Safar- A journey

donoñ jahān terī mohabbat meñ haar ke

vo jā rahā hai koī shab-e-ġham guzār ke

One fine evening, when the gym was closed, I went for a walk along the roadside near my rented accommodation in Thannamandi. The path runs along a mountain slope, with a stream flowing on one side and houses perched at higher altitudes, their inhabitants watching the water pass endlessly below them. One strange thing I noticed during these walks was the wind that travels with the stream. As you walk beside it, the cold breeze rushes straight at your face—making you believe the water is melted snow flowing down from the Pir Panjal glaciers.

The past three months have been an immense struggle. I twisted my leg during a cricket match, and recovery has been slow and cautious. Exercise has helped, healing has begun, but I remain conscious of my knee—I know I cannot run freely yet.
That evening, I sat on a riverside foundation. Lights from distant houses reflected softly on the water, and only a rare car passed by. By evening, life here feels settled, almost paused. Yet, like Bhaderwah, the running stream of Thannamandi roars like a lion throughout the night. I stayed seated, my head covered with a hoodie, when a sudden gush of wind struck my face. It reminded me of the book From Booseman to Banaras, Enna Dick’s spiritual journey. In my youth, back in 2013, I had gone to Banaras to feel the Ganga ghat during the evening hours. The Ganga had shivered me with its breeze as I played with sand along its banks.
Memories followed one another: evenings on the banks of Dal Lake, the wind rising from the water as we steered the boat toward the Dargah; my emotions once pushing me to drive to Pahalgam to listen to the voice of Lidder, where we sat with friends by its banks; and the Jhelum’s breeze never settling my nerves during a curfewed night in Srinagar in 2016, when I fished quietly behind a friend’s houseboat.
Now, sitting here, I missed all those companions—both human and timely aura. A tear rested on my cheek, then rolled down and disappeared into the river, a tear that wished to travel with the stream. How a simple breeze can awaken so many memories! It reminded me of Khalil Gibran’s saying that life is “a tear and a smile; a tear to share with those who suffer, and a smile to share with broken hearts.”
May be I am tired with travels and homelessness. I have travelled with passion and into separation. When they say the universe is expanding, why don’t they say it is also displaced and separated? I know we are travelling fast, and I feel like me along with the universe are drifting away from memories and friends.
Bhaderwah’s streams once asked me to stay. Now this stream has created a memory as well. I could not stay at Dal. Nor did I help my emotions at Bhaderwah. I left all the waters with a heavy heart, and now this stream before my eyes searches, with deeper pain, for meaning. Perhaps we need exile to see all the streams of the world, but not before carrying the pangs of missing the previous ones.
At the end of the day, we are all only travelling—moving endlessly, like rivers, carrying fragments and pieces of ourselves downstream.