The Bad Influence
Tags: Writing, Short Story, The Bad Influence, Fiction, Storytelling

Hiraeth

Photo by Hari Nandakumar on Unsplash

It has been awhile since Tania has travelled. Around this time last year, she was in the central forests of India. It was something that she did that was truly wild for the first ever time in her life. Camping with total strangers in the wilderness made her anxious. A multitude of thoughts crossed her mind that night. “What if danger awaits us?” “ Would any of these strangers step up and look out for others?” “ What if it were my friends?” “Would they have looked after each other?” But what had confused her the most was whether she would have stepped up for others. She did not know. She remembered the Tumblr post she saw a week before that,

“People are not against you. They are for Themselves.”

“Maybe they are,” she thought.

Nothing happened that night that would turn their lives up side down. She learnt to capture star trails in her newly bought Olympus camera. From the central forests she went straight to the sand dunes of Jaisalmer. She was on a local bus, inside of which looked truly vivid. Ladies wearing beautiful hand made clothes and men wearing intricately crafted head gear sat as if in an elaborate oil painting. There was a snake charmer. There was also an old man making sophisticated beats using the traditional Khartaal. That was the only bus ride in her life which she wished would never end.

She went broke for a few months, but soon made enough money by creating content. Then she travelled to Petra, Jordan. For a few days, she camped in the deserts, capturing the clear night skies of Petra. A few days later, she met a group of five indigenous people from Hawaii. It surprised her because it was not something most indigenous people in Hawaii would do. It was so random. Yet there was a group of people with burning tattoos on the outside and a burning desire on the inside. Three of them were farmers who worked their assess off for most part of the year- cultivating Cassava, pineapple and coffee. Kana is a mechanic, his workshop focus on customizing bikes and off road vehicles. They were all from Waipio Valley in the Hamakua District of Hawaii.

She camped with them and danced along with them. On the second day, she got herself a tattoo from Alana, who is the artist in the group. A beautiful tribal tattoo that originates from behind her ears.

She felt a pain in her heart when she left for home. Not because it was an end to a beautiful journey, but to know that she could never be as free as the group from Hawaii. She thought about it a lot after reaching home. “What if I could travel endlessly, without limits, camp with strangers on the foot of beautiful valleys, groove to the local music, hear stories from the childhood of other people, and share a deep connection? What if?”

Before she could finish that thought, her mom called her for dinner,

“Tania, come fast. The food will get cold. I made vermicelli for you.”

That was enough. The clouding thoughts in her head made way for the realization of how privileged she really is. There were moments in her travel when she really wished to be back in the comfort of her home. She cannot deny it.

“Well, maybe I need this. Somewhere to come back to.”

She turned on her ipod and rallied down the stairs to have her favorite vermicelli.

And the music went,

Only know you’ve been high when you’re feeling low

Only hate the road when you’re missing home.