The road

The road is part of my journey. It is going somewhere and taking me to a destination. All of us on the bus are passing through. We experience the length of the road, the turns and changes, the bumps, the valleys, the hairpin bends, the scenery. We are accompanied by the changing rivers, a presence along side us. We pass through towns and villages and take mental snapshots of the faces and scenes. The bathers, the vendors, the people breaking rocks, the men playing karam, the children going to school. Our experience of the road is moving, transitory and changing.

The people in the village experience the road as part of life. What does the road seem like to people who live in a village by the road but have never left it. The road is solid and a part of life, your children are born and live by it, they play on it, you walk to work or the fields along it, you cross it to get water, you sell your snacks to people who pass by on it, it is a central part of life in villages that straddle the tarmac. Yet it is also a fluid thing that brings people and changes and moves on. Passing through. Never static. Always busy and moving and changing and vibrant. Does the road have its own life? Does it call people to leave the village and move on, to where may not be clear, but onwards. A call to the unknown.

Maybe that is just me. Is a road okay just to be there? Does it beg to be travelled and explored? For me I think it does. I like to sit and watch the world go by, but after a while I want to be ‘the going by’, on my way to some new place. Seeing where the road takes me and what the road offers me. Onwards.