“The world is a book and those who do not travel, read only one page” – St Augustine

You know this is what I did when I took a break from the daily grind last summer. I wrote and wrote, and wrote. Here, I am sharing a few excerpts from my last summer’s diary entries, circa 2018:

I was lying down on warm sand, somewhere on the coast of hope, dreams and wild imaginations. Salty breeze was caressing my bare back and I was fervently pouring down my thoughts on the crisp white pages of an orange cover diary, which was a farewell gift from a very dear friend who lived in Cairo, Egypt…..

It was Kishore Da (I am a self confessed Bollywood freak) who sang, “Musafir hoon yaaron….” (I am a traveller, friends…) and it was Anais Nin who said, “We travel, some of us forever, to see other states, other lives, other souls”. In my solitude, as I set out to discover the unknown of late, never has this felt more true.

Lately my soul mate/my love (let’s call him L from now onwards) has been coming home from his work and saying to me, ” Vib, let’s sell everything, we will get a good exchange rate, currently Aussie dollar is even bigger than the US dollar and let’s go to India. I will grow a beard and leave our son with nana nani (my parents) for a while and….you and me – lets go backpacking around India. I want to write Vib, I want to write. I wanna work in the slums of India, some social work, some community development work. Enough of this high flying, jet-setting, high-pressure, ministers galore lifestyle. I wanna break free, do something drastic. Lets have a seachange. I wanna add some meaning to this life – something beyond this meaningless existence of consumerism, daily grind, rat race etc”.

Always known L as a bit of an eccentric, oddball, highly principled, strong and scary type but then the thought of giving it all up does scare me a bit, especially when you have a kid. But then life’s never been boring with my Scorpion L, he has always given me the flights of my life – I trust him with my life. When I met him, he was this young writer, a philosophy graduate who was just so different from the rest of the crowd and that’s why I fell head over heels in love with him and married him. But the big question is….Do I have the courage to give it all up and go for the unknown with my man? My heart says ‘yes’, I have always followed my heart and it has hardly ever gone wrong. After all, life is always best played without a script – always been my motto. So I say to my man, “yes, let’s do it!”

Are we destined to be nomads for life? Constantly seduced by what is unattainable, mysterious and exotic in our minds? It’s an exciting thought but scary too. Our dreams often say more about us than we would ever like anyone to know.

I am sure you will agree with me when I say that sometimes, at least a few times, in our dreams and in our imaginations, we have all tried to explore new paths, a new city, a new love, a new everything, even a new ‘us’, a totally new life….to some extent. We have all spun fantasies and have tried to live them up, despite not knowing our directions or even our end destinations at all. We are people who when fear of the unknown stare us in the face, we look back at it boldly with wide eyes and ask, “could you be any more fascinating?”

LESSONS LEARNT: When you move away you can be yourself, you can be someone else, you can be who you want to be. In that desire to be unmasked comes a certain sense of freedom.

This is the great power of any journey. When elsewhere becomes here. When we are forced to navigate for ourselves. When we are forced to feel alive and our senses are heightened. When our dreams come close to reality and we feel happy, fulfilled, challenged, confused, dazed, peaceful, restless, euphoric, ecstatic….all at once.

May the dream never end.

I dedicate this with love and respect to us all – to the wanderers and the searchers in us all. We are not there yet but almost…. which is of course each and everyone of us.

PS: I love the brightness, the boldness, the newness of no fixed plan and an itinerary that is loose at best. Destinations unknown, people unmet, places unseen. Play the great explorer; take off and touch down. Go on friends, live a little…

Let’s get lost!!!
~ The Gypsy Girl Vibs