Dreams and desires – aren’t they fascinating beings? Don’t they form the grand scheme of things in our survival? What are our lives if not just a search for the direction to guide us towards them?
Someone once told me, “Original ideas are pretty hard to come by.”
Well, there are times when I ponder and daydream about ideas.
I see people, people whom I care about, toiling hard every day on their own paths – some grand, some modest – but driven by dreams nonetheless.
I have always thought about the reasons why a person beginsto admire somebody else. When does he start feeling an attachment to another human being? My guess – it all starts with a conversation. Speak to someone for hours and it leaves you feeling enervated but then you meet a stranger for a few minutes and it feels like you just can’t stop talking.
We all have the opportunities to meet strangers like these -some pass on the chance and some take the leap of faith. Every once in a while,we take cab rides which take us from our source to our destination. On quite a few trips, my mind is preoccupied with a lot of thoughts – thoughts mostly about how I am faring in the grand scheme of things. Occasionally, I look around and see this person entrusted with the responsibility of taking us safely to our destination, the contraption he’s stuck in for hours on end and the way he has made it a way of life. Sometimes they speak first, sometimes youlisten to these stories to say – about their lives, their experiences, theirfailures. They share with you a piece of themselves and often they are so valuable that you keep it forever within you on your journey. This is my way to bring to you some of these stories which we carry with us and to let you know that once in a while it doesn’t hurt to take that leap of faith, to open up and soak in the experience. This is my original idea and I hope I can reach out to you in some way or the other. I hope you carry this with you on your journeys.
We were enjoying ourselves at a friend’s place. It was Thanksgiving and we were part of a wholly satisfying evening. But it had to end at some point. We had to take leave and embark on our journey back home. And that night, as a lot of other nights, we entrusted the responsibility of driving us safely back home to a cab driver.
It was late in the cold night in Downtown Baltimore and we hurriedly jumped up in the cab. There were three passengers in the car – Oindrila, one of her friends, and me. Theycomforted themselves on the rear seat while I sat in the front. We had a minor hiccup when we realized that one of the doors was not properly shut. The man who was driving seemed to be in his early sixties, an African-American with a wrinkled, unshaven face and with a cap on his head. When the door indicator of this dash alerted him about the mistake, he politely asked us to check which door was open. We found it and once it was closed properly, we took up speed towards our destination.
A few minutes into the ride I started noticing the dash of the car. Right before me, I saw two photographs attached on top of the glovebox. On the left, the photo showed a handsome young man in his twenties dressed in a blue suit and white shirt with a blue cap on. It looked like the attire of one of the wings of defence, but I wasn’t sure which. Right next to it was the picture of an old man who looked like the person driving the car.
I was curious. I asked him about the man in the photo on the left. He seemed excited to tell me “That’s me, back when I was in the AirForce.” I was drawn into his story right away and wanted to know more. Hewas kind enough to continue saying more about him.
He got enrolled in the Air Force right out of college in the 70s and his dream was to fly a jet. But in his long tenure of about 10 years, though he visited places like Germany and Thailand, he never got the opportunity to train for flying one. Sadly, he was a passenger. “I have been a lot of places and what I saw is that there’s love all around”, he remarked.
His tenure at the Air Force ended and all the education he had was in Business Administration. He dreamed of going back to college to pursue studies but he life drew him in a different direction. He pursued photography. I was fascinated because I am an amateur photographer myself. We heard how he spent a lot of years doing fashion and clothing photography. He did not really like the darkroom, he said. He never liked playing with all the chemicals and the whole process of developing a photograph. “It’s mostly digital today”, I told him. He agreed and then we spoke about how some photographers and filmmakers still shoot on film today. I was thinking about all those articles I have read about Christopher Nolan using IMAX cameras and encouraging distribution and screening of movies on film. He said at the end of his professional life, he worked on a project which piqued his interest a lot -restoring old photos digitally.
Photography is such a subjective and nuanced art form. The same scene can be captured by two different people in completely different ways and somehow so often one seems so much more appealing than the other. He told us about the enchanting nature of imagination and creativity – there’s so much new to bring to this world.
We were nearing the end of our trip and I guided him with the directions to our home. He parked the car right in front of our house and I realized that all this while we didn’t know each other’s names. I asked him his name. He said, “Create. Create, like in creating something new.” I thanked him and got off, still intrigued by the name.
This was my humble attempt to share one of those innumerablestories we all keep within us. From today, Oindrila and I are going to share those pieces of other people’s journeys we have within us. I hope you like them and the next time you are looking out of the window sitting on the back seat of a cab maybe, just maybe, these stories motivate you enough to take the leap of faith and start a conversation.
