Imagination unboxed
Tags: Articles, Travel Writing, Writeup, Writers On Medium, Interesting

Of all the stories we have heard, one that has an astounding impact is the one which is happening now. Ever since I have started writing ‘travecdotes’- amalgamation of travel and anecdotes, I have discovered a thing or two about this endeavor. To write content related to travel, one doesn’t necessarily need to travel; but what is essential is for one to let their imagination travel.

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A lot of us have vivid and interesting imagination which quite often struggles its way out of our intricate, rigid system. The more it’s trapped, the more we lose out on crafting the best stories. Stories are manifestation of vivid imagination, and imagination isn’t limited in nature. You can dream any dream; you can imagine anything under God’s sun. There are no barriers, well, unless one chooses to introduce them deliberately. This is when one should let loose of their imagination, for it to travel across the boundaries, and break all the barriers.

The question however is, how and where are we going to let our imagination travel? It isn’t all that complicated, the answer. You let it travel to places that you are afraid to go to, in your physical form. Often, we end up holding ourselves back from traveling, for reasons known to us; but when we do that, we essentially ‘box-up’ a throbbing desire that can be satiated only when we go miles. I’m not defying anyone’s stance, we all have our reasons, especially because we are Indians, it is not hard to understand why we hesitate to travel. But like the saying goes ‘Heart wants what it wants’.

Perhaps that is when imagination, quite literally comes to our rescue. When we can’t experience things in real-time, we allow our imagination to do the job for us. But how does our imagination see what we haven’t seen? It does needs a context, doesn’t it? No. I don’t believe so. A friend of mine has started sketching off-late; he had an elaborate discussion with me about my expedition to ‘Chitkul’- the last Indian village on the India-Tibet border, Himachal Pradesh. We discussed at length, and once we were done, he started working on his next sketch, which supposedly was of everything that I described about the place. What amazed me was the accuracy with which he had sketched. The similarity in what I had seen and described, and what he had sketched was uncanny. I scratched my head, because the guy had never been to Himachal Pradesh.

One might call it talent, others might deem that to be hard work, and some might term it as ‘God’s gift’, sigh, I beg to differ. I call this manifestation of high imaginative power, coupled with practice and hard work. The best part about imagination is it’s not one person’s prerogative per se, we all can imagine. It’s free, if you were wondering. We have the ability, almost in an equalizing way, to imagine the most detailed subject, provided we let it travel miles, just like my artist friend who allowed his imagination to travel all the way to Himachal Pradesh.

The next time you see a box, make sure you peak hard into it, because you never know who would’ve stuffed their imagination in there. In your case, I’d say, it’s time to unbox.