A walk in the woods-putting life in perspective

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These days the most blissful part of my day is my walk in a neighboring forest preserve which I prefer to take at the crack of dawn.

Today on my stroll, the path was partially obscured by the morning mist. Appropriately perhaps a ?song from the? 1965? Hindi film Oonche Log played almost subconsciously ?in my mind

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The song for me symbolized the spirit of the moment. The legendary singer Mohammed Rafi showed his mastery over the craft beginning with a little above a whisper almost as if taking the first tentative step into a new dawn. In the second verse the cadence ?grows more assured resting finally at what one lyricist called Rafi’s ‘makhmali’ tone. ?The song’s ?lyricist was the impossibly versatile Majrooh Sultanpuri and the music composer was the equally talented Chitragupta.

On a philosophical level though another song, sung by Rafi's contemporary, Mahendra Kapoor, would have been more symbolic of the moment. It is from the 1973 film Dhund. The lyricist is the legendary Sahir Ludhianvi.

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My companions daily are several species of birds, ducks, geese and swans. ?Perhaps the most ubiquitous bird is the American Robin whose chirps make it sound like an avian choir. But in reality there could only be a couple of them.

At this early hour, the trail is almost bereft of human beings, which is just as well. I cannot help feeling a vague sense of betrayal if I spy a fellow human. It is almost as if someone had rudely intruded into my sacred personal space. My dear friend and fellow journalist Mayank Chhaya shares this unreasonable view. “Yeh subah meri milkiyat hain,” he tells me. (The word milkiyyat is borrowed from the Arabic word milkiyya. The reference was to the land owned by zamindars(landlords) during the Mughal rule)

It is during these walks that I have -thanks to Youtube and Bluetooth- reacquainted myself with the great minds of history. “Read their works ?and you are walking with the great achievers of history” said the historian and philosopher Will Durrant. My ?companions have ranged from the ?writers V S Naipaul and Christopher Hitchins, the Indian music composers Mohammed Zahur Khayyam, Naushad Ali, and ?the lyricists and poets Javed Akthar and Gulzar.

“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees” said Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau preferred the term ‘sauntering’ which described the activity “of idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages.”

And so as the mind harks back to the realm of history and ideas, the hour is up and life and reality intrude once again.

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