Me

I always wanted to travel the world. Not to famous places or anything of the sort. Just places. New places every now and then. Wake up in different beds…look out of different windows…look out to see different scenes and different people. I yearn to sit at back of the bus and gaze aimlessly out the window…a little squint in my eye…the sun smothering my face…and my 2 day stubble. I want to drive on an empty road. I don’t want to drive fast…just coast along…the morning breeze streaming through my hair. I want to listen to a hundred voices around me…speaking in a language of which I cannot make out a thing…I want to look for words they keep saying…and then cook up a meaning for each of them. I want to capture images of faces I don’t know…faces I shall never see again…capture them in my camera…gaze at them for emotions…try to figure them out. Sit myself at a roadside shop…where they serve steaming cups of tea…very sweet ones…like hot sherbet. And I want to drive in the countryside…where the sun never comes out from behind the clouds…and lush green meadows are dotted with little farmhouses with queer brown fences around them on which jackdaws stare at me as I sail by. And I want to stare at little kids on mountain tops in grey shorts and red sweaters, unwillingly dragging their satchels along, some wild mountain fruit clasped in their hands…their tiny little eyes gaping at me in curiousity. I want to run along the beach at the break of the dawn…to see where it ends…where all the big hotels give way to the tiny homes of the fishermen and then the lighthouse and then suddenly all the sand goes away and its only lashing waves and brave black rocks thrusting their chests out to take the beating. In the middle of the night I want to be sitting on the verandah of a tiny forest bungalow, with the lights gone out…only a candle in the dining room where the cook prepares country chicken in a fiery gravy on a winter night…and as I wait for him to serve the steaming rice, I want to hear the cricket’s trance and the occasional trumpet of the elephant and the otherwise silence of the mysterious jungle…I love what this world has to offer…all its nature…all its creatures…its human civilizations…I respect all of them…and I love to know all about them…