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FOOTLOOSE: "A victim of the  same stigma, I was 
far away from her as I too had followed the footsteps 
of my  predecessors and chose a vocation that meant an 
exile for the rest of the life, in foreign lands."

As I Fade Away...
Diary of a Nomad
By Umer Siddique
Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The other day I saw a group of nomads. It was dusk and their hazy forms were silhouetted against the crimson haze that radiated from the horizon. They had just uprooted their camp and were heading towards some unknown destination; some distant land, where some other sun shone, shrouded in mystery like their own fading forms. Their hazy figures and amorphous shapes moved away imperceptibly until they disappeared into the oblivion of the darkening evening. The only reminder of their erstwhile presence was the remnants of their camp fire where a few cinders still glowed like ambers in a heap of ash. There was an air of tangible sadness hanging over that place. I felt a surge of dreary feelings gripping me as I stared at the ashes of the moments that they had spent there.

How mirage like the existence of these nomads was, how illusionary! The only evidence of their existence in this world was the fading ambers of fire and ashes they had left behind them which would soon be wafted about and scattered by the winds. And once the ashes would be scattered by the callous winds, the last proof of their presence would be lost forever. Who knows those silhouettes that I saw fading into darkness might be mere illusions- those nomads only a figment of my imagination- who knows.

There is some strange, invisible thread of association that connects me with these nomads- for all my life I have been a wanderer too. I have wandered both in the spiritual and physical realms- I still am a wanderer. I don’t know when and how did it all start- perhaps it runs through the family and was bequeathed to me as a heritage.

Sometimes I wonder if this association started the day when my grandfather was bundled away to Burma by his colonial masters as a conscript to fight the Japanese. He was sent to fight an enemy he had never heard of, had never seen and perhaps found no good reason to fight against. Growing up in a small town of East Punjab, it was rather hard for him to believe that his enemies waited to stalk him somewhere in the Burmese forests. They were just a name to him that was uttered every morning by his commanding British officers - a name that gave a semblance of meaning to his wanderings. Yet he marched through marshes, hacked his way through thick jungles, slept near camp fires, fought pitched battles with mosquitoes, endured endless rains under open skies, cried for his home, wrote letters to his poor mother who could not read them- and wandered in search of his enemies. His wanderings came to an end when he won the war without firing a shot or finding his elusive enemy and returned triumphantly to his home many years later hoping for a steady life. But it was only a wish.

 A few years later he was again a nomad- this time with millions of others that were uprooted as a result of the partition of India. But unlike nomads, he knew he would never be able to set his camp at the same place again. I have reasons to believe that this displacement was somewhat more painful than the last one as it meant leaving behind his entire childhood memories, abandoning the graves of his ancestors, his cozy little home and dreams of a familiar place to greet him every time he returned home. But he never turned back; not even once and stoically marched towards his unknown destination. He lived in refugee camps; once gain sat around camp fires amidst the sobs of thousands of dying, starving people; once again endured endless rains under open skies- and wandered. It all came to an end eventually but not before he passed on the baton to his son who decided to join the military service- and bound in the cruel and inexorable wheel of fate that governed his life, set out again in search of shadows that his own father had chased all his life. He moved from one city to another, scrambling from one place to the other, like a restless piece of chess in the hands of an impetuous player- and that is how I found life when I wandered into this world myself. 

I vividly remember how we all waited for some distant event called settling down- perhaps in the same manner in which my grandfather would have waited years ago in the seclusion of the thick tropical forests. Everything revolved around it and at the centre of this whirlwind was my mother who spun it faster and faster with every passing day. I have reasons to believe that she liked her life of eternal banishment initially and fancied moving from one place to another. She liked the romance associated with visiting strange exotic places and sleepy little towns that she never imagined existed before seeing them herself. But this romance did not last for long, just like a long train journey that begins with a lot of excitement and interest. One looks out at everything that rushes past the window and feels thrilled both by the flux and by the novelty of the scenery. As the time passes by, the excitement wears off and the novelty turns into monotony. That’s what every wanderer feels and that’s what she felt. She started waiting for the moment when this long journey of perpetual displacements would come to an end eventually.

I remember how my mother would always fondly stack her precious possessions away in boxes that looked like deep pits, waiting for the day when we would settle down. And when that glorious day would come, all the secrets of her treasure chests would be revealed to the world. It was like preparing for some great occasion that deserved special preparation as it would be the culmination of countless dreams and fancies. Those things were too precious to be shown in the middle of the journey – not to be opened in the train apartment. As a kid, when I roamed around in the market with my mother, holding her finger, she would point out towards shop windows and tell me what she would like to buy when we settle down. She talked for hours how our home would look like and how exciting it would be to live at the same place forever. Everything around me whispered the impending great event somewhere in the distant future. It was a strange world that I inherited from my parents-one that was based upon anxious anticipation. Every face reminded me of it. Every image reinforced its existence.

I can still recall the pains of those wanderings. They unfurl countless images that float away from me in oblivion. I still remember looking at the sad faces of my grandparents and their moist eyes from the rear screen of the car as it moved away from them. They stood like withered autumn trees, waving sadly at me as they disappeared out of sight. How sad I felt, how fragmented and torn. I remember how as a kid I followed the bus that was taking my father away for many years on a long journey. I wildly paddled on my bicycle as far as I could till I was panting out of breath and the little bicycle was meandering out of control and saw the big bus fading into a speck. How I made friends only to leave them one day – never to see them again. I remember it all.

After many years the great event did happen for which my mother had been waiting for years. She finally unpacked all the things that she had been fondly collecting for years. But I was not there to see that. A victim of the same stigma, I was far away from her as I too had followed the footsteps of my predecessors and chose a vocation that meant an exile for the rest of the life, in foreign lands.

Sitting thousands of miles away from her, I could image her rummaging through her boxes, looking for her treasures only to display them on empty walls that echo loneliness. I could hear her weary footsteps in rooms with all those things that she once used to show me through the shop windows. I could picture her taking out all those laurels that I had brought back for her from the school and the photographs that were meant to be finally exhibited at a place of our own.

Like the ashes the nomads left behind them, they would be a sad reminder of the dreams that she cherished all her life only to be lost to the winds of time as I fade into the darkening horizon far away from her.

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