By Ambika
Image linkThe notion of travel gives me joy. It takes me to a faraway land. There is a saying in my mother tongue, Kannada which literally means that you should read more and travel more. It helps to gain knowledge and broaden your thinking. Yes of course, it does. But travel for me, is going to a place where you can feel like you are a different person.
All the strings which pull you back get cut. When you are in a place where no one knows you, you have the decision left to yourself, as to what you want to be. You are a strange person to the city, the sea, the trees, the birds, the people and they are new to you. Going to a strange land is a new chance, a new chapter, a new painting. As if you have messed up the canvas given to you and you are given a chance to get a new one. So you can start off clean, fresh and beautiful.
Try to find yourself in this new place, because no one else is trying to find you, because only you can find yourself. No one else is present to weigh you down, make you feel like you are “so and so” person, you can do this, you can’t do that. Your mind is like a pond. As long as people keep coming, ripples are created, the water gets disturbed. Once the disturbance stops, the water is clear and calm. If you look, you can see the bottom of the pond, clean and transparent. That’s how we can look in to our soul. Only you know what your heart wants. Only you know what you want and what you don’t. No one should be able to change it. Whenever I panic about my Dad’s health and insist him to go to Doctor, he says “It’s my body. I know when I am sick and I come to know how sick I am”. And he is always right. How I wish, I could judge my mind in the same way. It is always influenced by external entities.
Be it people, be it the situation or past experiences. Traveling to an unknown land with no strings attached is one way of getting rid of these entities. Lost in thoughts, lost in the strange land, be a person you always wanted to be and walk back home with a new experience, a beautiful painting, which can be the start of a master piece.