One misty morning, my friend and I travelled on the top of a bus from Kalimpong, a little hill station in West Bengal, India, to Gangtok. It was a reckless journey. The bus brimmed with people, and the overflow –we included – had scrambled up to find a place. There was no sense waiting. The next bus would be no better.
It was bitterly cold, and the road, taking sharp twists and turns, was a relentless agony. I wasn’t taking in the nature unfold its pristine best although I registered amidst the chaos all, a beverage factory, which my co-travellers shouted belonged to a Bollywood star.
I didn’t expect to make it to Gangtok, and I clutched hard to whatever metal hold, and tried to laugh with my friend – a veteran in this game. After all, he has lived in Kalimpong all his life. He, Pradhan, grows orchids and cacti; it has been his family vocation.
Kalimpong had been a nice experience. There was the imposing Kanchengunga mountain range, a lot of pretty flowers, a festive air, long nights of card-games, Pradhan’s huge family – who took me in as a member, and an eerie bungalow upon which Pradhan had woven enough stories to scare any one out of his wits.
We had slept there one night, and I am sure that the slap I got on my cheek in the middle of the night was a nasty prank by my friend though he denies it vehemently. He attributes it to some long-dead British man who had built the house. Oh yes, he was foul-tempered and had died a terrible death. As horror stories go, it was perfect thriller material, but the slap was particularly painful, and I decided not to read into the episode further.
Next morning, we were on the Gangtok bus. I don’t remember much of the sleepy town, except for the flowing robes of monks and a huge walled building, which Pradhan said belonged to the king.
I, however, remember eating delicious dim sums, and walking down the main street at night. That was sheer idling. And I have never experienced the same feeling of total peace – with yourself and with the world around you – ever after.
That joy of idling hit me the other day in Dubai making me realise that idling isn’t laziness. It isn’t escapism. It isn’t resting. And it does not need a Gangtok street to be discovered.
I see the joy every day, on the faces of those chess players who sit by the Deira taxi-stand – day in and day out. Do they have no other work to do? I see it in the old men who sit by the shops in Bur Dubai souk; in the dhow crew as they stare into the creek from the wayside café.
In this very minute of sheer idling, they are not going to break their heads on the utter mundane-ness of the work schedules that wait them. They would idle now; the worries can come later.
Image courtesy: http://live-less-ordinary.com/gangtok-to-changu-lake-in-low-season/
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