Sun Addict 2
He* wrote at length and copious length at that, of the delights of sauntering, of stopping a while to make modest acquaintance of tree and meadow, of walking like a camel, ruminating, of going where one’s tread might lead. While these pleasures I can appreciate, a farm, a meadow, a gurgling brook upon which a meandering path rests are but a random luxury, a wealth of those long-ago times that I must recreate in my mind, for the laburnum and the gulmohur stand proud against the manmade that towers to the sky. Should I peer through half-closed eyes, I would gladly encounter a deep forest of yore beyond, spy a doe eyed deer, and hear the drumming hoofs of a warrior in pursuit, and the clamoring sigh of a flock of birds. Or come upon an orange robed mendicant seated in deep meditation beneath the overpowering, kind canopy of the whispering peepal. He scorned walk for exercise, said that our walks were no crusade, half the walk wasted in retracing our way back home, what would he say of this circular track where people jostle, all the classes admixed, the limbs stretch and contract to an unheard beat, a reassuring rhythm that holds ample space for the call of the koel and the shuffling of the wind in the palm? He who walked in dappled shade, what would he know of the life granting touch of burning sunlight?
(*Thoreau, Walking)
Mira Desai lives, works and writes in Mumbai, where she works in pharmaceuticals.When she can, she writes fiction and translates from Gujarati, her first language. She blogs at austereseeker.blogspot.com