Walk to be free

We spend our time now staring into the rabbit holes that are our computer screens and smartphones – for work, entertainment, and news. When, for whatever reasons we cannot look at a screen, we put on our headphones and listen to songs or a podcast. To fritter away the otherwise unbearable time, it seems our eyes must always be focused on something else.

We seldom spend a minute of our waking hours without input – somebody else's thoughts flooding our own. What is it about our own thoughts that are so awful that we cannot spend a minute alone with them? There is only one way to find out. Unplug and go outside.

Walk if you feel up to it, and especially if you don't. You might lose weight, have lower blood sugar levels, gain fitness, feel more alive, and even enjoy nature's best antidepressant – endorphins. But that is not why you must walk.

What walking really is, is a way to leave behind this digital dystopia and its constant notifications, if only for a little while and a few miles. Laptop screens or Bluetooth earbuds are not built into our system when we are born. When we turn off these firehoses of input, when we move with nothing in our ears but air, we return step by step to what we were meant to do and meant to be.

A long walk, French author Frédéric Gros suggests, allows us to commune with the Transcendent. "All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking," said Nietzsche, who wandered the mountainside to write. Rousseau took saunters through his town in order to think. Nerval, the French poet, perambulated up and down the streets of Paris to cure his melancholy. And Kant, the German thinker, marched through his hometown everyday at the same time to escape the compulsion of thought.

In 1854, American philosopher Henry David Thoreau said he could not stay in his house for a single day "without acquiring some rust." He was amazed at the power of endurance of his neighbours, who confined themselves to their homes and offices the whole day for months on end. Later, Thoreau's idea of "civil disobedience" as a form of nonviolent protest influenced the spiritual and political thoughts of Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Speaking of protest, I could not recall a single incident in recent history where change came quietly while people sat comfortably in their homes and workplaces. Morality is like water – it flows from the top down. When morality has to rise from the bottom up, and people have to take to the streets – in masses and on foot –, we call it a revolution.

Sometimes, it is just one person making a statement.

Muhammad Dulara sells low-cost clothes out of a cycle van in Mohammadpur. He provides for a family of four dogs in addition to his own family. Why and how does he do it? "They cannot talk. If I don't help them, who will?" he says, mixing Bangla and Urdu.

"I work seven days a week to support them," he continues. Underneath the van, the puppies, named Lalu and Sadhu, sleep without a care in the world while their parents patrol the streets nearby. They look agile, amiable, and alert.

I would not have met Dulara had I not been walking that afternoon. In a way, he is Superman. Not the Hollywood character who wears his underwear inside out, but Nietzsche's "Übermensch," one who strikes off conventional social values to create his own. Dulara cannot walk on water, nor can he fly. But he can hand life over to four animals who have become his children. To paraphrase Tagore, he comes with the message that "God is not yet discouraged of man."

The streets have many more stories. I saw workers of the city corporations tirelessly sweeping streets and lanes every day at dawn and in the evenings. Unfortunately, within minutes, they become dirty again. Now contrast that with the Japanese spectators who, during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar last year, collected garbage from the stadium before handing it to smiling stadium workers on their way out.

Yes, dustbins are few and far between, the city is overcrowded, decentralisation is the need of the hour, and the overall quality of services is disappointing – all that is there.

What seems to be missing is personal responsibility. Taking responsibility is not about accepting blame for our difficult circumstances. It is simply about recognising the part we can play in improving them, whatever their cause. It is an expression of a belief that we as individuals can wield greater degrees of authorship over our lives and by extension our conditions. This is not merely a fanciful thought. It was an argument put forward in one of the Reith Lectures organised by the BBC late last year.

Recently, India's Rahul Gandhi, following the footsteps of men much greater than him, launched a cross-country march, hoping to connect with people and unite them against hate and division. He has reportedly been walking more than 30 kilometres a day, getting up as early as 4am in the morning.

Of course, not everyone can walk. Temperament and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with it. As we grow older, our ability to sit still and practice indoor activities increases. Eventually, we leave the room feet first, hoping only to be remembered in our children's heads. Their walking begins and ours ends.

An invitation to walk, dispensed from a dispassionate distance by someone who has never lived it, rings hollow and smug. That is not the case here. But where are we supposed to walk when a well-made pavement is a dream in our city? Well, where there is a will…

We are built to walk. It is probably the most fundamental and democratic of all human activities. No prior experience, relevant education, or strategic planning is required. Only a willingness to set foot outdoors. We must ourselves be well before we can ensure the wellbeing of society.

The only way out is all in.

Amitava Kar writes from Ottawa, Canada.