The long walk

Suddenly decided yesterday to walk from point A to B. Maybe it was the thought of the traffic snarls, or the lovely northern breeze or the bimbette who passed me as i was opening the car door. Anyways, I was glad I did.

I dont go to gyms or malls, and these are the only places I see people walking these days. So the walk brought back a lot of memories. There were times when we used to walk home from college just for the heck of it, prolonging the meaningless banter with friends, or delaying the return and the mandatory pointless sessions with an open text book. 90% of my first affair was walking together in winding bylanes for hours on end, feeling on the top of the world, feeling the thrill of the everpresent danger of someone seeing us and reporting the incident.

There have been memorable walks in my life. A 140km trek in the Kumaon has to be the best. But not far behind are the winding streets of Dublin, or the white sand beaches of Thailand, or beautiful countryside of Goa and many more. But gradually over the last couple of years, the mechanised home-office-home routine has squeezed out this activity from my life.

Anyways, it felt good. I discovered a lot of things I had never bothered to find out. The security guy at the gate has a beautiful 3 year old son, there is a gap in the hedges from where one can see a not-so-bad view of the surrounding neighborhood, the reriwala makes a great concotation of peanuts, onions, masala and nimbu, the stray dogs understand bengali, the neighborhood ladies give 'interesting' looks..

Ours must have become a developed first world country. If our lives have become such that these simple things now give us pleasure, then it must be so.