My phone doesn’t support WhatsApp anymore.

Boy to chaiwala: “Bhai thoda jio hotspot de na, paytm karna he”.

Chaiwala to Boy: “Bhaiya ab toh naya phone le lo”…………………..

The premise.

There was an experiment done where a huge control group of people over 50yrs of age were asked what is their biggest regret in life. Some told about how they didn’t work hard enough, some told about that cute girl in class they could never ask out so on and so forth. But over 70% people had one similar answer.

“I never travelled to satisfy my soul.”

Most of who I am is from my experiences and growing up in the 21st century has definitely inculcated in me the megalomaniac who is never satisfied with what he has. Always looking for that cellar of sin to quench the insatiable thirst of an infinite consuming machine. So the moment I could conjure this image about myself and had the freedom to make my own choices aka , college, I tried to do things different. Instead of chasing material pleasures I tried to chase spiritual pleasures to satisfy my soul.

And hence travelling.

Tragedy 1 : She was stolen.

The summer of 2017. My camera got stolen because I had left it outside my room while my mildly intoxicated self went inside to bid goodbye to my friends before I headed home for the vacations.

The loss was apparent to me. My viewfinder to the fairy tale world had been taken away from me. And I mourned her. (FYI - all my precious material possessions are female). But in between every muffled, decapitated sob of mine there was a cry of joy. As if a weight had been lifted. I don’t NEED to take that perfect Photograph anymore. A very cool photographer once said to me:

“Sometimes when there is a beautiful frame, I just sit there. The shutter is a distraction” 

He was telling this to me while looking at a mama bird feeding its newly hatched baby birds while sitting atop a giant tree.

I didn’t realize it then but the capacity to be enthralled by a moment and live it just in our mind is probably one of the best qualities of a photographer. And little did I know that I would soon experience this first hand.

Tragedy 2 : I let her go.

Home came with the familiar forgiveness. The oh so comfortable coziness. After the tiring hostel days home was like the welcoming warmth of being wrapped in a comforter in a cold winter night while having a pizza perched infront of the reddish hue of Netflix. (I don’t have Netflix in college so it’s a lot of fun when I can watch it at home).

Tragedy 2: I broke up with her. Life is never really a bed of roses is what my 21 long years have taught me. At one moment the long distance relationship of laughs and giggles and intimacy might seem perfect and at the next it might become a little less perfect. And sometimes we really don’t know why. But it happened to me and we had to “let each other go”.

The journey.

The camera was gone and so was my girl. My phone was barely working as it is. So my mom did what every logical parent would do. Tried to fill the hole in my heart with a new android phone. And I, well I did what every logical son would do. Took the money, packed my bags and went to the mountains.

I felt like the hero of a movie where he leaves everything to Travel.

Little did I know that after I reached Delhi and took my friends’ advice “the Hero” would meet his first challenge. The last bus to Manali had left. I didn’t blink twice but boarded the bus to Chandigarh and from there to Kullu and from there to Manali. The Hero was back on track.

Manali was the land of hippies. It actually isn’t. It is engineered in that way to make foreigners feel like hippies. And yes I indulged myself in it as well. I ate over expensive pasta and smoked some really good hash and by the end of a week “The Hero” was broke.

So I did what every “Hero” would do. I took the advice of the cute girl in my hostel and left for Spiti. And there I saw a topography unlike any I have seen before. It was a 200km journey that took over 14 hours. A land unlike any I have seen, a desert unlike any I could imagine. We were so close to the upper layer of clouds that they would form a clearly discernable outline on the mountain ranges. At every turn of the road my jaw would drop open and I would let out a muffled scream of pleasure: cause it was all so beautiful so mystic and pain: cause the dryness of the air had torn my lips apart.

An epiphany.

Chandratal was an image straight out of a fairy tale. A lake so still that it calmed my very soul. Or maybe it was the hash. I don’t know. All I know is that I was having too much fun and I could internalize it all. I could look at that lake and did not feel the need to take a photograph. Partly because I didn’t have a camera anymore also partly because I didn’t feel the need to.

Spiti was a small village with maybe a 1000 people in it. The bad internet connection and really poor network service had made my stay even more absorbing. It was as if the whole Universe was working toward making my stay more and more immersive. Cut off from everyone and everything I knew, I don’t know why but I had found a new sense of patriotism for this beautiful land of mine. Where people were so friendly and food so delicious that I could almost call it home. After a night I remember and choose to skip I found myself in a car headed to Key monastery. Funny thing is I didn’t have enough money to be in a car but the Universe had brought to me these two lovely ladies who magically enough were headed to the same place that I was. And they were cute too.

I got suspicious at how good my luck was but I chose to ignore it. And just when I was having too much fun the Key monastery gave me some pretty sucky room mates. Their age and condescension had started to get to me when a very nice Israeli couple offered to ease my pain and offered me some Malana cream. The cream was “creme de la creme”. A muffled subconscious and a heightened sense of appreciation was what I was feeling. And infront of me was spread a sight so beautiful that there isn’t a language that can even begin to describe it. The moon acted as a beacon of my reckoning as I looked at the unforgiving hairpin bends on the mountains that lead me into an overwhelming trip. In the valley lay a partly dried up river that turned and twisted like J.K Rowling’s Slytherine. And amidst those harsh onforgiving elements I found an immense sense of peace, tranquility and just the state of being. Not good, not bad, I was just what I was and I was ok with it. It sounds super cheesy when I write it but this is how I felt. And again I did not even think about capturing that moment in anything but my mind. Couple of days later I made my way back to the valley again and spent some more days exploring the beautiful little villages around Spiti.

A Resolution.

You might wonder why “A resolution” why not “The resolution”. This is because every moment of our life is dictated by the choices that we make. And that choice leads to an experience and that experience creates the very essence of our being. We are a sum total of our choices. And I had made the choice to head back to college. The 3 odd weeks had been a journey for all of my mind, body and soul. And as I sat in the train cursing my oncoming days I realized. I learnt something. A lot of things:

- I learnt to live with less. And less was more.

- I knew the technicality of photography but now I learnt the soul too.

- I learnt that life is more than just about us. We are not the centre of the universe but just a part of the bigger picture.

-Lastly I learnt that if I don’t update my whatsapp for a couple of days cause my phone dosen’t support it anymore it wont be the end of the world. Maybe it will be the beginning of a completely new era. An era where I make different choices. And these choices will make me who I am.

………..Chaiwala to Boy: “Bhaiya ab toh naya phone le lo”.

Boy to Chaiwala : “Bhai paise nhi he yaar.”