Issue 8 | 26th February, 2023 | 10 minutes reading time
Hi, everyone, and welcome to your February Multitudes. I’m sorry this is a day late, but I’ve had an intense week that involved rushing a friend to hospital and late nights finishing up work that’s long overdue.
Before I start, I want to thank you for the immensely kind response to the last issue. Many of you reached out to see how I was doing and some of you shared your own exercise and injury-related woes. As far as numbers go, it’s one of the most popular issues so far. It means a lot that my story struck a chord.
A common theme in the responses was an appreciation for a personal story. I figured I’d share a slightly different one today, this time a travel story from a lonely road south of Munich, Germany.
“Bob Marley’s great, isn’t he?” he said as he passed me by.
“Uhmm, yeah, absolutely” I replied. Never mind that I’d heard Bob Marley’s music maybe twice in my life. I was walking down a lonely road in a strange place, no one had any clue of my whereabouts, and nighttime fast approached. It seemed safest to agree and move on. If only he’d let me.
“Ah, you speak English! Great!”
He stopped, walked back towards me, and got talking.
_____
That I wound up on this lonely road at nightfall was the result of lots of enthusiasm and very little planning. It was October 2018; my father and I were holidaying in Schliersee, a small village south of Munich. Back home in Delhi, pollution season had just kicked off. I wanted to take advantage of the pristine alpine air while here, so decided to hike across a nearby hillside.
The problem was, I started crossing the hill only around 2 PM. It was almost 4 by the I made it across. The sun would set soon and crossing back in the dark seemed risky. I wasn’t sure what animals lurked there or whether I’d find the right path. Instead, I’d have to walk around the hillside, adding 20 kilometres to my excursion.
So I began, walking through the green meadows, watching the sun set over the lake, passing a field of ponies. My stomach rumbled throughout; I hadn’t eaten since breakfast but was hesitant to stop for a meal. I had no way of letting my dad know where I was and even if I walked non-stop, I’d only reach the hotel by 8.
And so I walked and I walked. I passed multiple bus stops, only to find I’d just missed the last bus back at two different places. And then somewhere along the way, I passed a strange man who said, “Bob Marley’s great, isn’t he?”
____
He wore grey baggy pants and a shirt to match. His thin face and chiselled jawline ended in a small goatee. The top of his head was radiantly bald, though he’d grown out the hair on the side, tying it up in a bun. His eyes were hidden behind thick sunglasses, despite the quickly fading daylight. A rucksack hung off his back and from somewhere buried inside a speaker played, obviously, Bob Marley.
He seemed surreal and, given the lateness of the hour and loneliness of the path, a little scary. Fleeing felt inappropriate since he hadn’t done anything suspicious. So I stayed and we talked.
I don’t recall how the conversation started, but I do remember that he put the rucksack down and started contorting his body as he spoke. Standing on one leg, he moved his other limbs about in a slow, dreamy manner. I’d later come to recognise these as Tai Chi movements. At the time, they just added to the absurdity of it all.
Soon, he posed a question I never expected.
“Do you know what Ayurveda is?”
Of course. What else would a white hippie want to ask a brown person?
“I mean, I’m from India, so I obviously know about Ayurveda” I replied, somewhat indignantly.
“Oh, wait, is Ayurveda from India?”
A curveball. So he wasn’t racially profiling me. He was just being a hippie. I stood there, slightly dumbfounded, as he extolled the virtues of my culture’s cure to every ill that plagued society.
It’s mind-boggling, the number of coincidences that led to this bizzare interaction. For an Indian to be holidaying in this remote German village was likely rare (though there were three middle-aged Marathi men at our resort who insisted that bathrobes were appropriate attire for lounging in the lobby). Had Schliersee’s cycle rental shop been open, I’d have spent the day cycling around the village and never crossed the hill in the first place. If I’d started my day at 10, as planned, I’d be heading back across the hill earlier and wouldn’t need to walk around it. Add to this a skipped lunch, buses missed at two different places, and my decision to take the side road instead of walking along the main highway.
All of these stars (and likely many more) lined up perfectly, leading me to a conversation with this peculiar man enamoured by Ayurveda. I barely got a word in throughout but he didn’t seem to mind. He enjoyed the sound of his own voice, performing his Tai Chi contortions to the rhythm of his speech.
