A Long Walk

It was the 18th of April, 2023. I was sitting on the cliffs of Dover looking across the English Channel, trying to spot France in the mist. As a big history nerd, I was trying to place myself in that same setting almost eighty years ago, when the cliffs were silent spectators to the epic evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Allied forces from Dunkirk to Dover. Though disinterested in the matters of us humans, those cliffs were witnessing another battle as I sat there- a survivor’s battle to heal. 

I was just about to suggest that we leave when my sister reminded me that it was a special day. It was exactly a year to that day that I had undergone a craniotomy to remove a one-in-a-million tumour from the base of my skull. From that day on began my long journey of healing. I remember the week after surgery like it was yesterday. The groggy 5 AM showers with a pounding headache, the inability to keep anything I ate down and the struggle to walk a few steps down the hospital corridor.  I lost almost 13 kgs in a week.  I finally lost that weight I was trying so hard to lose! When I finally managed to get strong enough to leave the hospital, I lay down in the backseat of the car scared that I would vomit and end up back in that god-awful bed. 

Nevertheless, I made it home and then began the journey to become myself again. The guy who demolished Mangalore buns, cycled 70 kilometres on a whim and heck, could walk without being afraid of falling.  As I began to recover my strength, my first milestone was walking unsupervised. Powered by my mother’s hand-mixed curd rice, I started off with short walks in front of my house until one day I graduated to a walk on the road. I remember the first time I walked outside the house. My father and I walked to a nearby Naturals ice cream shop and ate celebratory ice cream. That was the tastiest ice cream I have ever had. Once I began feeling confident that I could walk alone without tumbling, there was no turning back.

                     Baby steps

My next milestone was getting back on the saddle of my bicycle again. I had become very wary of bicycles since it was blacking out while riding one that led me to the hospital in the first place. That one incident made me so fearful that I got a bracelet with my parents' numbers on it made in case I ever blacked out on the road again. But the feeling that I get when I whizz around on my bicycle on a sunny windy morning pushed me back into the saddle again. Before long, I was riding my usual 18 kilometres a day again and now that I had lost a bunch of weight, my spandex riding shorts fit me better too!

The biggest milestone in my healing journey was perhaps travelling again. When I was a young lad about 18 years old, I printed out a poster that read “My Dream? To travel the world!” and stuck it inside the lid of my first-ever suitcase. I may not have been sure about much else, but I always knew that I wanted to travel. I have been fortunate enough to bring those dreams to life, but there is so much more to see and do before I can surrender my passport. My first trip after my surgery was to attend a wedding In Chennai. As I stood there trying to awkwardly dance in the afternoon heat, I kept touching the scar behind my ear, as if to remind myself where I had been barely two months ago. Since then, I have made many trips including the one I started this story with.

I am not a strong believer in anything but the human spirit, but what happened that day in Dover is something quite special. My month-long trip in the UK was coming to an end and my sister and I decided to go on one last adventure together before it was time for me to come home. I discovered by accident that the town my sister lives in is the beginning point of an ancient pilgrimage route known as the Via Francigena that runs from Canterbury to Rome. While neither my sister nor I possess the required religious fervour (or paperwork) to embark on such a long walk, we decided on a whim to at least walk the stretch in the UK, from Canterbury to Dover. So we set off towards Dover on a gloomy Tuesday morning. I’m not sure what drove us that day, but we made it almost all the way to Dover on foot after walking for almost five hours through the English countryside. 

                 Somewhere on the way to Dover.

As we sat there on the cliffs of Dover and my sister reminded me that it was the anniversary of my surgery, I was overcome with an emotion I am not sure I have the vocabulary to describe. A year ago, I was afraid to stand up and here I was after walking almost 30 kilometres. That mini pilgrimage was a reminder of the personal pilgrimage that I have been on in the past year, trying to heal and become stronger than I was before my surgery. This journey has taught me so many things about myself and my body. For starters, I used to always wear a shirt in the pool, but knowing what my body has been through and what it is capable of has given me a newfound respect for it. No more shirts at the pool. Nevertheless, I didn’t write this story as a motivational parable about a walk being a metaphor for healing.  This story is a gentle reminder to myself to keep walking.