Monday, January 2, 2017

Bullet Returns: Final words

It's the next day today. Returns are always vague. I feel disoriented adjusting back to the city when I return from a trek or even a small 2-3 day ride like this one.

I wonder what happens to us in the city. B kept asking along the way, why are we planning these Mars colonization trips? There's so much space around. It's true. In a densely populated country like India, there's so much space. It's expansive. We all like to accumulate in the cities for the conveniences and access to stuff. Mars is just an ego project, I said. Cities are hot. Clearly the temperature has been rising. It felt more stuffy than it did 9 years to return to the city.

What happens while riding a motorcycle is that you breath and smell the external world constantly - a changing external world. Your senses are alive. The air hits you. You know if you feel cold or hot. And it's a constant change. So your senses perceive things more acutely than if you would be in a car. And a little differently than if you would be walking (it's slow).

The stuffiness makes people less sensitive generally. More transactional. There's definitely a loss of innocence. Smallest of interactions appear weird in the city. In remote areas, smaller towns - somehow people are a lot more relaxed and natural.

Anyways. The trip was a bigger one for B. He was getting out after 9 years. I've lived most of my life in these 9 years. I've not written about several trips. I'll write, I was telling myself.

Chalo, I'll get going now. 

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