Kishore da once sang "Kagazon ki kashtiyon ka kahin kinara hota nahi",his choice of words to describe certain people and their fate is worth pondering a life time away. Similary the song "aye dil-e-nadaan" has the most haunting lyrics - "hum bhatakte hai, kyon bhatakte hai
dasht-o-sehra main, aisa lagta hai mauj pyasi hai, apni dariya mein".
Recently both the songs caught my thoughts in mid flight, both the songs talk about the most primitive instinct of us human beings. Wanderlust - a strong or innate desire to rove about.
What is that one things that makes us miss our childhood so much, what is that makes us feel so refreshed when we visit a new place even if for a day, why do we feel stagnated of our "settled" lives all of a sudden when we hit a random age beyond 30.
Last year on my birthday I was in pune all alone, I hadn't ever been to the city so the only choice I had was to explore it on my own. I chose to do something I had done often before, I packed a backpack with a couple of sandwiches from subway, cans of coke and headed towards the city. After a windy autoride, I was at mall road, the market had shades of old and new. Reminded me of CP in a way, there were some places that looked as old as they could be and some looked fresh out of a bursting economy, there were the chachas in the market and the mr.showroom owners. Some selling bags, some jwellery, some shoes, some snobbery.
However this was obviously the heart, the families which believed in the good old times headed to mall road on all occasions, it was something they could relate to more as compared to the urbanized glass cages called "malls".
Time was running out, I headed for deccan, the honest automan chose not to rip me off and I was thankful for the cheap ride. The deccan is the college crowd area, lots of open air cafes where young students plan everything from fresher parties to wedding dates once they complete their graduation. I roamed around like the primitive man just enjoying the "roam", at times I nibbled on the sandwich and gulped some coke. The deccan is different, it was youth city, if mall road was the heart then deccan was the spirit of youth.
I finished the day with a movie at a nearby mall, pizza from dominoes and vada-pau at a thela. I had missed visiting a couple of places from what my friends tell me, however that didn't matter much, my wanderlust was satisfied. Last year was filled with four to five trips, a number of friends showed the same patterns of wanting to wander, whether wandering between places, people or situations all of them wanted to wander.
Humans wander, there is no other truth. Our strife and struggle begins when we want that illusive "stability" just to feel a certain kind of "happy". And then when 35 happens, we have that "crisis" about when, what, where all this is going not realising that we are just like a small kid running around in a DTC bus. The kid thinks he's moving or just sitting, but the bus is taking it's own route.
Sure we've evolved, and sure we've come a long way, sure we roam a lot less only because there's less to roam about but we still secretly prefer being a explorer, a nomad, an adventurer.
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