The Socrates Express
- Автор: Вейнер Эрик
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
- Жанр: География, путевые заметки
Электронная книга - «The Socrates Express». Краткое содержание книги:
We contemplate for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a different perspective, to unearth hidden beauty and find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope.
Eric Weiner, *New York Times* bestselling author of *The Geography of Bliss* , combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from philosophers around the world, from Marcus Aurelius to Arthur Schopenhauer, Confucius to Montaigne. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport) he traversed thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi,...
I pause the insanity and gain a speck of perspective. I lost a notebook. Big deal. Hemingway lost an entire collection of short stories. Or, to be precise, Hemingway’s wife, Hadley Richardson, lost an entire collection of Hemingway’s short stories. It was 1922 and she was en route from Paris to Switzerland to meet her husband. She had just boarded the train at Gare de Lyon station, but she had a few minutes before it departed so she decided to buy a bottle of mineral water. When she returned to the train, the suitcase—and Hemingway’s manuscript—were gone.
Hemingway is known for his minimalism, but this was too much even for him. He fell into a funk. Yet, in the end, Ernest persevered, and became Hemingway.
A few years earlier, a young British officer named T. E. Lawrence was changing trains in Reading, England, when he lost the manuscript of his memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Handwritten, it was his only copy.
Lawrence had survived the Arab revolt of 1916 and the battle of Aqaba, traveled by camel across the Sinai Desert, yet the lost manuscript nearly did him in. Eventually, he rallied, holing up in an unheated Westminster loft and rewriting the book from memory.
I read these tales of lost manuscripts and recall Simone Weil’s words. “We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.” She’s right. I must wait.
If this book were a Steven Spielberg movie, this would be the moment when I miraculously find my lost notebook and realize it was right under my nose the whole time. Sadly, this book is not a Spielberg movie. Its fealty lies with the truth, not the box office, and the truth is I never did find my notebook. I will never know what wisdom it may or may not have contained. So I let it be. I let it go.
Is this progress? Perhaps, but that’s not a word Simone Weil used often. There is no progress to make, no prizes to win. There is only waiting.
And so I wait, willingly and with more patience than I imagined possible, for waiting is its own reward.
8. How to Fight like Gandhi
11:02 a.m. At Baroda House, headquarters of India’s Northern Railways. Attempting to obtain a ticket on the Yoga Express, from New Delhi to Ahmedabad. Odds of success: not good.
When I first heard of the Yoga Express, I knew I had to ride it, and was prepared to contort myself to get a ticket. To be clear: my yoga practice is strictly theoretical. “Yoga Express” appealed to me. It suggests a fast track to enlightenment. Then there is the train’s destination: Ahmedabad, the city where Mahatma Gandhi, my philosopher-hero, established his first ashram on Indian soil and from where he launched his famous Salt March, a pivotal moment in the struggle for India’s independence.
A train journey of a thousand miles begins with a single reservation. Obtaining one on Indian Railways is a process that, since its inception in 1853, has meant enduring hellish queues and navigating a bureaucratic maze. In the digital age, hell has migrated online. It takes me a good three hours to create an account, only to discover the Yoga Express is fully booked. I add my name to the wait list and download an app to track my progress. I quickly move up from number 15 to 8 and then number 1. Promising.
My friend Kailash consults a travel agent who says, “No problem.” A friend of his who works for Indian Railways also says, “No problem.” The obvious conclusion: big problem. In India, nothing is final until it’s final, and not even then. Every ending is a beginning. Every finale contains a tacit to be continued.
Number one sounds impressive, I realize. But this is India, a country that invented the concept of zero and is on speaking terms with infinity. What is a number? It is maya, illusion. As the ancient Stoics observed, if you’re drowning it matters not whether you’re one hundred feet underwater or one foot. Drowning is drowning. The wait list is the wait list.
“Why don’t you fly to Ahmedabad?” asks Kailash. It’s quicker and easier than the train, and only slightly more expensive.
He’s right, but I cannot fly. Gandhi didn’t fly. Not once. He took trains, and so will I. Gandhi firmly believed the means matter more than the ends. Not whether you win or lose but how you fight. Not where you go but how you get there. I will not fly. I will take a train. I will take the Yoga Express.
The situation, I decide, calls for drastic, analog measures. Before long, I am in the office of a railway official, one Mr. Singh, a trim, balding man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a sour expression. I hurriedly explain my predicament. Can he help?
It’s a rhetorical question. I know Mr. Singh can help. In India, power is directly proportionate to office size. Mr. Singh is clearly a man of power. I count no fewer than three separate sitting areas; the ceiling touches the heavens. With a stroke of his pen, a click of his keyboard, he could secure me a seat on the Yoga Express.
“It’s complicated,” he says, as if we were discussing integral calculus and not a train reservation. A certain number of seats are set aside for VIPs, he explains. “And VVIPs, too,” he adds.
I am tempted to resort to violence, but restrain myself. Gandhi would not approve. Violence harms the perpetrator as well as the victim, he said, and I don’t want to harm myself, not yet.
I try charm instead. I explain my lifelong fascination with Gandhiji, using the honorific suffix, and how I believe his ideas remain relevant today.
The pain on Mr. Singh’s face grows. I can see him weighing his options: risk disappointing a foreigner, a guest (one with a keen interest in Gandhiji, no less), or risk the wrath of a member of Parliament or some other uppity bigwig.
I never stood a chance. Go to the Foreign Quota Office at New Delhi Railway Station, he says. They can help, he assures me. We both know they cannot.
I thank Mr. Singh for his time, and walk down the hallway to the thick sludge of particles that passes for air in New Delhi. My quest for a seat on the Yoga Express has ended. Or, to put it in Indian terms, it has begun.
I am walking to the subway station with my friend Kailash. The air is fresh today, he tells me, freshness being relative in this, one of the world’s most polluted cities. The air quality is in the “hazardous range,” though slightly less hazardous than yesterday.
We pass two men sweeping the street with rattan brooms, kicking up a cloud of dust, as if Delhi needed more of that.
“Better wear your mask,” says Kailash.
I reach into my pocket and fumble for the flimsy black-and-gray cloth mask that, the clerk assured me, would protect my lungs. It cost the equivalent of $1.50. I am skeptical.
Gandhi would be alarmed but not surprised by the sorry state of India’s alleged air. More than a century ago, he warned of the dangers of industrialization. India’s future, he said, lies with her villages, not her cities. From a coldly economic sense, he was wrong. India’s cities are booming, its villages impoverished. You can breathe in the villages, though.
We pass a small group spread across a blanket, right on the sidewalk. A girl, not more than six years old, is looking at a book. She is barefoot and covered in a layer of grime. Two young adults are pointing to the book and speaking to her in Hindi.
“Tutors,” explains Kailash. The girl is a beggar. She’s never seen the inside of a school, so these volunteers bring the school to her. Gandhi would approve of this selfless act. That’s the thing about India. Just when you’re ready to write it off you stumble across unexpected kindness and your faith is restored.