The Journey is The Destination

Just so you know, there are at least 20 drafts in my posting list as evidence of me trying my best to write about this book. I'm really clueless as to how I'd like to tell you about it, so here in my 21st attempt, let me just make it short and simple.

Five years ago in London, a Pakistani guy told me and my friends how spoiled we are indeed. We had been walking for at least 10 kilometers that day, in a cold London morning in July (yeah... I know) and he said something like, "If you whine about how much you've been walking today, it is very selfish. In my country, children don't enjoy the kind of life you have here. You are walking 10 kilometers in the comfort of London, on a holiday, and there's really only cars beeping around you. But in my country, where disasters and bombings happen every so often, kids your age, or even younger, have to walk in cold, among the ruins caused by the disasters and bombings and all of that. They have to walk longer distance than you, and they are not on holiday. It was their life. Their destiny."

I remember we all shut up after what he said. And that made us think. It's funny because we never thought of that before, of the countries in the Indian Subcontinent, where the news about them are almost unheard of. Because no one cares. Because people dying of bombs and natural disasters in their countries are mere statistics. Famine and poverty isn't a tragedy. It's just a way of life.

So this book reminded me of that. Agustinus Wibowo went on an unusual journey through the Indian Subcontinent and visit countries that we had probably never thought would ever visit, not now, not when we're older, not even in a million years. He told us the stories and the views he found on the way, most of them about life, death, God, religions, family, motherhood, culture, humanity, fear, courage, and some other stuffs we don't learn in the classroom. The stuffs we can only learn from fellow humans we met during our travels. Just like what I heard from the aforementioned Pakistani guy. And this book has the power to make me think and re-think of what I thought I know about those subjects. There's just so many things really worth reading in this book, so here's a hint, in case you'd like a piece of it:

Cinta ibu dengan anaknya memang selalu cinta yang berat sebelah.