who am I ?

Who am I? Where is my home? What does INDIA mean to me ? What does the world mean to me? As my tenure at Manchester draws to a close, these questions have been plaguing me. They don’t go away when I close my eyes or close my mind ~ they sit around with that look of eternal calm and a desire for completion~ when I think of the future , I look past the idealistic possibilities of existence and often focus on the “seeds” of destiny that I have in my genes. I am talking about the legacy I carry in my blood: by the strength of which, everyday I question the very roots of my existence, the deepest core of my attitude towards, learning, towards people towards life. Like Siddhartha, I have no peace within me. the answer doesn’t lie in letting go of all that has desire in it, the answer isn’t in embracing the honest realization that without a system of “want” I will come to the place where my insides will over whelm with a sense of calm~ The more time I spend with myself, the more I realize the gift and the curse I was born with. This ties in very concordantly to what I constitute to be home. In its purest element when characterized I am a traveler ,A seeker , a wanderer ~ my roots stretch from sweltering plains of a south east asia to the cold desolation of a Midwestern farm land . The truth is, home for me is a dynamically evolving idea of “now”. Where I belong changes with seasons, changes with time , and grows with me to embrace the facets of existence which I wasn’t born with , but chose to be a part of. In retrospective, I have no concrete ideology that defines a home, however what I have is dreams, desire and the need to know – a feeling that at times almost burns out of my flesh , to draw out the design for my future.

Last summer , backpacking across India at times I felt like a visitor and a ghost, like a child and a lover , like a person without and a story within, there were thousands of miles of darkness ahead of me and there was the promise of so much light. Every step I took, every smile that warmed me, every touch of skin against mine: reminded me how much a part of me would never fail to answer the call of this mystic land of wonder and heritage, it was a sense of cultural duty and an almost magnetic pull that emanated from the 18 summers I had spent locked in its brown womb. Yet, there was another voice in my head ~ like the breath of a silent inevitability, it spoke to me: I wasn’t meant to dissolve into the nameless crowds and the smell of fried onions and sandalwood, this was a journey that has started many light years ago, with the birth of a single consciousness in the enigmatic vistas of space: a consciousness that I shared with every living thing on this planet. My birth was just a matter of chance, the formative forces for my fragile nucleus to use and understand. The limits of my cultural and social maturity cannot end and should not end within the confines of a single microcosm of our society. Even though, I draw a lot of my value system from the traditional premise that is India, it leaves a hollow sense of ignorance in my heart. The difference I saw in my last summer was evident in the moral clashes I had with almost every segment of Indian society and my definition of how it should be. Not meant in a condescending manner, or from a more learned perspective but a very humble and rational appeal to the potholes within a system and this further formulated my need to understand the existence of life in the world. Maybe this is a search for the universal sense of “us”. What holds us together in social communion? What restrains the dynasty of violence from shredding apart the very fabric of our national brotherhood and international identity? The more I read, the more I watch, the more I see , I can barely keep still ~ my insides are torn apart with the storms of indecision and helplessness , and a very important question keeps coming to mind : what is my battle ?

When Alexander marshaled his army of 35,000 men against the quarter million Persians that Darius commanded on the fields of Gaugamela, he knew no fear, he knew no god , he knew no death , because that was his war ; He had made it , while Darius was just fighting it. Alexander’s military genius and the story of his victory are a part of legend now and so is his conquest into the lands east of the great desert, but what remains vital in it all is that ~ Alexander knew which battle to fight. He was rash, yet calculated, passionate yet rational, the way he used his potential to rule his empire and to lead his conquest and army of men over thousands of miles is a testimony to the harnessing of resources that made him from inside out. And what a life it was , at 32 , while the known world looked up to him in fear and awe , he had written poetry, listed hundreds of new species, fashioned cities whose glory would stay for centuries and above all had ushered in a system of respect for other cultures and the very origin of inter racial brotherhood. Yet , none of this would have worked had he not known which battle to fight : in the fading light of each day all of us want to be like the great Macedon: courageous, wise , enterprising , passionate and revolutionary ~ yet , few of us ever find him within us because we never try and find the battle that fits us .

I know the paths I have walked are just the beginnings of the journey that started with touch of desire in that initial consciousness and neither with the ebbing of time nor with the decay of old age and mental and physical atrophy will it ever die ~ However, I feel it in the deepest, most sacred memories of this force within me, the need to explore and scatter my roots all over my “home”, the world. I am not on a journey of power like Alexander was, and neither is my battle with the “flesh” that covers my being : It is essentially the need , and quite often the searing pain I feel within me to know , to understand , to belong ~ And yet, everyday, the more I walk, the farther away , the horizon goes ….in my dreams, in my rational designs , I realize that like Frodo, I must carry this ring alone to Mordor : this is my task, my gift , my curse.

There is so much peace in the vision of a future where, the geographical self of the world will run parallel with the social self of it, for me. A journey of immense proportions with more friends than time, more love than ignorance and above all an eternal sense of humility at the incredible system of beauty that makes up this world, my world….my home.