Attitude, Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao
I am still struggling to come up with an apt title for what I am going to write now. Perhaps I am trying to combine two different themes into one, that's why? So far I have already come up with three - 1) It is "I" who makes the difference 2) Sometimes "it" is just near you 3) What makes the difference? and none of them seem to convey what I want to write about. Each of them conveys some of what I want to write but not everything. Nonetheless, I will settle for the 3rd one and keep on going without worrying about what the title should be.
I am still struggling to come up with an apt title for what I am going to write now. Perhaps I am trying to combine two different themes into one, that's why? So far I have already come up with three - 1) It is "I" who makes the difference 2) Sometimes "it" is just near you 3) What makes the difference? and none of them seem to convey what I want to write about. Each of them conveys some of what I want to write but not everything. Nonetheless, I will settle for the 3rd one and keep on going without worrying about what the title should be.
I have been doing a lot of traveling for a little over four years now for various business related projects. During the first couple of years, traveling was exciting because I could see different countries, meet different people, see different cultures, appreciate similarities and differences between the cultures, sample good local food and many such things. But within two years, it was no longer exciting to me! The new places started looking similar and the attraction was lost. The Seattle downtown looks similar to Mumbai or Shanghai city center - tall buildings near a beach or a river on a bright afternoon.
(Downtown Seattle, WA)
(Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA)
So why lug 30 pound bags, take a 20 hour cramped flight to another country, miss my cup of dal, curd and rice, and take all the pains just to see another similar place? Ahh, what a miserable position to be in, if your job involves a lot of travel!
Luckily for me, my perception changed for good this summer. I drove about 3 hours reach to Seattle from Portland to see Pike place, which is famous for its energetic people. On reaching the Pike place, I felt nothing exciting about the place, till I saw this grandmother and her grand-daughter.
(I do not have your permission to post this photo, but you guys are simply great! I want others to share your attitude too. I did not want to post your picture, but this article is incomplete without this picture! )
Everyone other than the grandmother and grand-daughter seem to be indifferent at one of the most active areas of Seattle. The grandmother is enjoying the moment (In fact, she asked me to take her picture and even posed like a model before bursting into laughter!) and her infectious laughter spread to the kid, who has plaster on her arm and is yet not grumpy. What makes the travel exciting is - taking such pictures, singing songs on the way, eating on the roadside, two families sharing one bedroom space in a remote corner of a forest, playing games in the park ... It is the things in-between that we cherish. The excitement does not lie in reaching the final destination but enjoying the in-between which will be always different.
Last weekend while I was at home and took pictures of a sparrow and a rose from my apartment. I did not have to go far beyond to a capture a moment that would make my day. Sometimes things are just around us, and yet we do not appreciate them. We just go searching for them on a trip hundreds of miles away...
(A sparrow in my apartment complex)
(A home grown rose in a pot)
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