Travel

Whenever I think of travel, Tennyson’s Ulysses will spring to my mind. “Much have I seen and know – cities of men / And manners, climates, councils, governments,” says Ulysses. That’s just what travel does: make us see and know cities, manners, climates, etc.

I loved travels. My years in Delhi were filled with much travel. I accompanied students on the annual educational tours and treks and during holidays my wife and I visited quite a few places like Darjeelinng, Gangtok and Shimla. I enjoyed both kinds of travels: with students and with my wife.

Travel broadens our perspectives by opening our eyes and souls to new realities. Though I was very much aware of the Gorkhaland struggle in Darjeeling even before I visited the place, the visit filled me with sympathy for the Gorkhas. I listened to their views and watched their hardships. I wondered why political leaders failed to understand their people’s woes and find relevant solutions. Why should the genuine aspirations of thousands of people go ignored for decades particularly in a democracy?

The answer to that question will provide a clue to why I stopped travelling in the last few years. In the current political situation in India, travelling is quite unsafe. Far from broadening your mind and ennobling your soul, your travel may get you eliminated physically from the face of the earth.

Mob lynching has become a national pastime in India. In the recent incident of lynching which happened in Mewat (Rajasthan), the people who killed a man for taking home the milch cows he had bought boasted that they had the support of their MLA. Brutal murders are sponsored by various governments in India today.

You can be killed for taking your cow home. You can be killed if you are seen with a child; you will be labelled as a child-lifter. You can be killed for walking with your wife or daughter in a park; there is the ubiquitous moral police lying in ambush behind the bushes in the park.

India’s Prime Minister is travelling all the time though the travels do not seem to broaden his mind or ennoble his soul a bit. Right now he is in Rwanda with a gift of 200 cows. Cows can travel safely in India and may even go abroad with no lesser a personality than the Prime Minister himself.

When will India be once again a country where people will be free to travel without fear?

Let me wind up with some nostalgia from my travels in strange lands when there was nothing to be afraid of.

 

Can i dare to pose like that today?

 

Can I dare to make friends with a child today?

PS. Written for in(di)spire Edition 231: #Travel