Journeys intrigue me. When I was living in Kolkata, because of work I had to travel quite a bit. I crossed India from Cooch Behar and Assam up north to the southernmost tip of Tamil Nadu—Kanyakumari. From Mumbai to Delhi to Chhattisgarh to Odisha, Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala. During train or bus journeys I just love looking around capturing details, colours, people’s faces, idiosyncrasies, the way people relate to each other: from the boisterous fun-and-food loving Bengalis to the quieter and a little more ordered Malayalis (if I may generalise). After a trip, I was never the same: for one thing I used to be dead tired. But there is something deeper than just tiredness and grime; I realised that there was a shift in me, I can say that I was richer just for the fact that I undertook the journey. I remember when in 1988 as a twenty-two-year-old I had stepped for the first time, out of the Air India flight in Kolkata, I felt as if I was ready to go back to Malta from where I had started. The fact that I had succeeded in arriving in faraway India was enough for me.
There are some journeys we only take once in our life. They are few but unforgotten. Nobody can take such journeys for us. They are those journeys which will remain etched in our hearts. For Sri Aurobindo the change came after he stepped out of Alipore Presidency Jail. He knew he was not the same Aurobindo Ghose anymore: there was a shift from a nationalist to a spiritual visionary. For the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, it was the journey he undertook from France to Belgium — a journey on foot for three days and three nights in the beginning of March, harsh winter in Europe. He was only 27 and after that journey he knew he was a painter. For Archbishop Oscar Romero it was the road trip that led to a heart-wrenching discovery: his friend, Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, murdered alongside an elderly layman and a young boy. This tragic encounter shattered Romero’s timidity, propelling him to break his silence and demand a thorough investigation from the oppressive military regime.
Br Carmel Duca MC
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