We are just passing by...

I don’t know why but that day my mind strongly urged me that I should go ahead and converse with this humble monk. As I walked toward him at a snail's pace, he actually turned his head.
I paused at the foot of his step and with a humble smile he said in theTibetan language,"Tashi delek, kayrang kusu debo yimbay?.”
“I speak absolutely no Tibetan, I can just only understand your greeting, tashi delek”, I replied to him. “Hello, how are you young boy?” he asked again, this time in English.“I am doing well. I am curious to have a word with you,” I replied.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I am going to the seaside,” I answered, and asked if he would like to join me in this walk.
Even today, I still don’t know why, but that day I actually insisted that he should join me.
“I love to watch and gaze at the early sunrise,” he replied and started walking on the street with me towards east, without resisting.
It was a movement of surprise for me. That was early morning before the crack of dawn. The revealing moon was still hanging in the sky and casting sliver sheen across the quite street.

I was not an early riser during those times. But once in a week, if I woke up before the crack of dawn, I always started my day with a promenade along the beach. Every time on my way to the seashore, I always meet this lama on the street and generally when our eyes meet, he used to give me a humble smile. I assumed his age to be around eighty-eight. In those years I was living in the south west region of India, an expanse where sea and mountains meet.

As we were walking I shyly persisted with the conversation and said, “To me it seems like you don’t belong to here, this country, Where are you from? Where is your birthplace? What you do here in this town? Will you ever return to your country?”
In a sheer bolt from the blue he replied in a meek yet delight voice, “You are right I don’t belong to this country - and neither do you belong to this country. We are all just passing by, and yeah one day we all will return to our country which is somewhere in the heart of this universe. On this celestial voyage we are walking in realms of infinity and on this earth sometime we sojourn for a movement to encounter, to love...all we have is this movement and it is a parenthesis in this voyage.”