i go to the hills when my heart is lonely*

We're none of us godmen, and so we all have our havens - our places of solace and calm and comfort in times of trouble and broken dreams. One of the best descriptions of a safe place I've read was in Jeanette Ray's book, Eat Cake, which the Reader's Digest collection threw into my bookshelf. The protagonist in it imagines herself to be deep inside a cake whenever she is lost, helpless, harassed and the rest of the menagerie; inside a deep, soft, breathing, comforting cake - she preferred a lemon and chiffon cake, but the chocolate and banana cake is my favourite to blanketed in.

As far as real (not in the Vedantic sense of the term, no) places go, I suppose we all have those places where we feel at home - safe, taken care of - like engulfed within a warm, encompassing, comforting hug. Mine is my room. Every time I come home, for the first three hours or so, I stay closeted in my room, acclimatising to the change, both in me and my parents, and to the place itself, and reflecting on it. If this precious ritual is broken, I end up a stark, raving lunatic for the rest of the week, and my parents are never pleased to make loony-me's acquaintance.

Then there is an old, wise, grandfatherly house about 20 km from home. It was the birthplace of Shankaracharya, and there are remnants of the bygone times in that house still - in the wood, the pillars, the lit oil-lamps, the smiles. There, one can be completely alone in the silence; unlike in a huge empty auditorium where one might feel a perverse desire to yell long and loud, there is only a want to go as softly and tip-toed-ly as one can, here. There are trees, old as my great-grandfather would have been, standing stick-straight on the grounds and spreading shadow, and rubber tree plantations that offer hiding places, and paddy and pineapple farms that delight.

There is also an old, rich, temple-city on a little hill, up in Andhra Pradesh, that offers the same solace, if one were to go at a time of the year where there's more breathing space than people. There is a garden there - large, but not very well looked after, and two enormous banyan trees growing intertwined, and they are always talking to you and gesturing with their thick leafy arms towards a blue, cirrus-y sky. There are sculptures in the garden that are not the work of masters, chipped and broken in places, almost hidden by undergrowth and shrubs, but they all have their stories to tell. There is silence there too, and it speaks a language all its own.

My home city is another haven - one can get lost in the milling crowds, and anonymity in familiarity is always the balm of Gilead for a lonely soul.

Mountains too offer the sort of solitude that cures all ailments of a diseased mind, and even freshen it up for a new plunge into the world of fleeting worries and happinesses (college, for instance). When I read Ruskin Bond's description of the mountains, I can't help but love them as he loves them, and give myself, heart and soul, to dreams of spruced and deodared and wild-flowered slopes. I have sat at the feet of men who've told me they spend months in solitude in the Himalayas. In fact, I have heard all hermits say they would retire into the Himalayas if they were to have the chance.

There must be a reason all hermits retire to the Himalayas. Even godmen need solitude, I s'pose, when all's said and done.

*The Sound of Music