The train flocked like sheep of Jesus, overabundant & with no sense of direction . It was 1 AM and I was approaching home in couple of hours, my left leg was bruised and right leg was bleeding or vice versa, and my body felt anesthetized, and all I could do was choke back my vomit because I earnestly didn’t want to get up from the strut of an unknown aged man who spewed out tobacco at every chance he got, and also I didn’t want to arise because my other body parts were either kicking, punching or tickling some others. All I could afford was a smile like always after an agonizing day, especially after recalling how I lay in my bed 18 hours ago unable to shut my eyes because of surmising the adventures the dawn was bringing and how I lay knowing what it brought…
The Hero’s Passion bike, my companion, had no passion to trek; and neither had it wanted to stop once the voyage started, for it made a screeching sound at every turn and brake. There was vortex of a road, maniac truck drivers, fully loaded plus 25 persons in disorderly busses, but the most disappointing thing was the clear blue sky & the detectable final destination point. My mother then and again said when one embarks on any journey they must first and foremost, as ritual, visit a temple; so I omitted all the temples on the way and headed straight through the top of Aravali Mountain. She always knew that I was never without despair, and never in close proximity to hope.
Places:
3. Guru Shikhar ~
Meandering at the highest point I had a rough notion about how airplanes undergo & experience the grand awe-inspiring feeling of fragmenting through the clouds. I wondered how privileged are the birds who could soar without any nuisance, and cursed because they can’t enjoy good symphony or a drink; but then again I don’t think human consciousness impressed them much. Chiming of bells brought me back down on earth, there’s a myth or saying or rumor or a good story about a gigantic bell which is perched on a wooden frame, that if one bells it 3 times their wish may come true, so I dingdonged it 31 times & I’m disappointed till today that neither of my 10 wishes have realized any substantiality.
I noted something down the line like:
“…meadows withered & dreams shattered.
Oh, look the petty whimsical bastard voyage
Against the charisma of colossal vista
On a journey ill and drifting still.”
And I ripped & tossed the paper away 5500 feet down because what I said, saw or wrote did not ever make sense to me; nothing except comedy made sense to me, which indeed again is tragic and did not make sense to me.
4. Brahma Kumari Peace Park:
This place is well centered on garden, flowers and lots of daisies, and people around there talk about karma, life and death, and they try to keep themselves under the constant illusion of happiness. Idiosyncratic videos, bogus speeches, phony environment of serenity, and heck people called this ‘odor of sanctity’. I was ‘Pissed’ at ‘Peace Park’ because for reasons I doubted, whether peace was a matter of institution or a bunch of intellectual hippies gathering to achieve their ‘vision statement’collectively. Well, it’s simple enough that no two person can achieve peace from a common thing and it’s more of desolation thing, and of course no such thing as universal peace exists.
5. Achal Garh:
There was a crooked looking comical saint over there who asked me, ‘Do you have a moment to talk about god?’ I was in no mood for this discussion so I turned away with a morbid answer, ‘Why, what has he done this time around?’ and went disappearing in the temple. As a ritual once again another temple failed to astound me. But that crooked looking comical saint with classic mild cigarette on tip of his jaws halted me at exit and said, “When you are fed up with accounts, business, science or whatever shit you will be dealing in that shitty world, come and try religion for once, it’s actually quite funny & an exciting hobby .” And this time around he left me gaping with my jaws wide opened.
(*Ruins of a battlefield – better than the temple)
6. Dilwara Jain Temple:
This was the best temple in Mt. Abu, over here god works as per schedule (from 12 PM to 5pm) and listened mostly to Jain community. I love it when he/she prejudices so openly & honestly. The engineers (craftsman) of that era did a breathtaking work while designing the white colored marble carvings. There’s nothing more exciting than committing a sin in god’s own home & asking for forgiveness, so I broke into the restricted temple by faking my identity as member of Digambar community ; somehow I was so happy that I asked to beg for forgiveness. Anyways, as a matter of fact all those 5 shrines are unequally expensive and equally unimportant.
7. The SUNSET Point:
I think most poets mistook a spectacular sunset for a dawn and wrote verses & epics on the same deception. Let me not stay far behind on this very modest paradise on earth, as it looked like a nuclear bomb striking the ground exploding and expanding in an auburn eruption that fulminate the city in pall of eternity, only to follow it with perpetual darkness. I only wish (alongside my 9 other wishes) if oblivion could be as fascinating as this. I was entranced there alone for 3 hours, missing the last bus & damaging my bones while trekking in dark, but oh boy I did not miss the spectacle of my lifetime for even a second.
Someone once said that, ” Peace is seeing the sunset and knowing who to thank.” Rest assured I was on my way to peace 😉
