Independence in India: “The Unshackled Soul”
God created this Cosmos with one prominent thing in mind, “UNIQUE”. When I say unique, it translates straight into the exclusivity of each living matter. And in nexus to that, the state of feeling free rather than just being free explains our distinct ways of experiencing Independence. The reason for that liberty will have a countless variety, but the state of feeling that freedom would remain the same.
The unshackled mind, body and soul for me comes from the experience of two small, but noteworthy incidents. Describing them aptly and truly would surely communicate the essence of my ink to anyone who gives it a read.
I am morning walker, yes walking for health like an implied reason, I use to walk. Just walk! Until one day I discovered something so great that it rescued me from the old useless fetters I used to live in and taught me a key lesson in life. The morning time is a quiet time when you actually listen to yourself like no other hour of the day. Walking past a series of house skeletons I saw the common boundary wall that segregated each house from another. What could be so special about an unconstructed house’s boundary? Well, all the boundary walls appeared the same except for the one that lay between the 1st and the 2nd house. The wall had withstood the weathers resulting in abrupt breakage. If the wall be climbed, then the steps would look nothing but crooked and ugly. Sometimes you do things on an impulse but sometimes you do things just for doing it. No marvelous reason adorns your explanation. And at that moment, so was mine. Despite having no reason to climb the wall and walking it, I still did it and believe me, I would have regretted if I didn’t.
Stepping on the boundary itself made my heart pounce like that in an intense cardio workout. I felt scared for the fact that I had to walk that irregularly stepped wall with nothing to balance. And the fall would throw me straight into the overgrown weeds and wild cacti so abundantly grown down. Even after pushing myself a lot I couldn’t do it. This process of seeing the wall, climbing it and then coming down without taking a single step continued for many days until one fine day I told my head, I will not go back unless I walk the wall. Head was strong but the heart, pulsating to be heard from miles ahead, still had its head nodding in “NO”.
One step on the wall, and I told the cacti, here I come, but then the second step relived into another and another ultimately conveying me to the other end of the wall. For those who want to imagine how the wall was, that terrified me so much, here is a small introduction to it. The common wall of the two houses, one brick’s width wide, broken after first step to a steep step of about one staircase rise. All in all a crooked and dangerous path to walk on, that was about 6 feet high.
When I stood on the other side of the wall I took a minute to absorb in the fact that I made it to the other side. Looked around as if looking at the world with pride over my accomplishment and then walked it again to come back. When I stepped down, I felt like doing that again, the same thing that once made me ghost scared. I happily did it, again and again. When I finally thought of bidding it goodbye for the day I realized that not only my fear went away when I reached the other end of the wall but at the same time I felt free, “YES”, free from the fear of my body. In another incident that happened during my morning walk itself when I climbed the boundary wall of a park that stood right in the center surrounded by houses, I walked my way through by stepping the park’s perimeter without the fear of what anyone would articulate or think when they would see me, an adult strolling on the wall instead of taking the road.
In the first incident, I called that adjoining wall as my FEAR CONQUEROR while in the 2nd incident I call that as the WALK OF FREE I AM. The quintessence of both the things that happened released me of my fears and escalated my independence, my freedom. When that fear of falling went away the fear of what the populace would say sublimed like camphor. What I learnt and loved was the fact that such trivial and inconsequential looking incidents in life can transform the very iota of your thinking.
Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence Travel Writing competition and tell your story.
