“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine
In Mahabharata, when Yaksha asked Yudhisthir, what travels faster than the wind ? Yudhistir replied it’s our mind. Today, the modern mode of transportation has offered us the opportunity to travel much faster than wind speed.... but are we really travelling?
Travel is for earning experience, learning new way of living, come out of the bondage of old habits and finally realizing - বিবিধের মাঝে দেখো মিলন মহান.....bibidher majhe dekho milano mahan (the unity in the diversity..... ) – Rabindranath Tagore. In Mark Twain’s language - Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
In ancient Indian mythology, Yogies could travel wherever they want through Yog ( meditation or connecting with the Self ) . What is that ?.... with out moving the body, just through deep meditation they could earn vivid experience of another place, even can tell what is happening over there, with as much clarity as being physically there.
“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson
Now a days we can travel so much distances so easily but after reaching there what we do ? Do the same old activities what we used to do in any other day. We talk with the same people over phone about same old topic, we do same silly texts, open our same face book or twitter account to do same small talk with same people of our own world, which we imagine as our global friends. So our mind is in the same place, we are just physically moving our body but earning no experience from the new place, what a contradiction !
In old days when a friend or relative goes to a different place and drop a letter with few lines about that place then others were waiting to take the opportunity to experience that place through his experience.
Today we want to go to a new place but want to see same kind of hotel with same lifestyle we are used to, search for same kind of food chains, don’t try to experience the local food culture. There is really not much value in this urban travel habit. We just take some beautiful picture with the known land marks and tick out that place from our travel wish list, and satisfy or fool ourselves claiming I traveled that place.
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
In nineties I used to travel Calcutta to Bombay quite often. Those train travel experiences left behind some golden memories in my mind. It was about 40 hours of train ride from Howrah station to Victoria Terminus of Bombay or return. That time cell phones didn’t make our life easy. So to make long distance call you have to stand in the long queues in front of the STD booth. That’s why once you boarded the train, for next one and half days of your life is limited with the unlimited experiences of all the different places the train will roll through. From the Ganges delta to west coast of India touching so many diversified places, interacting with so many different people not only the co-passengers of the same compartment but also all the vendors who are getting up and going down with their own creative foods carrying a little touch of the local soil, so many different local handcrafts or simple creative hand made products, even those people are so different in their look, accent and behavior, suddenly you will start to realize the diversity of this vast country. This realization is much different and more complete than what you thought at the time of writing the essay on the same topic in your literature paper.
Another time simply grab a seat beside the window and stretch your vision to the slow lifestyle of the small villages which the train is crossing or watch how the sun is going down far behind the hill after getting tired to run with the train for so long or after crossing a big town how the train enters in to the very natural darkness of the night leaving behind the artificial lights of the civilization.....who will stop you to imagine, as if these places never been touched by any human beings before you...for this moment all are yours.
Again when the train is rushing through a forest and a sweet call from an unknown bird makes you delighted, suddenly a patch of bright flowers catches your attention, there is no word in your dictionary to explain the beauty of them and finally you get connected with the same wonder of Debendranath Nath Tagore looking at the wild flowers of the mountain in his Himalaya travel…why they are here ?...to please whom ?
Some other time, with your open eyes looking through the window of the jhiki jhiki train, you may never know, when you have traveled deep into yourself forgetting and forgiving all the choto dukho choto sukh ( small joy and sorrows) of your very own life, then suddenly you return back to reality, listing to your most favorite Kishor Kumar song from an almost dark tea stall of a small station. You didn't realize when the train stopped there to wait for the signal. But who knows, who told them to play that special song at that very moment just for you…..and suddenly you be sure enough that the entire world, all the places of this amazing earth which you have not seen before or what you will never see in your life time are nothing but your very own play ground. All the people, whom you will never talk in your life, know your very own feelings so dearly.
मदात्मा सर्वभूतात्मा Madatma sarva-bhutatma... ( My true self is not any different from any person on this world...)
I think, being able to reach that very moment, or to that mystic land of that special emotion, is the true purpose of travel.
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