India, a land rooted in capacious diversity, a land that offers more than what a person can experience in 10 life-times put together and experiences that can be cherished for time immemorial. I am an ardent wildlife photographer and my passion for wildlife has taken me to almost all parts of the country. On every journey I am astounded at the diversity in culture, food, people, language, religion, heritage, landscape, forests, wildlife and habitat etc. that I have come across. India is a result of many countries put together like a stable covalent bond that shares electrons from several unstable atoms to form a stable molecule. India would never be stable even if a single part of it were to break off from the country. The country would then break up into 35 independent countries as India is formed by the union of 28 states and 7 union territories.
BREAK AWAY FROM MORTAL BONDS AND BE ON YOUR OWN.
The trait of viscosity has somehow been inherited by most of
my fellow countrymen, a conjectured guess would probably entail a result of
the influence of the joint family system and caste system that seemed to
prevent the people of India from leaving their families and in a much broader
sense the country as any person who left their family would have been deemed an outcast, a family traitor who did not wish to be a part of the family as the
person who left the family would generally be in love with someone above or
beneath his or her own caste and a person who left the country was stripped of
his Indian identity. I am referring to the pre-independent India here and of
course much of the traits of the past are the traits of the present with a
little bit of dilution where ever convenient to ensure a comfortable lifestyle.
CHOSE THE PATH LESS TAKEN AND CREATE YOUR OWN WAY.
But enough about the pre-independent India. It’s time to talk
about the present. I personally believe that the concept of careers and social
identity has taken an all new meaning in India, with the parents deciding who
and what their child should become. Everybody today wants to have a secure
future with a good income and a family to dispose of their social obligation
and then retire to a life of grand-parenting and an unending rest thereafter. I
don’t mean to be didactic in this excerpt but I would like to ask such people
who prefer a secure lifestyle, one without uncertainty and much adventure, what
have they experienced in this god given blessing of a life which happens only
once to each one of us. Of course with a secured life and family one will
succeed in spreading his genes to the next generation and probably his family
name will live on, but modern gene studies have revealed that a person’s genes
will live only for three consecutive generations and due to the mixing of
genes, his or her genes will be lost thereafter.
MAKE FRIENDS OF A DIFFERENT KIND ALONG THE WAY.
At present times a secure life is a built in stigma right
from childhood to become someone or something that is totally different from
yourself, to impress people who never cared for you and ultimately loosing
yourself in the process. A secure future is the most dangerous to the adventurous
spirit. I personally believe that life should be shaped by circumstance. There
are very few people who know what they want to do in life, a passion that
ignites their soul to live and achieve their dreams at a time where stereotypes
roam free and the minority with such dreams of a life with insecurity are
deemed outcastes and examples of people who risk losing everything. Well to
that I say ‘everyman dies, not every man really lives’.
LIVE A LIFE WORTH RE-LIVING !!!!!!
If you are old enough to live on your own and have been
hammered with suggestions of who you ought to become in life by your family,
peers, well-wishers and have no idea what your passions in life are, then to
you my friend I say to you, ‘I hope your living in India and if you are, take a
bag, fill it with clothes and essentials and start traveling’. Live life to its
fullest and worry less about your career because careers are just a twentieth
century creation and you need none of it. People live and die, and it is what
you do between that will be worth re-living a life u left behind. Never for
once put yourself in a precarious position of wanting to relive your life so
you can do it differently because that wish will never come true.
TRAVEL ALONE AND YOU LEARN THINGS THAT A CLASSROOM OR OFFICE WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO TEACH YOU IN YEARS.
People are shredded in the cloud of xenophobic nature as they
are characterized with a sense of nihilism to break out of their comfort zone.
Well I urge those people to break their shackles of obscurity and ignorance and
hear to my vociferous plea to go out and live a life they so desire. The
thought of failing while venturing into an insecure future is reducto ad
absurdum in every sense and I can’t help but be laconic when I say ‘get out
there and chase your passion’.
THERE'S A WORLD WAITING TO BE EXPLORED.
With that being said I now start my excerpt that would reveal
a journey spanning around 45 days and traversing a distance of around 9,000 kilometers in the midst of the Indian summer where the temperature soared to
and hovered around 45 to 48 degrees Celsius. My journey began from New Delhi
and took me to the semi deciduous forests of the Periyar Tiger Reserve in the
South, from there on to the mangrove forests of the Sunderbans in the East and
ended in the scrubs of Gir National Park, Gujurat in the west. I traveled
alone, relying on local buses and ferries for transportation and a journey
worth recounting a hundred times over and an experience that I would relive in
a heartbeat.
THE MAP SHOWING ONE OF MY JOURNEYS INTO THE WILD.
P.S: I shall not recount my experience in the Periyar Tiger
Reserve as I have already written an article pertaining to that on this blog
titled ‘LAW OF THE JUNGLE’.
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