Listening to the sound of wind!

 

During a recent visit to a hill station in Tamil Nadu, Anna and I had an opportunity of feeling the charm of winding roads of rural India. 

We got the assistance of google maps to travel through the state high ways and rural roads, which gave us a delightful experience. The avenue trees provided the canopy over roads in many parts, thereby making the road journey an experience of travelling back in memory to about fifty years ago. Most of the highways had similar avenue trees giving shade to make travel cooler in summer days, when air conditioned cars were not common. Since the widening of roads, these trees lost their history. It is no more a practice to nurture trees on road side in most high ways. 

The winding roads is another experience of travel to the mountain peeks. The winding roads and hair pin bends, this time forty of them, made the travel a unique experience, to watch at one stage five levels of the road. Watching a dam from a height and distance added to the diversity of sights, different from the ordinary. 

The  tea estates over the slopes of the hills added another dimension of history.  That took us to think about the pre-independent history of India when the Dutch and British turned cooler places to be a settlement for holidays or regular stay, converting vast areas into tea estates. 

A Magpie Robin kept us company when we halted to watch the panorama of the hill side and valley. 

The day breaks early for tea plantation workers at 7 am, who were already in the estate plucking tea leaves. 

It was after a long break Anna and I travelled long distance  to a hill station. The journey and the recollections of history of life of people in the hill stations reminded us that they live at a different pace. They walk long distances each day. The grocery shops provide the essentials and not the luxury goods. The mode of transport is mostly public buses. The houses are like old fashioned Bungalows or  thatched houses. They are so used to tourists and visitors, that they dot seem to be disturbed by people around them! 

It was while returning after the two day stay in the hill station we felt the contrast. When we draw close to nature and experience the serenity of less inhabited places, there is an inner resonance of stillness and solitude within ! 

We noticed that a Magpie robin was alert to the sound of wind!  

We came back thinking, that it is this inner attentiveness we loose, when we live pre-occupied, immersed in the  daily  routines and chores!

That was a timely recovery of consciousness to long to live from within!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)