Traveller for Life

The sense of freshness that travelling provides with, I think nothing else can compare to it. There are distinct changes in dimension. The sense of place grows with each passing moment, while we loose the sense of time.

We lose the sense of time, I think only because we are so much into each and every moment. We are not conscious of ourselves but more conscious of the experiences. As J.Krishnamurti would have put it, there is no observer, no observed. The barriers disappear when we start living in the present. The duality is destroyed. The time lag of thought no more exists.

There’s nothing like smiling strangers. The experience of smiling strangers back at you is like hearing a bird sing while you just expected it to chirp. It’s like falling in love with nobody.

Why can’t our daily routing be like a travelling experience? I guess we would have to be blessed with poor memory for that. As travelers, we are more like explorers, ready to see and experience new things. Ready for adventure. Observation tuned to everything happening around. We are not moving about with any pre-conceived motion. While we start our routing already knowing what is going to happen. The thoughts in our head are so concrete that we already create reality much before it would have the chance to happen. No wonder we get ourselves into endless circles. No wonder routine is routing and we fail to create anything new. Minds become dull and duller.

Trains are special. It’s like getting into a machine and then getting out discovering that everything’s changed. And the machine is interesting too. There are people inside it whom you can talk with. It’s a different kind of intimacy. You know the journey is not going to last forever. You are almost sure that you are not going to meet the person again. So any exchanges that happen during the journey are always genuine. There are no future expectations. Yeah, but then you can always take phone numbers, but that would be like taking the zing out of the whole thing.

Trains rock. Literally! Sleeping on a train is amazing. The motion of the train has that effect. I would like to think people generally like to sleep in the train and not because they are feeling sleepy. But I do admit that they would also sleep because there is nothing else to do.

Having nothing to do is a curious situation. Mind doesn’t understand how to react. I guess that’s the basic problem. It has nothing to think about, no activity to plan, and nothing to keep itself busy. If that’s the thing, then what does one do… that’s of course.. if we assume that the mind is a different entity. But anyways.. not going further into this, this always makes me curious about the duties of the watchmen. I always try to talk to them and understand the way they spend time sitting for so long. Trying to know what’s going on in their mind. But I have got no specific answers as yet. They always answer nonchalantly, ‘Bass.. Aise hee time kat jaata hai..’. I am still wondering.