And then, all of a sudden, he stopped moving and looked dead straight at me. “You’re different, you know?”
Another curveball. I was intrigued.
He continued, “You’re not like these Germans. They’re serious and sad and caught up inside their heads. They’re tense and always in a hurry. But not you. I look into your eyes, and I see calm. You are peaceful. Not like these Germans at all.”
LOL. Of everything he’d said, this felt the most absurd. Most people who know me know of the mild to moderate anxiety I struggle with. I’m always caught up inside my own head and am perpetually tense and in a hurry. Those Germans he described felt like family to me. I have no idea how my eyes betrayed a sense of calm. But who was I to contradict this kind stranger praising me? And so I stayed quiet, trusting that he’d continue talking.
“I never do this, but, because I have looked into your eyes and seen calm, I want to show you something.”
I readied myself to run, fearing I was about to be flashed.
“I’m going to show you my eyes.”
Curveball number 3. Remember, his eyes were hidden behind thick sunglasses. I didn’t make too much of it earlier but was now equal parts intrigued and worried. If he’d been purposely hiding them, surely there was something wrong? Were they scarred or mutilated in some way? Were they differently coloured? Were there just holes where eyes were supposed to be?
I held my breath as he raised his hands to his face, slowly taking those heavily tinted glasses off. Under them lay the most perfectly crystal blue eyes I’d seen. I was too wound up at the time to be mesmerized, but those were the kind of eyes you could really lose yourself in. The kind of eyes that force you to believe that there is something special about those two round orbs in your face; that they’re more than just tools to let light into your brain.
I stood silent as I’d been throughout, but no longer worried. His eyes had put me at ease.
There was nothing more to say. He’d let down his guard and his glasses, letting me witness a rare sight. Our conversation had peaked and there was no point trying to continue it.
We started saying our goodbyes. As we did, he handed me a piece of paper with a picture of a cannabis leaf (duh) and some text. He explained,
“This is my website. I want you to see it. But, when you open it, you need to move away from the computer. A lot of energy will come out from the screen. You need to let the energy escape and move away, and then you can look at it.”
It turns out I was wrong. This was where our conversation peaked. Like everything else he’d said, it left me speechless. So I accepted the piece of paper, put it in my wallet, and thanked him.
As were about to part, I felt our interaction incomplete without the holy grail of hippie culture. I turned to him and said “Namaste”, fully aware that I was needlessly exoticising my culture for this man.
His response - “What does that mean?”
The final curveball, but the most dispiriting of them all. Of course, I’d bump into the one hippie who could lecture me on Ayurveda but didn’t know what “namaste” meant. I hid my disappointment, giving him the most spiritual interpretation of the phrase that I knew - one soul recognising and honouring the other. Pleased by that thought, he turned around and walked away.
And that was that. I headed back to the main highway, walking illegally along it in the dark. A man saw me, stopped his car, chastised me for being stupid, and then dropped me at the nearest railway station. I took a train one station down to Schliersee, reaching my hotel about 6 hours after I’d left. My dad, on seeing me, said, “Ah you’re back, great. I didn’t want to open the beer before you reached.”
____
Somewhere during that holiday, I lost the slip of paper he gave me. I never saw his website and didn’t get overwhelmed by the energy that came my way. I also lost the only real proof that this strange Ayurveda-lecturing, Bob Marley-loving, German hippie was real. I’ve added my Google Maps timeline from the day below, if that helps (I met him somewhere between Gasse and Gmund am Tegernsee). I understand if you refuse to believe this happened. My only defence is that I’m nowhere near creative enough to invent such a tale - there’s a reason I stick to non-fiction writing.
I hope you liked this issue of Multitudes. If you’re enjoying these stories, reply/comment and let me know. While I love trivia writing, it’s been a lot of fun revisiting my memories and experiences this way. You can share this with anyone who’s interested in eclectic travel stories below.
If you’re new here and want to read more of my writing, feel free to sign up. I’ve got an Oliver Sacks-inspired essay planned for next month which I’m really looking forward to writing.
Take care till then,
Shantanu
Are you going to share your experience in Paris? And that of driving across borders to meet a college friend? All on the same trip.