“Aankhon mein jiske
koi to khwaab hai,
Khush hai wohi jo
thoda betaab hai,
Zindagi mein koi
aarzoo ke jiyein
Phir dekhiye……
Hothon pe jiske
Koi to geet hai,
Wo haare bhi to
Uski hi jeet hai,
Dil mein jo geet hai
Gun guna lee jiye
Phir dekhiye…..”
- Rock On
What’s Dream, and what’s real? Are we really sure that the world we live in is real? I breathe, I walk, I talk, my heart beats, but am I real? May be I am. The wind blows, the sun shines, the streams flow, the grass is green and the dew drops on it shine like pearls; are these real? May be.
Or are they not? What if, all we see is a dream? A beautiful dream, may be dreamt by someone eternal… one of the many dreams he sees, I wonder what is the reality then? What is the factor that discerns dreams and reality? Are dreams, imaginations of things which can never exist? Once a friend of mine told, “Bani come out of your illusions! What you imagine will never come true!”
Does that mean dreams which can never come true are called Illusions? Then how can someone dream it?
“Cogito ergo sum.”
- Rene Descartes
“I think, therefore I am.” No one defined reality better than Descartes. Reality to a person is what he can imagine, because no one can ever imagine anything which he can’t perceive. My dreams, or as you say my illusions, are as real as the blowing wind, the shining sun or the cascading streams because I can perceive them.
It was Sunday afternoon; we Hydventura trekkers were on way to Karjat station to board the train back home; I was peeping out through the jeep’s window when I met someone.
I asked him, “How can you survive on that hill all alone, where no one else did?”
“Because I know myself”, replied the tall Palm Tree.
Know myself? What does that mean…. Knowing myself?
I asked him again, “Buddy can you please tell me what you mean by knowing oneself?”
The tall palm elaborated, “It’s like you know what you want, the limits to which you can go. One day I too was small; a seed; my bearer dropped me where I stand now. I started slowly, or should I say clumsily, not sure where to spread my roots, there was no one to guide me, I made lot of mistakes, I failed many times, but with patience and tolerance, with mercy enough to forgive my own mistakes, I grew, clumsily but steadily.”
The lone palm tree continued, “And you know, you missed some, I am not alone here, look around me.”
I looked carefully at the hill again; it was all green, full of grass. I felt guilty, how can I overlook the grass they had painted the whole landscape with green, the color of life.
I asked them, “You all are everywhere I see, it must be easy for you to survive, but why is it so? It is not at all easy for the trees?”
They replied in unison, “Because we know ourselves”.
I gave obtuse look.
They understood that I am not able to fathom and elaborated in unison, “We are small things, we lie low, and it may look easy to you that we survive easily, but the reality is different. We are not green everytime, the sun who gives us life, can take it too. He scorches us to the very core. But we have faith in ourselves. There’s a small thing within us, beneath the surface you can see, it’s our roots, our very soul, it’s small but powerful and it remains quiet, faces all pain silently and waits. Waits till the first downpour, even a drop of the heavenly nectar which you people call as rain gives us our hope back. And it is this hope that keeps us alive when all sources of life leave us.”
The Palm and the grass sent me to trance. I started reflecting on the trek we were returning from. It was a sunny morning in Pune when Peri, Kanuj and I joined Aish (Apni wali not Amitabh wali), Sadique, Deepthi (P.S. it’s deep not shallow and thi not hai, i.e. abhi Shallowhai, khair jo bhi hai acha hai), Shivaji (yes, by Shivaji, I mean Shivaji, the one!), Ashu, Eby (not the one my Hydrodynamics Professor introduced me to), Poovri (now at paschimi part of India), Ravi, Jay (Good Stamina and cameragraphy buddy), Sravanti, Soumya (Dude from Orissa, bad combo, shave karle bhai), Santosh (the owner of Santosa Resort), Ila (madam your 50 lakhs is at my desk, you can collect it anytime), Dipesh, Aditya (Bhai how is ur bag? Usko lagi nahi na?), Kalyan, Arun, Adnan, Shravan and Parichay. Getting down at Karjat we had a big hunt for transport to the base village Khopivali and after some experiments with bargaining skills we finally moved ahead and reach base by afternoon.
The trek to Ahupe begun soon after we crossed the farms east of Khopivali, it was my responsibility to set the pace for the trek so that we reach the top before sun down and I knew that this gonna be a long evening. We kept on walking… stepping on boulders and pushing ourselves up and up with the heart pumping more and more to the sinews and the lung doing his part of tasks. Is it not a miracle how all the organs function coordinating with each other in harmony? I sometimes wonder what is it that separates one living entity from another, why is it that we can’t have access to another person’s thoughts, his joy or his pain, why? Why are we all not interconnected? May be that’s the strategy the eternal architect used to protect his creations… may be to restrict the pain to few entities and checking it from spreading all over society. But yet he gave us compassion, so that even if we can’t feel the pain for others still we can empathize it, and give a helping hand to others who are in need.
