Hi,
My name is Anup,
I am your storyteller for tonight.
Tonight I am going to be speaking about,
As a philosophy,
As a story.
If you love to walk,
This is your time,
Yourself in a jungle,
In a forest.
You can choose to close your eyes,
Lie down on a comfortable surface and switch off the lights because we are going to be switching on our inner light.
Distances change utterly when you build on foot.
It comes a long way,
2 miles literally considerable,
10 miles whooping and 50 miles,
The limits of conception.
The world you realize is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know.
Planetary scale is your little secret.
I live very close to a jungle,
In a mud house and I often walk into the jungle space.
My inhibitions stay back.
I just open myself to the possibilities.
Life takes on a neat simplicity too when you are walking bare feet.
I remember first time I did that,
I was with a local lady and she asked me,
Why am I walking with my shoes on,
What am I so scared of?
I said,
I am scared of poisonous things,
She replied,
Just because we are scared of poisonous things,
We are also to all the good that jungles,
Forests have to offer when we walk with our shoes on.
So I walked with my shoes,
Time ceases to have,
I started walking and then when it was dark I went to bed and when it was light again I got up and everything in between is just in between,
It is quite wonderful really.
You have no engagements,
Commitments,
Obligations or duties,
No special ambitions and only the smallest and least complicated of wants.
You exist in a tranquil of tedium,
Serenely beyond the reach of exasperation.
You are removed from the seats of strife as the early explorer and the botanist will him,
But all that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.
As I was walking on the base,
Another lady stopped me,
She was carrying a log of wood on her head and she was resting.
As I crossed her,
She stopped me and asked me why am I walking so fast,
I am just walking at my own pace,
To reach somewhere and that is walking fast,
There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere.
However far or long I plod,
I am always in the same place,
She made me realise that,
I am always in the woods.
It is where you were yesterday,
Where you will be tomorrow.
The jungle is one boundless singularity.
There is no point A or point B that you can traverse from and to when you are in a jungle.
Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other.
Every glimpse into the tree is the same tangled mass.
For all you know,
Your route could describe a very large pointless circle in a way it would hardly matter.
At times you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago,
Crossed this stream yesterday,
Clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already.
But most of the time you don't think,
No point,
Instead you exist in a kind of mobile zen mood,
Your brain like a balloon deterred with string,
Accompanying but not actually part of the body below.
Travelling for hours and miles becomes as automatic,
As unremarkable as breathing.
At the end of the day you don't think,
Hey I did 16 miles today,
Any more than you think,
Hey I took 8000 breaths today.
It is just what you do.
How to exist in a jungle does not follow time cycle,
It does not follow any google maps.
It has its own paths and it lets you create new paths.
It lets you set new landmarks for yourself.
You don't have to reach any landmark at any given point in time,
You can just reach whenever,
Wherever.
Imagine yourself in this jungle where rules don't exist.
Feel free to explore this jungle with imagination and don't forget to remove your shoes when you enter this jungle,
This forest of freedom.
