Walking through the cultural diversity

Been thirty three days since I hit the road to immerse myself in the vast universe of India. Lived many lifetimes in little over a month.

From walking barefoot in the Himalayas to witnessing a mystical sunset by the Ganges while listening to Kabir Das’s wisdom words, getting lost in the Nati music of Himachal to seeing a lifetime worth of wood carvings passed on through generations, making Siddu (a traditional pahadi dish) on firewood to drinking water from the glacier streams, the holy country offered it all to me and my rucksack.

The world belongs to the brave. The more I believe in these words and walk through, the more they prove to be true.

I value these experiences more than I ever could have because this was a conscious choice. A choice I made right before it was going to be too late. To live and breathe real stories, I left everything else there was going to be. “Life is like a rail track, difference of an inch can change everything else.” Heard this in an Indian film years ago and it stayed with me.

The choice of walking barefoot in the Himalayan trails and towns over a prestigious degree from one of the best J-schools on a merit based scholarship, the choice of roaming around with a compact fujifilm camera over learning from the masters in air conditioned classrooms, the choice of talking to strangers and listening to their life stories in busses, homestays, hilltops and riversides over the ‘right’ ways to pursue stories.

Once you talk to the mountains and see the unbearable beauty there is in this world, it’s hard to look away and make the choices that are right in societal terms. Everything in it’s own time. For someone like me who has not learnt to give up on things, surrendering takes effort. But anything out of our comfort zone can lead to growth in ways we couldn’t have otherwise imagined.

Here’s to getting lost and found in the dhun.