It was sunset time when we completed climbing the Ahupe ghat; lying on the grass at the top of the Sahyadri mountain range; watching the lone star, the Venus, on the cloudy sky; I felt really relaxed. Venus, my favorite star; scientists call it planet, but for me she is the brightest star; has always been with me wherever I went, she brings a smile on my face everytime I see her. There’s a secret language I talk to her with, only she can understand it, I share all my pain with her and she just smiles and tells, “Bani the pain in an illusion, you feel it because you think it’s real, just look into my eyes, there’s no pain” and peace spread through my mind.
It 4.45 AM when Peri’s alarm rang, it was time to leave the cozy school balcony where we had the delicious rice the previous night. The gang got up pretty fast and we were on the double to the….(lemme name it) Venus Point to have a glance of the sunrise and the misty valley, with peacocks’ and lapwings’ songs filling the nature’s vivarium.
It was time to descend the mighty Ahupe ghat again. Sipping the views of the valley through our optical slits and the parrots and barn swallows cheering us all the way, we starting hopping the boulders one after another.
Down the ghat, near the stream most of us were enjoying when the news of Aish’s fall came, we all were worried and soon I hurried with Jay, Eby and Poorvi to find vehicle ahead to the towns, I knew Peri was there behind sweeping the group and Aish had the first aid kit, so I need not go back, more so when I came to know that the bleeding has stopped.
It took some time to arrange for 3 jeeps but that was done before others reached. Soon we were off to Masshaa where we have our lunch and Aish’s wound got dressing in a nearby clinic.
I feel like giving a lecture on understanding your body while doing endurance sports, ya it won’t sound kool, I can avoid it to have a fine travelogue, but still I will, because it’s more essential to share your learnings with others than showing off the beauty of Sahyadris. I will be short but there are things that all trekkers should know. First is how our body functions; all of us know that muscles do all the physical activities… blood is what carry the energy required by the muscles. While doing trekking the body needs more energy than they require usually…. The density of blood cells carrying energy can’t be increased all of a sudden so to increase energy supply to the muscles the rate of pumping of blood to the muscles increases. This provides the required energy to the muscles but that comes with two side effects, first it uses up the available energy like the carbohydrate from the food we have ate… like the Theplas we had just before the trek, secondly because of the higher energy requirements the muscles the blood supply to the other organs like brain are decreased which can cause dizziness. Sometime the body also induces higher heart rate when there’s excess loss of energy, there will be involuntary shaking/shivering of some body part or the whole body, body does this to increase the body temperature; I have personally felt shivering out of cold at noon in summers during some of my cycling trips and these are signals that our body give to us and if we ignore them it can become dangerous.
And there was well defined solutions to all of these; if the heart rate goes up a lot, it means it’s time to relax, sit down in a relaxing posture, don’t lean forward, keep legs stretched and relaxed if possible, let the heart rate go down before you start again; this will avoid a situation of dizziness. If you shiver or any body part shakes, you need to relax and have some carbohydrates (non-oily food) and minerals (Electrol).
There’s another thing, as we spotted a green colored viper on way, lemme share what should be done to rescue a snake bite victim (learnt this during a CPR & First Aid course that I did). Tie the part above the snake bite wound, do not ever cut the wound to let the venom out, cutting the wound will spread the venom faster in the body as other arteries also get cut and the venom spreads in them too. The next step is to, identify the snake, if you can’t identify it take its photograph of and rush the victim to nearest hospital. The identification of the snake is essential to select the right anti-venom, hopefully with the photograph the doctor can identify it…. The photograph idea is mine the guy who took the First Aid course told to kill the snake and take it to the doctor for identification; I have neither the will nor the guts to kill a snake or any animal.
Enough of lecture I guess.
Santosh and I were lurking of out the window of the Konark Express, watching the Sahyadri mountains with the peaks hidden behind the clouds, soon Deepthi joined us, nostalgic discussions kept us engrossed, Chess and Chinese checkers lead to more conversations and finally cooking was the subject when the time for parting came. But that parting was happy, with smile on everyone’s face, the waving hands, I knew everyone had a pleasant trip, since two years I have given pain to many, whether it has been cycling or trekking I have given pain to many legs. But when I see them smiling even in that pain, I remember one thing that my Venus tells me, “Bani, Joy is reality, Pain is illusion, there’s no pain”.
koi to khwaab hai,
Khush hai wohi jo
thoda betaab hai,
Zindagi mein koi
aarzoo ke jiyein
Phir dekhiye……
Hothon pe jiske
Koi to geet hai,
Wo haare bhi to
Uski hi jeet hai,
Dil mein jo geet hai
Gun guna lee jiye
Phir dekhiye…..”
