i saw myself

This entry was never to be. I thought my blog was just a means of keeping friends in touch with the walk. It was great fun writing it and I really looked forward to the act of getting up before anyone was up, to bang away at the laptop with all the ideas accumulated during the day. When the walk ended it was meant to fold up but so many people ask me what were the lessons of the walk that I am forced to think of what the walk taught me- if anything at all.

So here I am writing a blog entry I hope no one ever reads-it’s too personal, its too complicated and there are bound to be loose ends all over- It is about where the last one ended – with me having traversed the journey to Ajmer and at the end of the post making the grand declaration that “the inner journey would now begin” .

Honestly like all others like me who are the standard of the “thinking people” in today’s world I said it for forms sake- because it sounded real nice and gave me a kind of mental edge marking me out as the thinking walker- Like all these “thinking people” I am totally comfortable with form without content and can discuss people, places and things with the right dose of humor – and deliver my punch lines in the right way, but ask me to discuss ideas - particularly ideas that require original thought and I draw a blank! Hence I am probably writing this entry more for myself than for those that may chance upon and decide to read it.

I think the major lesson of the walk was that I knew what I wanted and did all that was necessary to achieve it- and did nothing else.. Had I started out to reach Ajmer and then kept going all over the roa- stopping at Neemrana , going off to Alwar to watch the tigers or deciding not to walk further till I had eaten all the stuff on the menu at Behror- would I have made it Ajmer ? or if I had started to lay the started practicing playing the clarinet to get there ? or if I had practiced walking, packed all the right stuff , got my logistics right but yet not decided where I wanted to go ?
We could all work out the answers to this and yet this is what I have been doing – either not knowing what I wanted or playing the clarinet to learn to walk- and then ruing not reaching the places I wanted to go to.

This came to me not in an “ Ahaa “moment when I walked but it was the at the end of the thought process which started from the moment when on the way to Dudu the Captain stopped by the road to offer us butter milk-and when I cried as I walked away from him. I cried for the God in me I had forgotten all these years-I cried for all those that still believed in love, God, truth , honor, the value of the word, doing the right thing and all such nonsense.. I cried for all those simple clods the world takes for fools and tramples upon as it goes about its daily business-I cried for the simple guy who once believed that the Lion would never eat Androcles because Androcles had done the right thing by the lion- I cried for all the Androcles’ lions eat all over the world for a post breakfast snack- and I Saw myself- Androcles standing in the middle of the arena secure in the knowledge that he had done the right thing and no lion would ever dream of eating him.

I will have to believe in all the simple things that make the real me and live by them since that clod is what I was and this is what I shall forever be and being him is the only way I will ever be at peace.

It will take courage being him – it will take effort on a massive scale- there will be much pain as the pit of the stomach tells me to run every time the lion comes out – but be him I will. I owe it to the Captain and to the remains of all the Androcles’ the lions ate .

I will of course need to work out what will make me Him but then that is a mater of detail- and as the walk has taught me – it is identifying the target that is important – the rest can follow.