The Wanderer

​I am a wanderer who wants to travel everywhere—from the mountains to the desert, from snow to water, and from small tea shops to fields, from gurudwaras to masjids. Yes, I want to travel like a free bird who has lost its nest, but still, there is someone waiting for me. She waits for the day I return, to hug me and feed me with love. Yet, there is a resentment regarding my travels; she complains to me, "I am alone here. Who told you to travel? You don’t think about me; you just want to fly like a free bird." With a bit tiff in her voice and a frown in her face.

​While she served me food with love, I realized these thoughts had been hidden in her mind for days. She had been waiting for me, her brown eyes was looking at me without blinking filled with love and in that evening staring across the fields toward the road that crosses them as we watched the fields together, her head resting on my shoulder in that fog-surrounded air, she stared into the wheat and asked, "Will you leave me again for your trees, your dargahs, and the mountains?"

​At that moment, I kept quiet for a second. I stood up, walked into the field, and plucked a single yellow flower from the wheat. I came back to her, tucked it into her curly hair, and held both of her hands and rubbed it with my thumbs and I asked , "Do you know why I travel? Do you know what calls to me?"

​She didn't utter a word in that silence. I said, "It’s you. It is your love. I travel to feel the happiness within your complaints and the small sorrows you convey when I return from a journey. That is what motivates me; that is my ecstasy."

​I saw her eyes fill with tears; her eyes seemed to glow within them. With my hands, I wiped her tears away and said, "From now on, I will not leave you alone anywhere."

​Just then, the sound of the bani drifted from the nearby Gurudwara into our ears:

​"Moo lalan sio preet bani Rahaoo

Toree n tootai chhoree n chuttai

aisee maadho khinch tanee"

​Which translates to:

"I have fallen in love with my Beloved. If I try to break it, it does not break; if I try to let it go, it does not leave. Such is the string the Lord has tied me with."

- aromal. 🕊️