- Rock On
What’s Dream, and what’s real? Are we really sure that the world we live in is real? I breathe, I walk, I talk, my heart beats, but am I real? May be I am. The wind blows, the sun shines, the streams flow, the grass is green and the dew drops on it shine like pearls; are these real? May be.
Or are they not? What if, all we see is a dream? A beautiful dream, may be dreamt by someone eternal… one of the many dreams he sees, I wonder what is the reality then? What is the factor that discerns dreams and reality? Are dreams, imaginations of things which can never exist? Once a friend of mine told, “Bani come out of your illusions! What you imagine will never come true!”
Does that mean dreams which can never come true are called Illusions? Then how can someone dream it?
“Cogito ergo sum.”
- Rene Descartes
“I think, therefore I am.” No one defined reality better than Descartes. Reality to a person is what he can imagine, because no one can ever imagine anything which he can’t perceive. My dreams, or as you say my illusions, are as real as the blowing wind, the shining sun or the cascading streams because I can perceive them.
It was Sunday afternoon; we Hydventura trekkers were on way to Karjat station to board the train back home; I was peeping out through the jeep’s window when I met someone.
I asked him, “How can you survive on that hill all alone, where no one else did?”
“Because I know myself”, replied the tall Palm Tree.
Know myself? What does that mean…. Knowing myself?
I asked him again, “Buddy can you please tell me what you mean by knowing oneself?”
The tall palm elaborated, “It’s like you know what you want, the limits to which you can go. One day I too was small; a seed; my bearer dropped me where I stand now. I started slowly, or should I say clumsily, not sure where to spread my roots, there was no one to guide me, I made lot of mistakes, I failed many times, but with patience and tolerance, with mercy enough to forgive my own mistakes, I grew, clumsily but steadily.”
The lone palm tree continued, “And you know, you missed some, I am not alone here, look around me.”
I looked carefully at the hill again; it was all green, full of grass. I felt guilty, how can I overlook the grass they had painted the whole landscape with green, the color of life.
I asked them, “You all are everywhere I see, it must be easy for you to survive, but why is it so? It is not at all easy for the trees?”
They replied in unison, “Because we know ourselves”.
I gave obtuse look.
They understood that I am not able to fathom and elaborated in unison, “We are small things, we lie low, and it may look easy to you that we survive easily, but the reality is different. We are not green everytime, the sun who gives us life, can take it too. He scorches us to the very core. But we have faith in ourselves. There’s a small thing within us, beneath the surface you can see, it’s our roots, our very soul, it’s small but powerful and it remains quiet, faces all pain silently and waits. Waits till the first downpour, even a drop of the heavenly nectar which you people call as rain gives us our hope back. And it is this hope that keeps us alive when all sources of life leave us.”
The Palm and the grass sent me to trance. I started reflecting on the trek we were returning from. It was a sunny morning in Pune when Peri, Kanuj and I joined Aish (Apni wali not Amitabh wali), Sadique, Deepthi (P.S. it’s deep not shallow and thi not hai, i.e. abhi Shallowhai, khair jo bhi hai acha hai), Shivaji (yes, by Shivaji, I mean Shivaji, the one!), Ashu, Eby (not the one my Hydrodynamics Professor introduced me to), Poovri (now at paschimi part of India), Ravi, Jay (Good Stamina and cameragraphy buddy), Sravanti, Soumya (Dude from Orissa, bad combo, shave karle bhai), Santosh (the owner of Santosa Resort), Ila (madam your 50 lakhs is at my desk, you can collect it anytime), Dipesh, Aditya (Bhai how is ur bag? Usko lagi nahi na?), Kalyan, Arun, Adnan, Shravan and Parichay. Getting down at Karjat we had a big hunt for transport to the base village Khopivali and after some experiments with bargaining skills we finally moved ahead and reach base by afternoon.
The trek to Ahupe begun soon after we crossed the farms east of Khopivali, it was my responsibility to set the pace for the trek so that we reach the top before sun down and I knew that this gonna be a long evening. We kept on walking… stepping on boulders and pushing ourselves up and up with the heart pumping more and more to the sinews and the lung doing his part of tasks. Is it not a miracle how all the organs function coordinating with each other in harmony? I sometimes wonder what is it that separates one living entity from another, why is it that we can’t have access to another person’s thoughts, his joy or his pain, why? Why are we all not interconnected? May be that’s the strategy the eternal architect used to protect his creations… may be to restrict the pain to few entities and checking it from spreading all over society. But yet he gave us compassion, so that even if we can’t feel the pain for others still we can empathize it, and give a helping hand to others who are in need.
