Nomadic

 This is a story of why I call myself a nomad. And it starts in 2016 when I finished college and was about to leave for Zürich to start my postgrad course. A very close friend of mine met up with me a few weeks before my departure and told me he was going to spend the next year of his life on his bike exploring India. I found it amazing and something I was not capable of. So I left and finished 2 years of partying, travelling, meeting different people, learning languages and most of all - living life - the same things my friend did back home in India.

A few days before my departure from Switzerland, the department chair at UZH where I did my thesis asked me what I was going to do and where I would go. I told him I was going back home but that I had no idea what I was going to do there. "Wherever life takes me," is what I told him. He laughed and said, "You're choosing the nomad's life I see". Now of course, I oversimplified an entire luncheon's worth of conversation, but that exchange carried itself with me as I landed in Chennai - ready to let life happen to me.

After I got back, I pondered a lot about my 2 years there, what I learned, what I went through - the goods and the bads. And I came to believe that a large part of my learning about people came from what is commonly referred to as "culture shock", although it isn't always quite the "shock"as much as it is a peer into the unknown. When I was put in a place I was unfamiliar with, didn't speak their language and didn't know anyone beforehand, I was forced to learn. I defaulted to "Grüezi" when I spoke to someone - in whatever broken German I knew, travelling around the country and experienced their relationship with the land, and most importantly, made many friends, acquaintances and memories. I like being that guy who doesn't run out of crazy stories.

And that got me chasing the high from learning about people from such cultural differences. Cultural practices, belief systems and all the other idiosyncrasies that go with it are, in my opinion, closely tied to the geography. And this is why I am a nomad. This nomadic urge has brought me to a village in the Himalayas, working on identifying and possibly help solve problems in the rural landscape. Life brought me here. I didn't come, I followed. I will continue to allow circumstance to direct me as long as I feel like I am enjoying it, however long that lasts.

Why am I here and not somewhere else? To know what it really means to be human. To know what makes all of us so similar and yet, so very different! To be a son of the Earth, unsubscribed to arbitrary lines in the sand.