The walls within

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Hello, fellow human beings. Human beings, it is the most underappreciated word in our dictionary.
We live in a tiny little planet and we still managed to divide this tiny planet into 7 Continent and 195 countries.

None of us is born racist or religious or followers of a cast. We are raised to become one.
Our brains are very impressionable.

But all this changed as I stepped out to the world and started travelling. I learnt that the world is not like what they teach us in books.
I am gonna share 2 stories which re-shaped my perception –

Story Number 1 – I landed at London Heathrow airport. I realized my bag has gone for its own trip to Paris. My baggage was lost. I was baffled and hassled and taking my frustration out on airlines people. Suddenly, I heard a voice from behind, Bhaijaan kahan se ho Hindustan se? I Looked around and a guy in a blue uniform walked towards me. He introduced himself as an immigration officer. I explained to him what happened and told him it will take a couple of hours for the bag to come. He said you can freshen up and rest at my place till you get your baggage and my wife cooks amazing biriyani. He had an Urdu accent in his Hindi so because of my stereotyping I asked him are you from Hyderabad, he smiled and said no I am from Karachi. I stepped back a Little and looked at him surprised, asked why are you helping me, I am from India. He said ” Pet bharne ki kashmakash mein kisi se nafrat karne ki kahan mohalat hai, janab border wahan hote hain yahan to sirf insaan hote hai”. (English Translation) –  In the struggle of filling the stomach who has the time to hate anyone, borders are back there here we are just humans.
Story Number 2 – Jerusalem and Bethlehem, if you check on the map these cities are just 9 km away. These two historical cities are united by history and mythology but divided by humans. When I went there what welcomed me was a 40-meter border wall a wall which divided Jerusalem and Bethlehem. This wall is witness to one of the longest-running conflict in the history. But when I was travelling back to Jerusalem I witnessed something very beautiful. A conversation between two babies one from Israel and one from Palestine they were hardly a year old, they were making sounds to each other, waving at each other but the parents were hardly looking at each other because of the hostility between Israel and Palestine. but these two babies were oblivious to these differences.
I realized one important thing that day History was Real, Culture is Real, The Cuisine is Real but the concept walls borders and countries are the fragments of convoluted thinking. There are no borders there are no walls it is all in here. To an extent that we identify ourselves as Delhites, Kannadigas, Indians or Americans but we forget to identify ourselves as Humans

And travelling brings these imaginary walls down.

Travel changes your perception. You start noticing a lot of things you never noticed before. A lot of things start making sense to you.
200 trillion galaxies in this universe and around 1024 planets in this universe. All of us started as stardust after the big bang and after travelling as stardust for billions of year we managed to be born on this tiny little planet as a human. This privilege of being human is for a very short period, let’s use it to travel, eat new food, talk to new people and make new friends.

I hope all of you fall in love and fall in love with travel.
Humans travel to see places but I travel to see humans.
May the force be with you.

3 Comments Add yours

  1. Harsha says:

    Love it 😊

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Shwetha says:

    You have extremely beautiful way of putting thoughts into words… overwhelmed by the tiny little story you told which explained Zillion things hidden.

    Write more i would love to read your blogs everyday

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Arun Verma says:

    Hi PP, first time I read your blog and for the bottom of my heart,you writes very well.. Definately bro,travel changes our perception.

    Like

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