A journey in search of life -- after many ‘rebirths’
| Date :26-Mar-2023 |
By Amol Maokar
“I needed a rebirth. Life was a mess by late teenage, and, because people around me were the root of this mess, I decided to skip people.” Skip PEOPLE! Sounds crazy, because it tells exactly what is felt, not a thesaurus-backed word option with an ordinary meaning. It precisely expresses the intensity of a heart, not a line the mind concocts to impress. When you come across Vishal Tekade, you might dismiss him as another young kid jumping into the typical ‘traveller-to-Ladakh’ bandwagon. And did he just overdo it, by using a pedal-bike, instead of a motor-bike? The boy must have soon realised that the bicycle ride was afterall, a stupid thing to do. It must have been a regret for sure, and now he must be looking for a lot of short-cuts to go on with his so-called journey to hog some limelight by the way. His social media pages said: In search of life... “Typical.”
The boy doesn’t seem to care, apparently. His amazing journey reminds of Rumi’s line: “Whatever purifies you is the right path.” He continues with a zeal much higher than the zeal he began with, a thousand days ago. And, that is what draws your attention. He has been riding his bicycle for nearly 3 years; So engrossed in his search for life that
he ignored most of the mediapersons. Or, did he carefully stay away from them? A deeper scan through his social media pages revealed whatever he was saying were realisations straight from the book of life. Pretty serious. His simple daily posts make a lot of casual watchers sit up and introspect.
A serious probe into what exactly the kid’s up to, and you learn that he is hardly 23-year-old. He was 20 when he left home, on an old bicycle. What’s about the bicycle? It could have been a train journey -- more comfortable. No, it had to be by road. Travelling by train is still protected, guarded, well-managed, calculated… And, the whole idea was to break that security, leave those cosy corners of what they told him life was. “It was a special journey. A journey in search of life. Beyond the walls of façade the society had put up around me in the name of life and achievements and happiness. I had been playing by the rule sincerely, in this game of façade, yet none of the achievements brought me peace. So, I had to leave.” At the age of 20! Vishal had been a topper throughout his academic life. “I was a scholar, because I earned all scholarships,” he laughs, sarcastically, “but still I was facing a zero when it came to life. Distressed, depressed, in trouble. There were Sant Kabir and Sant Tukaram in my textbooks, but the teachers carefully taught only a few verses. ‘Learn them only to earn marks,’ they said. The real meaning of Kabirs and Buddhas was never taught to me.” What he did to correct the course for himself befits a real scholar, unlike the ones who mug and spit theories and theorems at the drop of a hat, and yet are miserably stuck in the mess of societal norms. So, story of the journey isn’t so important. The philosophy behind it is. Childhood wasn’t smooth for Vishal. Parents were well to do, but constantly fought, separated, and remarried, both of them. At 8, the boy was at the mercy of a stepmother. He grew up with a constant search for the cause of all pains. One final solution to kill all his sorrows. A studious student, he started making notes of his observations and understanding of human life. He put them together in the form of a book – Reborn Within. However, it was still a theory that he suspected was true. Even if he believed it partially, it did not bring him peace. It was all intellectual. The restlessness continued.
One day, he decided to leave home, with Rs 10,000 and an old bicycle. But an equally fired-up mentor in Amravati, Santosh Garje, advised him something, which sounded bizarre to him then. “Unless you are robbed of every single thing that comforts you, you will not find it. The thing that you are looking for.” “I had to listen to him, because Garje sir is someone who had been running an orphanage, and he adopted his first child when he was 18,” Vishal mentions without fail. He donated all the money he had to the orphanage and started riding ahead. He had nothing to eat for 3 days.
He was hungry, but it was difficult to ask someone for food. When he couldn’t bear it anymore, he asked for it, and observed something wonderful. People were happy to help. They all needed a chance to get the feeling of helping, serving someone. “The realisation was immense. You can’t have love unless you start giving. It’s giving that comes first, which then generates compassion. I have to be ready to give first. I understood what Garje sir was saying. Give up all that is yours. In the process, you will end up giving up yourself. What will remain then will be pure love,
as that is the point when the divine is flowing through you.” And this understanding wasn’t merely intellectual. The travel ahead got lighter with this realisation. Because, for him, there are no others, or other places, now. He has realised that the world is a reflection of his being. He’s on a drive to correct the world by correcting himself.
“I will tell you an incident that destroyed and dissolved all my fears,” Vishal starts to narrate another incident. There was one rainy night during Covid-19 when he was not allowed to sleep in any of the temple premises which used to be his night shelter usually. He was an “outsider”, so they suspected his intentions and drove him away. The place was Pandharpur. That night, he slept in a graveyard, with his raincoat on, under a makeshift shed, which did little to protect him from the downpour. He was totally exposed, as if the Gods are snatching away, one by one, every single thing that he had been holding on to. None of his achievements, the identities that the society had given him, were of any use there. “But after all that, the next morning, I was still there. What exactly did I lose?” And then came the
realisation: “I am what remains when everything’s gone. Everything that we collect and guard day in and day out. The God of Pandharpur chose to give me what He did not give to all those who guarded his temples.”
Having to sleep in a grave was a lesson that took him beyond the fences of hesitation. When he slept in the grave, maybe he didn’t want to take another birth. Another physical birth. He did not need to. In that graveyard – as Vishal says – he was reborn within.
Vishal is in 1,015th day of his search for life. Growing closer to The Truth with the push of each pedal. After covering 28 States and 9 Union Territories, he crossed the international borders. Now, he is in Nepal. He no more has to look for a place to sleep. People feel the warmth of this young traveller and give him references for the next town. But it doesn’t matter now. When asked, when he is coming back from his journey, he quips: “Where do I come back? I’m home, already.” The universe is his home now. His parents have made peace with the idea that their kid was born for the roads less travelled. And, Vishal is at peace, as he has found his destination, which is to choose the right path, and keep riding, till he is purified.