Sunday, October 9, 2011

An ode to the outdoors

When I was growing up, "I love nature" sounded very uncool to me. For me, loving nature was for people who hung big posters of Himalayas/ Bengal Tigers bought from Boring Canal Road, in their living rooms back home. I clearly didn't know too many real travelers in those days. My parents, who liked getting out quite a bit, approached traveling with amazing accuracy and planning. Strict, do-as-much-as-you-can, see-everything-you-can, city holidays those were.

Anyway, for all the uncoolness I associated with loving nature for many, many years, turns out I love it. Give me a patch of green, and I will give you a flashing smile. And for that, I don't even have to get out of the manic city traffic. A patch of tree line road, the dense greens outside my balcony, this big patch of green I see from the terrace, that goes on forever - anything will do!

My quick getaways are pretty lame a lot of times, we drive on to a some picnic-y location, and then we drive around to find a secluded place that has some green, some water, some peace. And it is a holiday stashed away safely for reference when I get sick of the monotony. Sometimes even a drive to the middle of nowhere just outside Outer Ring Road does the trick.

If I spend my weekends at home, I usually get pretty restless by Sunday evening. And then we sit and think about all the cool things we could do. Turns out, none. All I really need on a Sunday evening is to get on that bike, and do some hawakhori. There is nothing else in the world that is more liberating than a bike ride. It makes a muggy day look good. This love for outside might be one of the biggest reasons I have, for not enjoying eating in a restaurant so much anymore. Unless of course it is open on all sides. Or it is food served on the side of the road, bang in the middle of "outside".

This may be bordering on some sort of obsession, this love I have for outdoors of pretty much any kind. But somehow I don't want to unlearn it. It keeps things simple.

Sometimes I think I have grown up to be very different from how I thought I would be. Oh well. Thank God.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ME TOO! (Referring to this entire post.)

In my case though, it might just be because I associate being outdoors with being free. Anything else is a compromise.