Do Not Fret, Fly

A THOUSAND FEET UP IN THE AIR ABOVE ARAKU’S COLORFUL LANDSCAPE, GARIMA PURA FINDS A WIDER PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE’S LITTLE NIGGLES

- Garima Pura

At the safe harbour of a cathartic process, I was recommended by a well-meaning friend to observe my situation from a higher perspective—like I was flying over myself. If all the hard work by the wings was dealt with, birds would have a gala time in the air.

Flight has always caught man’s fancy. Envy too, until we found our ways. Today, we have plenty of ways to shift the perspective to aerial in stressful times, without being boxed. 

I was on one such flight—wafting over the Araku Valley, 114 kilometres from the port city of Visakhapatnam, in a hot-air balloon. The Ministry of Tourism, Andhra Pradesh, and Sky Waltz had organised a hot-air balloon festival to present Araku to the world. It was a smart means of presentation. I bore bird’s-eye-view-witness to the unending farmlands that cover its landscape in different shades of green and cream, punctuated with kondas (hills in Telugu). Araku has almost entirely escaped the concrete touch of bricks and mortar. While tribes residing in the valley have fixed their homes with dried leaves, cow dung cakes and wood, the only trace of cement I could spot from a height of a thousand feet was a rather minimalist temple. White in colour with a red flag propped on its crown, it hardly occupied a square metre, as seen from my vantage point. It seems like the gods in Araku valley believe in simple living too.