IIH OF NEPAL AND HIS MANY WALKS TO FREEDOM by Mihir Srivastava

Iih, just over 30, has made strange choices in life that makes him an odd one in terms of normative existence. At the age of 14, he rebelled, left the comfort of home, dropped out of school, and became a vagabond in a more in a more contemporary sense—romanticized unconventional mobile lifestyle. Home, the irrevocable condition, was not there for him, so he learned​ to take care of himself, remaining a political animal, an activist with the Gandhian ambition to change the world.

A transparent person of existential complexities, Iih is travelling light in life, just a pair of clothes neatly packed in a small sling bag. A mobile, his window to the world, also acts as a camera, he’s a good street photographer, an observer, a traveler, he has walked the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent, and many padayatras—foot journeys—across Nepal, his home country, many times over.

Walking is his response to the world, and his own intransigence. Walking is a complex activity, almost a way of life in sync with motion, he meditates and contemplates, all kinds of things happen to him as he walks along, though never a beaten track, for hours together, only halts to soak in surroundings, and click an odd picture, off and on, if he wants freeze the moment. His pictures are meant to be seen, sort of visual notes.

Iih survives on crowd funding, enough to travel to places he wants to in the subcontinent, and all his belongings are stashed in two storages, at his family home and at a friend’s place. He is a ‘public figure’ in Nepal, by his own admission. He was one of the key figures in the leaderless uprising of the Gen Z that dislodged a ‘corrupt’ government in Nepal earlier this year, and made politicians actually scared for their mortal being.

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Iih is alert to possible mortal risks, which is a good thing, particularly when he’s asleep. Iih has remained unassailable, which is commendable given the life he leads, and in a way, also inaccessible beyond a point. His core is strong​ and protected like Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur. I get a feeling that he is lonely inside his protected core, and not many people, if any, have been able to breach it.

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Iih walks to be “vulnerable.” He's a lone ranger in an alien land, cold, heat and dust, driven by a sense of direction that he trusts, and the journey is the destination. I get an impression that walking is a kind of hibernation in motion for him, when it goes on for hours together, like a day job, day after day.

At the same time, this seeking of vulnerability is tempered with a strong sense of self preservation. Rightly so. While walking, he's earthed or grounded, unprotected, a walking duck, uncertainty unfolding with every step, yet never ceases to be mysterious.

Iih is a tall, nearly chubby man, with soft clear hairless skin that glows. All he wears is an oversized​ plain t-shirt complimented by a nicker that dangles on his waist. He wears sneakers. In the early phases of walking trans-country, he'd wear slippers, and ended up damaging his foot, though, thankfully, was still reparable.    

He is alert to possible mortal risks, which is a good thing, particularly when he’s asleep. It happened ​more than a couple of times, he reacted strongly, and made sure that the people in question will never cross a line with him but also with others in future. In one case, cops were summoned, but he didn't press changes.

Iih has remained unassailable, which is commendable given the life he leads, and in a way, also inaccessible beyond a point. His core is strong​ and protected like Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur. I get a feeling that he is lonely inside his protected core, and not many people, if any, have been able to breach it.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s very friendly, has many friends from all walks of life, he’s curious and a good conversationalist, and understands the underlying forces that guides people. He’s had sexual proximities but ‘it was a phase,’ he recollects, but his core has remained fortified.  

So, this is a bit of a paradox, I ask him, "you seek vulnerability but you have this strong sense of self preservation, why?" There are like two countervailing forces running parallel as your transverse landscapes on a tightrope. “Is it an escape or a quest?” I ask him to ponder. “Both,” he says without hesitation.

There's always a quintessential ambivalence about being. There isn’t any affirmative response to existential questions, after all, life is a blind date with destiny. His long walks, I get a sense, will shed some light ​o​n him to him, enlighten his journeys unto ​himself. We dwell on this idea silently sipping coffee at an upmarket café in Delhi's Khan Market. As an afterthought, he says, ‘my core is not so opaque now, as it used to be.’ Opaqueness has become translucent. It's not a mystery, at least to him, the contours of his core.

Iih is from an upper middle-class family. He has a way with words, a certain facility with the Queen’s (now King’s) language. How did this happen to a school drop out? “I read a lot,” he says, and adds, “it was a phase. I used to watch many English movies.” Things have happened in phases to him. But this walking phase has been a constant in his life, half of his life, since he abandoned the comfort of a family life.  

​I​ih thinks hard before he makes a call, and tries to make informed decisions. Like ordering a coffee. He is mostly vegan these days to the extent that he will not go down hungry.

Iih is vulnerable. Family is a condition​ we are conditioned to. And it is not easy without them, to put it mildly. But he has done very well. Lately, though there was a bereavement in his family, he refuses to specify who died, but this unfortunate happening reconnected him back to his folks. A strong feeling of denial, initially, and then guilt encompassed him, like the morning mist, or Delhi’s smog.

After all, he didn’t abandon his family, at a subconscious level. And there’s a part of him, perhaps, I get the feeling, is seeking connection, or perhaps had stayed connected to his roots all this while. He’s not happy that his absence, for his own selfish reasons, would have ​p​ained the deceased. Many times, people have a stronger presence in their absentia, I learned this the hard way, after I lost my mother last year. I empathize with Iih.

In the words of Rumi, ‘what you're seeking is seeking you.’ I will keep an eye on his many walks unto himself​, for he’s destined to do big things. Happy walking, Iih, between flights and trains.