Yet Untitled Lite 20 - A Short Essay on Wrong Turns
And Many Photos of Unlikely Roads.
Dearest Yet Untitler,
I was attending a wedding in another city, and the venue was an hour and a half away from our hotel. Google Maps offered me a route that was 20 minutes faster.
I took it.
And therein begins a tale!
We were directed through what was more or less rural wilderness seemingly fit only for the kind of vehicles driven by Queen Elizabeth’s family while on holiday in their far-off estates. We were rocked on this road for kilometre after kilometre, with Google Maps sneakily and steadily increasing the projected travel time. Eventually, it was over 2 and a half hours before we reached our destination.
There were stretches of this road which were very remote and removed from everything. None of us said it, but we were all petrified of breaking down in the middle of nowhere with a car full of luggage and wedding jewellery. Needless to say, we were all very strung-out and agitated.
At that point, I reminded myself that we were going for a wedding where we would look great, feast and dance. It was meant to be fun. And here we were, moving slowly along a very bad road at the pace of a lazy, drunken buffalo swaying from side to side, each of us a veritable cauldron of nerves.
Then, we saw peacocks.
This flash of blue did something to me. It prompted me to think differently about the situation. I started thinking that this road was no worse than many of the safari trails we’ve driven in the wildlife preserves I’ve visited with Ananya and Aahana. On the same kinds of roads - behind a bush, on branches of trees - are more flashes of colour, tangles of antlers, perhaps a movement of flaming stripes.
I started thinking of wrong turns and the beauty they can potentially lead you to. I started considering that this beauty lies on the other side of the peril of having taken the wrong turn, a peril we were all feeling in a somewhat overly pronounced way this time.
I thought about times when I felt like life itself has taken a wrong turn and the peril I felt in those moments. The peril was always pronounced because of the thought that I could have taken another route.
I guess this current situation was no different. There are peacocks here, there were peacocks there too. I’m going to keep this one short - make what you want of the peacocks, but what followed was that my breathing slowed and I looked at the wrong turn with different eyes. When I relaxed. Everyone relaxed.
I’ll leave you with a gallery of roads/paths that I have shot over the years, not really knowing why. Whatever the reason may be, here’s to wrong turns and to the surprises that unknown paths bring us to.
I wish you all joyous adventure. Enjoy the photos!
Lots of love,
V
PS. Tell me about a wrong turn in your life that led to a surprise.
Tell me. I want to know!
Cannot think of a wrong road I may have taken, but I do doubt myself for having left behind a city job. I wonder what if its the wrong turn to take a punt a try and do something thats against the grain. But I truly hope this one surprises me.
What a lovely way to start the day reading this diary reminding of the many roads we all have taken and the ones we may take .