Into the Wild

My first attempt at stringing together a few words about my stay in a foreign location begins below. Since I’m going to be writing a lot, I thought I’d start off with a little bit about myself…

I pride on being the typical Indo-Brit-Yankee culture influenced teen. I, like many others my age love showing off the ‘I don’t give a damn about old traditions’ culture my generation has slowly acquired. Which means typically, to show that I’m ‘cool’, I have to parade around with heavy metal music blaring in my ears, jeans that just cannot hold on to my waste and a Jimmy Connors like perpetual swagger, to show off my utter contempt for anything thirty and above.

I don’t really fancy the look that I acquired just to make myself fit in, but it grows on oneself. Till the tenth and secretly even now, my honest choice to spending a day would be an R.K Narayan novel, a Satyajit Ray movie and a game of tennis as a cherry on top. Of course, I have to twist this choice to Playboy, American Pie and a night of immersing myself in alcohol to convince my lot that I’m worth associating with.

I don’t know why I chose Himachal as a place to complete my mandatory internship. I could have spent a month and a half wasting my life, and probably convinced myself that I took the right path by working in any Indian metropolis. I guess something in me gave me a kick while submitting my choices and a week after my exams, I was on my way to the north, a part of India I had never been in.

Well, it’s been a week and a half now. My first three days here, I admit, were unadulterated terror. The thought of being somewhere where canned juice is a novelty seems hard on any city boy. The fourth day however, I felt so brain clogged, that I decided to do what I used to on a regular basis earlier, go for a nice long jog. After 2 kilometers of panting, I stopped at the edge of the valley and looked down.

And I’ll be frank, it was a high I’ve never ever had before. All my worries, tensions from college, issues with girls, my biting conscience, all of them just dissolved into nothing. A river gushed in full flow down, unperturbed by everything around it. The thousands of trees surrounding me flanking its borders. Every breath of air I took in sent oxygen of a quality whose worth was unquotable. And I loved every moment of that moment. I sat down and just stared in space for an hour. Just thinking about what an idiot I had been for the past one year, and how I had let my identity run away. Being here for a month has given me that little chance at change, and I’m grateful.

I know I must sound dramatic, but there are things in life that no one can teach you, which you just figure out. In my case, I had to return to the most primal friend a human can have for advice-nature. I’m glad Himachal gave me that opportunity. In the week I have spent with My Himachal here, I have learnt a LOT.

I plan to write a lot about how much this state continues to make me think, about how different the culture of the people is, about how the nature here can give you an inferiority complex unlike any other and lastly but not the least, my experience with the varied work I’ve been doing with MH. I’ve never been this alone for a long time. I wish to give everyone my age(and everyone else who might consider by opinion a little something) my view on the impressions of this beautiful place, its people and its culture.

I’m not a particularly modest person, and I can pompously declare that I’ve travelled a lot over the world. I’ve seen all those places dear old Bollywood has advertised more than the tourism department of those countries itself, right from Switzerland to New-Zealand.

I’m not going to say Himchal is more beautiful, that would be unfair to Mother Nature.

But I can definitely say that for any person in the world, Himachal is by far, the most charming.

I’m a very social person. This feeling of loneliness makes me feel strangely sad….

But at the same time-content.

Till next time…

The writer is an Intern with My Himachal from Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Pune.

Sumedh Natu