Back in 1962, the ex-wandering Jain monk and tireless campaigner for peace and the environment, Satish Kumar, started a walk from the Mahatma Gandhi’s tomb in New Delhi. He was destined for the leaders of the then four nuclear powers in the world (USA, Soviet Union, France and the UK), to beg them to disarm unilaterally.
Fourteen months later, having walked through snow, rain, desert and mud, Moscow, Paris and London, and just five days before he reached the United States, President Kennedy was assassinated. He never got to see him. Actually, he never got to see Messrs Krushchev, De Gaulle or Wilson either, but that was because they refused.
In all, he and his friend walked about 8,500 miles, through all weathers, and without once carrying so much as a cent or a dollar. Whatever they ate, wherever they slept, they begged it, or were gifted it.
A few weeks ago, I sat with Satish, now in his mid-eighties, and asked for his advice for the mental bit of my own approaching walk. This was partly because he is very kind and wise, and partly because he was one of the few people I knew whose own walk made mine look like a Sunday stroll.
‘Live in the day, not in the destination,’ he said. ‘That way, each step of the journey will be a gift.’
‘Expect hardship and embrace it,’ he went on. ‘Because then you won’t be surprised and downcast by it when it inevitably comes for you.’
‘Avoid distractions like the news,’ he added. ‘Just look at the passing nature around you so that you feel a part of it.
‘Finally, allow yourself to be changed by it. Make it a pilgrimage, to whatever you want it to be. Then not one mile is wasted.’
Later on at supper, he was telling us how, when he was walking through Georgia (the Soviet Republic, not the Southern US state), a lady ran into her house and emerged a few seconds later with four boxes of tea. She asked him to carry them with him and to give one each to Krushchev, de Gaulle, Wilson and Kennedy.
‘Tell them,’ she said, ‘that, if they ever think of doing something so stupid as to press the nuclear button, to spend a few minutes making themselves a cup of tea, and thinking about what the effect would be.’ Each one was delivered as best it could be, even though the last one went to President Johnson, not Kennedy. Tea or no tea, we have been spared nuclear war for over half a century.
For a reason I have absolutely no understanding of, I have decided to take a box of tea on my own walk, and give it to the person who I feel needs it the most, even if that person is me. If I fail to offload it, I will send it to Boris.
And with that happy, flavoured thought, can I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a safe and happy new year.
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