You cannot trust your life or limbs to be safe on Guwahati roads. The authorities seem to take a perverse pleasure out of leaving yawning, Stygian gaps in the footpaths or piling the sides of the pavements with heaps of stones and sand. You may be hurrying forward in your evening constitutional, huffing and puffing at the sheer exhaustion of it, and then you suddenly find that the foothpath has disappeared and you are left to negotiate a treacherously narrow road where vehicles bear down with the tenable intention of scaring you out of your wits and making your heart flutter in a distinctly unpleasant way. Car drivers seem to make it their life’s mission to reduce pedestrians to a state of acute nervous exhaustion and the ones who drive bigger cars do seem to have bigger egos and bigger tempers than the drivers of smaller cars. I have seen car drivers actually descending from their cars and actually raining blows on some hapless pedestrain who did not give way to the vehicle in time.

When I was a little girl of about seven or eight, an uncle of mine often took me for a walk to the Guwahati Railway station. It seemed a strange destination, but it is entirely understandable. My uncle had once been in the army and during our forays there, I often saw groups of armymen moving from one train to the other on their different postings. They were close-knit groups and often joked and laughed among themselves, twirling their proud moustaches and slapping each other on the back. They seemed refreshingly free from the shackles of mundane everyday life and were always on the go. Perhaps, my uncle missed this camaraderie and freedom of the army life he had left behind.

Standing there on the overbridge, watching the crowds milling on the platforms, the trains rolling in and out along the tracks, gave me an idea of how vast the world was. Everything seemed perpetually in motion, the chai and snack wallahs running up and down the length of the trains, the big wheeled carts that carried the luggage, the red-shirted coolies following the passengers. But, among them were some people who were, as it were, on a limbo. Some of them were old lepers who sat still, a diseased arm stretched out, a tin bowl in front of them. Others were people who had made the platform their home. They lay fast asleep, their belongings under their heads, oblivious to the hooting trains, the chattering masses, the ceaseless announcements about arrivals and departures. Nobody nagged them to get up and go to work. Nobody asked them how they were feeling. They were the forgotten ones and returning home, I was always a little depressed remembering them, who seemed already to be in the valley of death, outside the pace of life.

There was another uncle too, who loved to take my brother and me on his brand new Jawa bike. Uncle was the quintessential man about town, proud of the fit of his drainpipe trousers, leather jacket and hair slicked down with Brylcreem. The Jorhat of those days was a small, sleepy town where a boy conversing with a girl on the street had the ramifications of a major scandal. Everybody knew everybody else and entire families sat outside in the verandah on still evenings, when a cool breeze drifted in from the Bhogdoi and the cows came lowing from the green pastures. Uncle, driving his loved bike at breakneck speed, was considered a rebellious James Dean kind of figure and the fact that he had no interest whatsoever in his college books seemed to endear him doubly to our eyes. My brother and I, two gangly pre-adolescent kids, clung to him for dear life as he thundered through the streets and exulted at the racket his machine made. In that small town place, where nothing really happened, Uncle was the exotic figure who stirred interest wherever he went with his shiny bike, shiny jacket and filmi sideburns.

Walking can be described as a metaphor for life. It is the journey which is important rather than the destination. A walker who focuses only on how soon he reaches from point A to point B will miss out on a lot of things about the journey. It is not so much about how fast and competently you walk as to what you see as you go along, the sights and smells you absorb and make your own. During my evening walks, what I enjoy most is the sight of the people on the way. There is the officegoer with his battered bag, trudging homeward after a long day, looking forward perhaps to his snug place on the couch, watching his favourite football game before a warm meal gets served by his wife. There is the housewife running a critical eye over the piles of vegetables, mentally preparing the evening’s menu, scolding the vendor for the limp greens or the spoilt potatoes. There is the grandfather and the grandchild, one facing the sunset and the other heading for the sunrise, one ambling with slow, tired steps, the burden of past failures and disappointments weighing him down and the other skipping forward, eyes agleam with anticipation, marvelling at the surprises strewn along the way. And yet, they are bound intimately by the ties of blood and kinship and they need each other’s experience and zest for life to keep going.

Walking on the hills is different from walking on the plains. For one thing, it is far more strenuous and the steep incline of the roads make you grunt with effort. It is also more romantic and mysterious. The twisting roads promise a different sight as you take each bend and there is the keen anticipation of sighting something new. You can hear a stream gurgle and chatter by the side of the road, its silvery waters concealed by the leafy undergrowth. Or there may be a ghostly mist creeping around you like a silent adversary so that the hills are obscured and you are transported to a shadowy world of nebulous shapes. Best-selling author Ruskin Bond has written about how he came upon ideas for stories during his solitary ramblings around the streets of picturesque Mussoorie and how his visits to the local graveyard gave birth to spine-chilling stories of ghostly spirits. Walking frees the imagination in a way no other activity can. You do not require any particular skill for it except, perhaps, that of observation and rumination. It brings to life memories that had retreated deep within you and creates a world in which you are complete and self-contained. Your physique may benefit from your evening constitutional, but it is really your mind which is truly enriched.

i_raimedhi@yahoo.co.in

Indrani Raimedhi