bike. I could see that he was hurt.
I walked closer to him, and said ‘Hi’.
He looked up at me with suspicion. But the eagerness to meet some one must have clearly shown on my face, for he slowly gave me a crooked grin.
“Hello. Good morning”. He said that in Hindi.
“Wow! You speak Hindi?” I said in Hindi too, excited about something related to my country, after a long time.
“Yes, I have been living here for over two years now”, he said.
“Why? You work here?” I asked.
“No. I just love this country. I am travelling all over the country on my bike”, he said with a smile.
I smiled. Here I was, cursing, and hating every little thing related to this country. And here was this old guy, who had come from some other part of the world because he loves it here. I felt a strange feeling of pride in my heart. I had never felt proud about my country before.
I asked him if he had a cigarette. He offered me one, and I sat down beside him.
We started talking. His name was Barney. He was a sixty two year old French guy.
He had been in India for almost two years now. He had traveled the whole of south India, on his Royal Enfield Classic.
I asked him why he was travelling like this. I mean I thought he was one of those guys who travel all over the world with a message of peace, acting as if God himself had sent them to be the prophets of mankind.
No. He was travelling, just for the heck of it, just because he enjoyed it. He travelled at his own leisurely pace, halting and staying in the small villages, mixing up with the villagers, and then moving on to his next destination when he felt like.
Last night while travelling on this road, he met with an accident, and had hurt his leg. From the grimace on his face, I feared he might have broken it.
He asked me about me. I didn’t feel like telling him my story. I mean you could not tell a free and liberated person like Barney about your loser story. He would laugh at your face.
So I told him that I was just travelling with no particular destination in mind.
That brought a smile on his old face.
“Want to join me, boy?” he asked.
That’s what I love about these people. If it had been some person from my country, he would not have talked with a stranger in the first place, let alone invite him to join on a journey together. Barney was the kind of person I admired, and I wanted to be like him.
I thought about it. I had no better option in front of me. Maybe this was the ‘good thing’ in my life that the voice in my head was talking about.
“How do you intend to travel with that broken leg of yours?” I asked him.
“Oh, its nothing. I have had worse things happen to me in my life while I was in the Army in France”, he said with a smile. My respect for this old guy increased ten fold.
“Can you ride a bike?” he asked me.
I thought about it. I used to ride a 100 cc bike at the hostel. It seemed like a toy in front of this 500cc monster bike.
“Yeah. But I have never driven such a heavy bike. I don’t know” I was confused. I mean I weighed only fifty kilos. The thought of controlling this 180 kilo bike just scared the shit out of me.
“Come on boy. It’s not about how heavy the bike is. It’s how you control it”, Barney said with a hand on my shoulder.
I have never forgotten that line of Barney in my life ever after. In the face of extreme danger or trouble I reminded myself that it did not matter how big the danger was. What matters is how I face the situation.
“Ok”, I said. “So where are we going?” I asked with a smile.
“No idea. You tell me where you want to go”, he said with another big smile.
I loved this old guy. I just adored him.
“Ok. Let’s ride then”, I said and jumped up.
“Lead the way, boy”, he said, and I helped him get up on the bike.
This is going to be fun, I thought to myself. It was time to leave the past behind me.
- to be continued -