It was sunset time when we completed climbing the Ahupe ghat; lying on the grass at the top of the Sahyadri mountain range; watching the lone star, the Venus, on the cloudy sky; I felt really relaxed. Venus, my favorite star; scientists call it planet, but for me she is the brightest star; has always been with me wherever I went, she brings a smile on my face everytime I see her. There’s a secret language I talk to her with, only she can understand it, I share all my pain with her and she just smiles and tells, “Bani the pain in an illusion, you feel it because you think it’s real, just look into my eyes, there’s no pain” and peace spread through my mind.
It 4.45 AM when Peri’s alarm rang, it was time to leave the cozy school balcony where we had the delicious rice the previous night. The gang got up pretty fast and we were on the double to the….(lemme name it) Venus Point to have a glance of the sunrise and the misty valley, with peacocks’ and lapwings’ songs filling the nature’s vivarium.
It was time to descend the mighty Ahupe ghat again. Sipping the views of the valley through our optical slits and the parrots and barn swallows cheering us all the way, we starting hopping the boulders one after another.
Down the ghat, near the stream most of us were enjoying when the news of Aish’s fall came, we all were worried and soon I hurried with Jay, Eby and Poorvi to find vehicle ahead to the towns, I knew Peri was there behind sweeping the group and Aish had the first aid kit, so I need not go back, more so when I came to know that the bleeding has stopped.
It took some time to arrange for 3 jeeps but that was done before others reached. Soon we were off to Masshaa where we have our lunch and Aish’s wound got dressing in a nearby clinic.
I feel like giving a lecture on understanding your body while doing endurance sports, ya it won’t sound kool, I can avoid it to have a fine travelogue, but still I will, because it’s more essential to share your learnings with others than showing off the beauty of Sahyadris. I will be short but there are things that all trekkers should know. First is how our body functions; all of us know that muscles do all the physical activities… blood is what carry the energy required by the muscles. While doing trekking the body needs more energy than they require usually…. The density of blood cells carrying energy can’t be increased all of a sudden so to increase energy supply to the muscles the rate of pumping of blood to the muscles increases. This provides the required energy to the muscles but that comes with two side effects, first it uses up the available energy like the carbohydrate from the food we have ate… like the Theplas we had just before the trek, secondly because of the higher energy requirements the muscles the blood supply to the other organs like brain are decreased which can cause dizziness. Sometime the body also induces higher heart rate when there’s excess loss of energy, there will be involuntary shaking/shivering of some body part or the whole body, body does this to increase the body temperature; I have personally felt shivering out of cold at noon in summers during some of my cycling trips and these are signals that our body give to us and if we ignore them it can become dangerous.
And there was well defined solutions to all of these; if the heart rate goes up a lot, it means it’s time to relax, sit down in a relaxing posture, don’t lean forward, keep legs stretched and relaxed if possible, let the heart rate go down before you start again; this will avoid a situation of dizziness. If you shiver or any body part shakes, you need to relax and have some carbohydrates (non-oily food) and minerals (Electrol).
There’s another thing, as we spotted a green colored viper on way, lemme share what should be done to rescue a snake bite victim (learnt this during a CPR & First Aid course that I did). Tie the part above the snake bite wound, do not ever cut the wound to let the venom out, cutting the wound will spread the venom faster in the body as other arteries also get cut and the venom spreads in them too. The next step is to, identify the snake, if you can’t identify it take its photograph of and rush the victim to nearest hospital. The identification of the snake is essential to select the right anti-venom, hopefully with the photograph the doctor can identify it…. The photograph idea is mine the guy who took the First Aid course told to kill the snake and take it to the doctor for identification; I have neither the will nor the guts to kill a snake or any animal.
Enough of lecture I guess.
Santosh and I were lurking of out the window of the Konark Express, watching the Sahyadri mountains with the peaks hidden behind the clouds, soon Deepthi joined us, nostalgic discussions kept us engrossed, Chess and Chinese checkers lead to more conversations and finally cooking was the subject when the time for parting came. But that parting was happy, with smile on everyone’s face, the waving hands, I knew everyone had a pleasant trip, since two years I have given pain to many, whether it has been cycling or trekking I have given pain to many legs. But when I see them smiling even in that pain, I remember one thing that my Venus tells me, “Bani, Joy is reality, Pain is illusion, there’s no pain”.
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