Mt. Snowdon : As sudden as it gets.
A ride through my past #1
I am writing a time in my life that would seem very contradictory to what I write today. I am sure many will not agree with me on the topics that I mention, but still I feel like opening all of you up to my past.
To be honest, all these incidents have shaped me into what I am today. So I don’t regret them nor am I attached to them. This is just how life took me on some weird journeys!
A certain Wednesday morning, at 3 am.
I was sitting alone on a beach. Sunset and wind were building up together. I was deep in thought, mesmerized at the wonder of being alive. I made it through all the negative thoughts after all. Nothing to fear anymore. There was a crimson haze in the sky and all the blues were turning into violets. Gulls were making their way home. Feet playing with sand like a 2 yo child, hands resting on the knees. I was watching a slightly blurred mandala inscribed in the sand. I must have carved it a while back with my fingers. My thoughts went something like this,
“What a time to live in. It has been a few months since covid. The world has literally gone bonkers. The internet has shot up and the number of people making stupid shit for entertainment has risen as well and still there remains a wide array of population that sits in despair and lives the same tragic life as before.
Before I could form any opinion or even reply, I gasped and sat on the bed. Dream. Dreams are getting longer lately. Dream-thinking. I don't know if that’s even a word. I will add in the dream-thinking throughout the chapter.
I searched all around for water. Nothing!
Didn’t I forget to keep a glass on my bedside?!
Well. It was a walk down to the kitchen again.
Descending into the kitchen at 3 in the morning seems almost as if you have entered a whole new reality. If you peek out of the window, you see no one on the streets, no noise and a certain scared attitude that all of our horror stories have successfully helped build up in our conscience. Reality is just a bit twisted. Erase all the mental conditioning for a day and you would witness a gradual dying world. Yet an eternal scramble around for money as if nothing was wrong with us.
Two sips of water and things seem to get normal.
Covid is essentially non-existent for an upper class of the population but it is still in talks in the lower classes of the society. The ones accepting media and newspapers as prima facie sources of information.
Restless, I sat on the sofa. Still feeling uneasy, I opened the glass door that overlooked the garden. My feet got some taste of that freshly wet grass. Better to stay like that, than to be in socks and shoes all day long.
What even is it about shoes and socks all day long? I get it, it's cold on most days, but the fact remains that westerners don't like to keep their feet grounded. (I found atleast one story online about how wrong it was to show ones feet in a public space.) Once your feet get the hang of the temperature, you’re good to go. Who is to tell this to a people who have found godlike honour in manipulating the temperature? To them, living in what isn’t is more important than living in what is. We all had a good way to keep ourselves warm. A thing called ‘fire’, which an average city-dweller must have forgotten of by now. Restrictions on lighting fire in the houses while more drilling permissions on the Scottish coast. A bit of green politics for everyone. Anyway!
A THIRD WAVE! MAYBE A FOURTH ONE!
Settling on the ground, I looked up at the stars. A beautiful sky filled with galaxies and planets and star systems. I hadn’t seen the sky for some while. I was busy ‘working’.
Work - what does that even mean? “Work” or even ‘scholarly work’ kills the basic curiosity in every human. Doing for a purpose, rather than doing for the sake of doing, as if the universe has set various goals; and yet people suffer. They get anxious about doing, not-doing, achieving, losing, failing. All a useless exercise, in my opinion. Trying to make sense of things is an even greater issue.. reality just is.. be in silence then it starts speaking..
This isolation was very dear to me. I went through a lot to find this space, where I am free of the delusions that the world has set for me. Aren’t we all deluded from the get go?
We are forgetting that TV anchors are getting paid by feeding people information. Information that is based on poor statistics and where someone’s opinion is considered a fact. The people who own these networks have corporate interests on their minds. Pharma companies, industrialists, businessmen, political lobbyists, you name it!
Ideas, whole systems of beliefs, dogmas, scientific dogmas, and a whole lot of other things that make up our psyche as we grow up. We are never allowed to be the truly authentic versions of ourselves. Instead acting in a society to merely exist. An existence so ordinary and banal that it would be better to not be.
I remember a trip to India. I had such clear visions of the nowness. The world is, and it is this isness that I was lacking since I arrived in England.
Sorry to say, but a reasonable amount of the English people are bland, who set their lives so far into the past that lords and kings and queens are still a thing. The funny thing is, people believe and enjoy having them. (Again, not everyone!) It’s their security net - even though the Welsh fighters are long gone, none of the commonwealth countries are to launch a full blown attack on them for the decades worth of loot, and the rest of Europe is anyway a channel away from them. The most they should worry about is the literal changes in laws which are taking away their freedom, paralyzing their democracy and making them efficient but ignorant voters. Tech is making the English population dumb and people never realize it. It’s not their mistake but that is what is happening.
A deeper voice asked me a question, “Now, is it just you who is seeing this as it is? Or are you the only person blinded?” All you know is that people throughout the world are watching someone else, in order to form their understanding now. It is a tragic reality. It is baseless. It has no core. It has no holding in truth. Human intuition has already lost its ground. We are living in someone else’s fantasies.
