I digressed …

TO digress from an objective is often destructive… but it can also be fruitful, offering surprises that can always be treasured in the heart. 

I have digressed often in life. However, digressing in a group activity can bring more pain than when we digress alone. Remember last time when you forgot your picnic pack and came to the bus, everyone staring at you with a look of complaint?  I have often digressed in group bicycle rides and have gone for short surprises, to have a joint back the group at another location.
No one looks at you or sees the champion in you if you digress from the pack. 

TO digress from an objective is often destructive… but it can also be fruitful, offering surprises that can always be treasured in the heart. 

Why not take a break from your long story and try something short, like a quick snack? Suddenly, you find yourself in a magical world filled with words, wind, rain, darkness, chill, fragrance, and more. 

Do you enjoy short stories? I do. Still, they can pull you away from deeper or more complex thoughts. Reading a short story in the middle of a long one feels like stopping at a roadside hut for tea, getting lost in the view of the cool hills, even though you still have a long journey ahead.

“Sometimes, in the evening while arraying myself carefully as a prince of the blood-royal before a large mirror with a candle burning on either side, I would see a sudden reflection of a Persian beauty by my side of my own. ….  A wild gust of wind, laden with all the fragrance of hills and woods, would put out my light and I would fling aside my dress and lie down on my bed, my eyes closed and my body thrilling with delight and there around me in the breeze, amid all the perfume of the woods and hills, floated through the silent gloom many a caress and many a kiss and many a tender touch of hand and gentle murmurs in my ears and fragrant breaths on my brow or a sweetly-perfumed kerchief was wafted again and again on my cheeks…." 

Once I left my pack to ride to a magical cardamom hill… and came back late…very late... 

Once I left the ice-packed Russian Urals, and the stormy story of a doctor, Dr. Yuri Zhivago, and his passionate love for Lara. And then, I could never find my way back to them. 

Yes, the danger of digressing is that I may never return to where I left off.  

Who am I? Oh, how can I rescue thee? What drowning beauty, what incarnate passion shall I drag to the shore of this wild eddy of dreams? O lovely ethereal apparition! Where didst thou flourish and when? By what cooling spring, under the shade of what date groves, was thou born-in the lap of what homeless wanderer in the desert? What Bedouin snatched thee from their mother’s arms, an opening bud plucked from a wild creeper, placed thee on a horse swift as lightning, crossed the burning sands and took thee to the slave-market of what royal city? And there, what officer of the Badshah, seeing the glory of thy bashful blossoming youth, paid for thee in gold, placed thee in a golden palanquin and offered thee as a present for the seraglio of his master? And O, the history of the place! 

The music of the Sareng, the jingle of anklets, the occasional flash of daggers and the glowing wine of Shiraz poison and the piercing flashing glance! What infinite grandeur, what endless servitude!" 

On a drowsy evening, as rain returned to the city and wild winds rattled the towering coconut trees, torrents of anxious water raced through the gutters. In that moment, I let my mind wander.

Tagore kept me company, his presence conjuring tales, long forgotten tales tinged with strangeness, love, and sorrow, echoing the fading days of the British in India.

But no, I must return to where my heart truly lies: the vibrant chaos of the markets, drawn by the endless search for something lasting. That is my true home.

Tell me, where are you going? Where do you bel

*Fine*

(The quotations from Tagore's 'The Hungry Stones'.

Photos location : Waynad, Munnar, and Himalayas)