The road to 'Worry-lessness'
The road to 'Worry-lessness'
Ghumakkadi - Our method and the people who opened their doors to us!
घुमक्कड़ी वही कर सकता है, जो निश्चिंत है। किन साधनों से संपन्न होकर आदमी घुमक्कड़ बनने का अधिकारी हो सकता है, यह आगे बतलाया जाएगा, किंतु घुमक्कड़ी के लिए चिंताहीन होना आवश्यक है, और चिंताहीन होने के लिए घुमक्कड़ी भी आवश्यक है।
Only one who is truly free of worry can pursue Ghumakkadi. What means a person can possess which might make it easy to travel will be told further ahead, but to travel you must be free of worry, and to be free of worry, you must travel.
Sankrityayan, Rahul. घुमक्कड़शास्त्र: Ghumakkad Shastra (Hindi Edition) (p. 10). Kumar' Publication.
This is the second in a series of articles within the Ghumakkadi project. If you haven’t been following the series, please read the first article for more context.
The format of the walk was largely taken from how Siddharth conducted the ‘Moving Upstream: Ganga’ walk. We would walk from morning to little before sunset, and then on reaching the last village before sundown we would start asking around for someone who could give us shelter and food. Beyond sunset generally people are mistrustful and uncomfortable – we did look suspicious with our beards, gamchas and cameras with monopods.
This process of asking has been an intriguing and contemplative moment at multiple levels. The first is simply that it requires you to leave in the morning with the inherent belief that you’ll find a place to sleep the same night. That was an assumption I didn’t know I had internalised all my life. It makes you trust in an unknown entity in the future who would be benevolent enough to extend that security. The other thing it does is to get you in the habit of trusting, which I feel is the first step towards being ‘चिंताहीन’ (literally ‘worry-less’), as Rahul writes in the book.
The second contemplation is the vulnerability that comes with asking. This is very interesting in a rural setting, since we definitely ‘look’ urban, and with our cameras and our backpacks have the perception of affluence. The cameras also contribute to the power dynamic between us and the people we met – imagine telling someone to go stand somewhere with and without one, and you’ll see what I mean. This vulnerability completely reverses this power dynamic, which disarms people. Some eyes us with suspicion, some just shrugged and decided that we were not their problem, and some just pointed further down the road. But wherever we went, there were always some people who stopped and listened.
This was what Jagdeoji did when we reached Sirisiya. The sun was setting, and we were desperately asking around for accommodation but since this was a somewhat larger town, people were skeptical. The presence of a bus route also added to the hesitance since they would just suggest taking the next bus to the nearest city and finding a hotel there. We were asking in a medical store when Jagdeoji, who was heading somewhere on his bike, stopped and asked us what the matter was. We explained what we were doing (for the hundredth time that day) and he sat on his bike and thought. In a minute he said “Keep going straight, and you’ll find a temple next to the pokhra (lake). Wait there, I’m coming.”
As promised, further down the road stood a small, quaint shiv temple – interestingly inaugurated by Khurshid Alam, the local Muslim ‘ganna mantri’ (sugarcane minister) whose name was soldered onto the gate of the temple. As we waited on the steps, shopkeepers from the other side of the road came and we had our customary introduction and chit chat. True to his word Jagdeoji materialised in a short while and told the sadhu who took care of the temple to give us a place to sleep inside, and he informed – without us asking – that he’ll send dinner in a short while.
This was common to most days on the walk. Only once we were unable to find accommodation, and that too because of timing and not because of lack of offering, and we headed to Motihari and booked a room, then returned to the same spot the next morning and started walking. People opened their doors - both literally and metaphorically – like Umeshji in Dumaria, a beautiful town on the bank of the Gandak. Masterji – he was the teacher at the local government school – also had a coaching centre next to his family’s kirana store. He gave us a wooden bed and a table fan as well, and treated us to both dinner and then breakfast the next morning at their place.
However, when we reached the village by evening, we were tired and – having answered the same questions a hundred times each day – were weary of more questions. Yet, the people of the village were intrigued, and generally there would be a gathering and questioning session that would continue till late. At these moments I would have to tap deep inside and counter my inner instinct to shut myself down, and have conversations – even if it was just listening. Like one conversation that I had with the person who had given us shelter for the night (I am not naming him, reasons for which are evident ahead.) As we sat outside - me lathering every orifice with Odomos to counter the mosquitos - he reminisced about how he used to work as a muscleman in the late 90’s and had (allegedly) kidnapped a businessman from Assam for a handsome ransom. But now he was on the straight and narrow for the last 25 years, but because of the change in governments, some old cases against him had been re-opened. He had managed to secure bail in three of them and was waiting on the judgement for another two. I hope he gets them - he was very kind to us.
At times my urban instinct would kick in – and I did my best to be as ‘safe’ as I could always – but sometimes you must open yourself to have other people open up to you. And I’ve learnt is that if you are patient enough for a conversation, people love to let you in.
It turns out the most important organs in travelling are our ears. Eye-ronic.
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The writer Shridhar Sudhir is an independent filmmaker, academic, artist, and founder of Buddhijeev Studios. You can check out his website here.