As a student of Biology having dwelt upon the designs and description of life with scientific objectivity for over four decades, movements fascinate me much. And I clearly notice that progression on this living planet is really all about mobility.
From that very first evolutionary migration of life from the voluminous hospitable oceans on to the expansive hostile barren land, the ability to move from the natal site to distant unexplored terrains was the key to the dominion over this terra firma. Of course some life forms exploited the ‘comfort of confinement’ and still continue to occupy that ‘sessile slot’ with some benefits.
The broad division between life as plants and animals represent these two discrete groups on a scale of mobility. Flora is largely restricted in space and is endowed with limited movement and practically nil locomotor facility, in contrast with animals that have invested significantly in their precision movements and ambulation. Perhaps this is the basis of the fact that floral species constitute only a fourth of global biodiversity as contrasted with the faunal species richness of approximately 72%.
Also, in their quest for exploration and the accompanying continuous voluntary displacement between places; the animals acquired acute sensory abilities and a greater control and coordination of their life processes; giving them a host of specialized organ systems unlike their vegetative companions.
Santayana the Spanish-American Philosopher in his 1964 essay ‘Philosophy of travel’ makes an interesting observation that plants were stuck to the ground and destined to suck up whatever is available at their site of attachment, deprived of the nutrient rich soil even in the immediate neighborhood; simply because they cannot migrate.
Of course we know the efforts taken by the plants to disperse their progeny to faraway places through various seed dispersal mechanism; just as aquatic animals like oysters that permanently holdfast a substratum have larvae that drift passively in water and get dispersed. These are clearly a pointer to the significance of moving away from one site to another.
The displacement movement of animals offered advantages of access to newer resources, protection against threats from local hostilities, and leveling off competitive pressures intrinsic to crowding at one place. To improvise and optimize the basic locomotor ability of animals that resided in the waters, land and air; systems evolved that allowed swimming, flying and terrestrial locomotion.
Our species as well could walk, run and swim, but not fly; an evolutionary encumbrance that we sought to address through our technological prowess. It is intriguing to ponder on the reasons for invention of transport by our ancestors, and from the floating logs and rafts to cross rivers, and wheels attached to carts and chariots to carry loads and royals; we have a come a long way into the age of supersonic aircrafts, magnetic levitation trains, pneumatic tubes that can transport goods and passengers at speeds of up to 760 miles per hour. Humans having accomplished a precision coordinated bipedal gait, then sought to add speed to their movement between places of their settlement and resources.
So does travel offer a survival advantage to life across the board? And by corollary of this presumption, have the evolutionary advantages of movement reached a pinnacle in our species’ wanderlust aided by extreme conveyance modes in the present anthropocene? If travel is meant to widen our cultural and intellectual horizons, we must step out of our ethnic garb and be willing to appreciate and assimilate everything novel and foreign in that different epistemic universe. The purpose of travel then must be to experience ‘the otherness’ distant from your familiar comfort territory.
I grew up reading the Marathi version of Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and was captivated by the ‘land of Lilliput’. My mother narrated to me that ascetics and spiritual persons would embark on long journeys in search of enlightenment. Later in college I read the lucid narrative in ‘The travels of Marco Polo’ the Italian explorer and was particularly gripped by his commentary on India’s wilderness.
In my life I have traveled a lot by general standards of a middle class family, first moving out of Goa for my higher studies and then moving through most Indian states; primarily for studying nature and inadvertently understanding people. I have also traveled to and through a little over a dozen countries of Europe and Asia attempting to understand their perspective of life’s multifarious dimensions from their intelligentsia and common people. And all I can say with conviction is that my world views are richly coloured by global amity than being afflicted by ‘cultural stenosis’ in the garb of jingoism.
Travel is a journey through novel experiences, new knowledge and diverse opportunities towards an unknown destination; all culminating in better understanding of larger scheme of things that we are a minuscule part of.
On a philosophical note all of us are perpetual travelers on our life trek. Our journey encompasses distance and time between our mother’s womb and our final resting place, though there’s little we know about the prequel and sequel of this earthly passage.
As we travel this path we learn, unlearn, interact, react, bond, withdraw and vanish into nothingness. Along the journey the traveler is greeted by carpets and embers, company and solitude, revelry and misery, purpose and perfection making life interesting and worth living. Soaring momentarily on feather-light balloons of success, we soon get grounded by iron anchors of failures, and then turn inwards in search of our final destination. It is during this twilight phase of our lives that our previous ‘travel nostalgia’ rescues us from a total disconnect with the journey undertaken.
Nearing the sixth decade of my existence in a few years from now, the edict in Chinese classic Tao Te Ching credited to sage Laozi makes much sense to me; that a ‘good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving!’ After all it is that element of uncertainty and shifting finishing line that keeps us going.