..and yet, not everyone I have met so far is so obviously numb like others.. The English past, the real one, much before the British set out on their conquests, was of normal people. These people consisted of fighters, peasants, common folk who rejected the authority of a foreign king. Sadly, that part of English history was brushed off from the black boards of historical knowledge and a much more authoritative, obedient history, which suited the kings of then, was passed down the centuries. It is still the case today.
Maja called me one day, “Ash, are you free today?”
Maja was a tall Slovenian who joined our uni-parties. I hadn’t met her in a long time.
‘A joint?’, I guessed.
‘Yep’, she said.
‘Let’s meet at the garage’.
We were sitting in the garage that Gabriel and I had recently cleaned up. It was an empty car storage because none of us poor students owned a car. I loved that space. Actually, I rented the house only because it had a garden and a garage.
Flis, my English roommate, had asked me about my requirements for the house. I said, a garden where I can sit in the sun.
‘Are you a flower?’, she had asked me.
Maybe I am, maybe sunlight and a garden is all that I needed after all. I would end up spending most of my days in that very garden, soaking in the sun. A mint tea and a nihilistic philosophical book to cover my face when the sun was too bright.
‘You should totally meet Jago’, Maja said, sipping the PG Tips that we made together in the kitchen.
‘He loves an adventure’, she’d add.
I liked Maja. She was perfect to hang around with, though she had her own problems. I was never alone. Maja was always a phone call away. We’d make a couple coffees/teas, roll a joint and listen to some really good music. We’d go out on walks and lay around on the bed collaborating on sketches.
Where has the world in my memory gone? Why have my friends turned so numb? Or did that world ever exist? Are we the lab rats or are we actually in an open prison, going through a pan-global Stanford Prison Experiment?
By the time she had mentioned Jago, we were already high and I tend to remember things when I am high, especially if these highs are accompanied by some unique smell or sound. A champa incense from my hometown had filled up the garage. I remember each and every second that I have spent in that space. It was my shrine, where I would put candles and incense sticks and pray if I needed to. It even had a broken window by which I would sit and confess. No one heard me there, other than the westward flowing wind and a couple of pigeons who would occasionally visit me in the garden.
I had walked over with Maja to her house. It was an urban house in the most elite part of Cheltenham, overlooking the Leckhampton Hill. I had fallen in love with the house the moment I entered it. Maja invited me downstairs where Jago shared the floor with her. The entrance was decorated with wooden carvings and logs on either side.
Jago greeted and interacted with me as if he had known me for years or it was just the 'oh, and he plays ukulele btw' that caught his attention. We sat in the backyard, Maja rolled another joint. Jago was clean. He never smoked and he was the fittest too. It is because of his company that I am in this shape today. We would later go onto many long jogs/walks.
He had been to India with his family. When I met Beccy, Jago's mom, it was clear why Jago is the way he is. It's in his genes is all I would say.
"We should go on a hike', he said. We both jammed on the ukulele that Tom (the homeowner's son and his brother) had brought.
“I won’t mind hitching a ride during the lockdown, would you?”
“Let’s go, " he said.
The interaction. The culture. The city. The chaos. The love. The arguments. Does that world even exist? or maybe we as a collective gave up a long time back and we are only witnessing a dying world??”
A few days passed where we didn’t really speak, until tonight when I thought of him.
So, here I am, in the middle of the night, sitting in the garden, bare foot, with a glass of water and I have decided to travel with this guy. We barely knew each other, but my gut says, “this is perfect!”
to be continued..
If you have reached this far then I hope it means you like what I’m doing and if so you might consider supporting me by ‘buying me a coffee’ ( Substack does not let me monetize my articles because I am based in India) which is a one off payment rather than a continuous subscription. Payments, however small, encourage me in my writing and mean that I can spend more time honing my skills.
You can buy my book about my 1800 km walk through India through my website. Thankyou, really! You people have been such a strong support system. Have a wonderful week ahead.
There is one more thing by the way.
Most of you came along on this Substack after reading stories from Saving a Village. There I mentioned the urgency of taking measures against the imminent deforestation, coastal highway projects alongside chemical and oil factories that are about to open up on this eco-sensitive zone. This might end up destroying many villages, including mine, and thus I have decided to walk this 500 km stretch of land. My aim isn’t political, nor am I pointing fingers at any specific companies or factories. Instead I want to speak in each village about change being the only impermanent thing - but this change being the right direction rather than a wrong one. I do not wish to make myself a hero. If anything I will be happy to witness this piece of land and its dying culture. Although if I end up making people aware about this situation than I will be content thinking that I did what was in my power.
For this I would need your help. To plan out the walk, to take care of necessary supplies means having enough funds. I could start a kickstarter or manage crowdfunding through some other website, but none of those options are available to me here in India. So, I will be dependant on your donations. You can donate through paypal - here’s the link. I can even send out a personalised postcards if the donations are above $30.
I will talk about it in detail in the upcoming newsletters. Thanks again!
“Trying to make sense of things is an even greater issue.. reality just is.. be in silence then it starts speaking..” The wisdom in these words is palpable. Thank you for this sharing Ashutosh, your writing and adventures are a delight!