sweet poison

The fire in the kitchen tent had gone out. The moon was still behind the mountain in the east. Just a snow covered peak to the west, faintly shone with the pale glow from a fragment of light. The darkness that stretched below him, in front of him and at the back of him was solid----almost with no beginning or no end. Only if he looked up, could he see a sky dazzling with dots of light. His personal source of light, a three cell torch, lay cold and unlit beside him.

He was sitting on a flat slab of stone, quite a few meters below the other tents. It was almost nine thirty at night, quiet an unholy time, going by the chill that had already set in. But it was holy, almost pious, he felt. Rest of his friends had gone to sleep and he had the silent valley all to himself. If one could see into his eyes at that time, all one could see was plain wonder, of amazement, of fulfillment...yet of a strange madness. His mind was full of thoughts that crawled its way out of nowhere and which perhaps went somewhere into the dark space almost like the tails of the milkyway that he could not see. It all had a stream, like the misty spiral that went through the space, with unattached events, that like the stars were moving in some way in the milky way but with perhaps, no definite way.

The valley was silent, even the wind wasn’t whistling. Somewhere at the back of the mind, a voice leaped up “Do you have to go?”---- a voice he knew, but couldn’t quite place it. A baritone asked “Why do you go away? Are you escaping? Escaping from what?” These, he knew, are questions that all travellers are asked-----now, then at the beginning of times and will be asked even when the last ship of earth sets sail for the unknown... yet how many could actually answer them? Can one give an answer to these, satisfactorily enough, for the people who thought the road had no warmth?? Perhaps not. Perhaps the only people who can “understand”, only people who knew there was “no answer”, were the people who had the same lunacy in their eyes. Such eyes you hardly find. They are bright---calm but then , if you care to look deeper and longer into those eyes, you can almost see a spark . You cannot place it. You cannot properly gauge it with meters that you are taught to understand a person with. There’s always a distant look, sometimes a hint of sadness, sadness which was almost like an unsettled aroma---sometimes fleeting, sometimes hard to catch. His mind fleeted back to the question and he realized that the crucial thing was not to  answer this question correctly, but to answer the question at all----because there can never be an answer. “ I travel because I want to see new lands”, “ I travel because I love to know people”, “ I travel because I cant stay at home”—these are all so vague, all true to some extent, all false to the brim. Ask any traveler about his motives, the answer is most likely a silence, followed by, perhaps, some fumbling.

One never knows why he or she travels. One only knows of a call deep down somewhere---not heart, not brain-----it’s a burning, which rises somewhere from the solar plexus, and spreads, spreads, spreads through the blood, guhes into the heart, out of it, pumps into each of the uncountable cells of the body, throbs in the brain---------and suddenly everything around seems to blur away, everybody around seems less and less important---what matters then, is only the call----a slow rumbling of the ocean, a flutter among the foliage, the whistle of a mountain gale, a silent road, a kitchen fire of somebody else’s hearth.

It’s really strange why travellers who cherish the warmth of a family man, and quiet lovingly recalls of him in his  memoirs personally detests being one. And although he loves every old mother that passes by, he never misses his own. And although he loves hearing of lovers but he hardly has his own. Blame it on him, he accepts. The road is kind of a mistress that won’t ever let him enjoy a family.

In school, he used to think, oxymorons were figures of speech that wasn’t really valid. But now, he knows….knows that only two words can be his justification ---Sweet Poison. A pain willingly accepted and cherished. From the time he had known the road, he had been retreating from his surroundings, blasé gatherings and meaningless conversations. That was from back in school maybe. Schools and friends often have names for such dream-aways . But a college education couped with various activities and love affairs that kept his friends busy he felt relieved of being under a constant microscope monitoring a peculiar being. He could wander away sometimes without being  questioned. And did love not cross his ways??  It did perhaps, when he thought he was wary of being the loner and he felt guilty of not behaving “normally”. But that was momentary(“ lapse of judgment” , he later recalled). Instantly he knew there was something amiss. The promises weren’t empty . it came with iron chains and lo! his mistress beckoned.On he went….leaving a string of broken hearts.
 But what had road given him, if you ask…..a silence for an answer….but this time its not an empty silence. Deep down he knew what he got…. freedom and wisdom. Of the first, all fairly knows. Of the second, people have a misconception. Its not knowledge. Its way beyond knowing a culture, a country, people.. its an acquired light that makes him look through his surrounding and yet give him the magnanimity of forgiveness.In the years of his travels, in the travels where he lost friends , he understood something-----that face is not the only mask that a man wears,  there is something called society. pull him out of  that, there he stands naked ---the unadultered element of his character shines without a filter. Nature is the greatest touchstone, he has learned. And sometime, along the way, he gathers some of this. He grows quieter and retreats away from the crowd. The madness of eyes evident, his willingness to escape prominent.
 

You call him a vagabond, he accepts. You call him irresponsible, he accepts( if responsibility is giving away lies and sticking to lies). You call him loner, escapist……he accepts all of it just to sit in the dark silent valleys, blessed by all that is pure, elementary, true ----the stars, the  rocks, the air….and an unexpecting and ever so loving mistress.