travelling and existing

So much of traveling is just the ordinary routines and rhythms of existing. It’s laundering clothes in a bucket, wringing them out and setting them on a line to dry. It’s walking barefoot over the concrete terrace in the evening, warmed from a long days sunning and looking out over the neighborhood. Glimpses of dramas and anti-dramas through the portals of windows, doors and other rooftops. It’s Hitchcock’s Rear Window every time I look over at the neighboring building. Each dwelling is faintly illuminated from the inside, each rooftop another world of custom and culture but I know there is a thread between my world and theirs. It’s the listening to the cawing birds and irate monkeys, it’s the smells of kitchens that waft spice and aromatic delights with the shifting breezes in the early evenings.

The more I travel, the more I feel not of one place, but of many. And it is these ordinary acts of feeding, of washing, of getting from one place to another that occupy a big chunk of my time and being. When I am in a place long enough, my own rhythms begin to integrate into the weave around me. I’ll take tea at the same street stand in the mornings. The man who sits cross-legged on the side of the road has my newspaper folded up, ready for me as I approach – whether I want it or not. And while I usually don’t, I’ll get it anyways because the interaction alone is worth a couple of rupees. Again and again, my path connects with the young boy who washes dishes on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant from morning till night and we exchange side-to-side head tilts, smiles, and some kind of subtle yet satisfying acknowledgement for each other’s existence. It’s the juice-man’s smile and it’s the guard in front of the bank in his overly official looking uniform that sits unmoved hour after hour whilst busses and taxis blare horns and cough exhaust just meters away. Unflinching, he’s completely absorbed, dissecting every bit of his newspaper. And the neighbors who I sometimes see on the roof of the next door building and sometimes down below on the street, sitting, talking, gossiping, as their children run in circles, laughing. It’s seeing these people each day and our brief expressions of communion through words and gestures that help take the edge off being alone – or at least feeling that way most of the time.

Being on the road in the ways that my experience is driven often means sitting, wilted-over, staring at the floor or the wall, alone in my room, trying to make sense of something that I may not even be conscious of yet. But there too are wonderful moments when through the dark of night, the sounds of classical Indian music haunt the stillness of space between the gods and wherever I am. A woman singing with her harmonium and there is no place that I would rather be than across this bit of still air and flowers of jasmine. And then there are the children that dance small homemade kites from rooftops from here all the way to the horizon that create a sea of birds in the orange hazy fire of a big setting sun.

Being away like this also means seeing more clearly where I have come from, where I have been, and where I want to go. Most importantly however, being away seems to help me see that wherever I am, it is just here – wherever that may be. And so I learn that it is less about here or there but just being in the world and noticing, seeing the beauty in the everyday expressions of existing, feeling my being in the present, and allowing it to communicate with what seems unknown, challenging, irritating, or uncomfortable. When this happens, the notion that I have traveled somewhere else drops and I realize that these places that I go are part of my being, part of my practice in just being. Choosing to go where there will be the alarm clocks of unknown territory help me ensure that I sleepwalk less and remember more.