Death of a Wanderer
As is apparent from some prior entries, I’ve become a wanderer. St. Louis, Columbia, Paris, New York, Michigan, Iowa, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Bombay, who knows where else will be next. I don’t like to let the grass grow under my feet. Running around the world is exciting, but part of me longs to stand still and settle in the Midwest. On the one hand, I’ve become real good at making friends – I mean, you always have to make new friends when you move to a new place. On the other hand, I have so many friends spread so far around, any of whom I may never see again. And in a few years I’ll leave these Pittsburgh friends behind too.
I bought a book in Delhi written by the famous British explorer Sir Richard Burton – not the actor, but a man with a fascinating biography nonetheless (link here - the first entry is not the same guy, but the rest are). Sir Richard was a wanderer in the first degree, exploring the entirety of India and Africa for the Queen. He also posed as a Muslim and snuck into Mecca -- supposedly the first Westerner to see inside there. The book I bought is about his visit to Goa circa 1851. The name is “Goa and the Blue Mountains or Six Months of Sick Leave.” In the book he recounts visiting a pile of masonry in the Goan interior that served as a marker for the final resting place of an English general who had formerly served in the British Army in India. This general had gone native. He learned the language, adopted the dress, and he married an Indian girl. Upon visiting his grave in Goa, Sir Richard reflected thus:
“It is always a melancholy spectacle, the last resting-place of a fellow-countryman in some remote nook of a foreign land, far from the dust of his forefathers – in a grave prepared by strangers, around which no mourners ever stood, and over which no friendly hand raised a tribute to the memory of the lamented dead. The wanderer’s heart yearns at the sight. How soon may not such fate be his own?”
I bought a book in Delhi written by the famous British explorer Sir Richard Burton – not the actor, but a man with a fascinating biography nonetheless (link here - the first entry is not the same guy, but the rest are). Sir Richard was a wanderer in the first degree, exploring the entirety of India and Africa for the Queen. He also posed as a Muslim and snuck into Mecca -- supposedly the first Westerner to see inside there. The book I bought is about his visit to Goa circa 1851. The name is “Goa and the Blue Mountains or Six Months of Sick Leave.” In the book he recounts visiting a pile of masonry in the Goan interior that served as a marker for the final resting place of an English general who had formerly served in the British Army in India. This general had gone native. He learned the language, adopted the dress, and he married an Indian girl. Upon visiting his grave in Goa, Sir Richard reflected thus:
“It is always a melancholy spectacle, the last resting-place of a fellow-countryman in some remote nook of a foreign land, far from the dust of his forefathers – in a grave prepared by strangers, around which no mourners ever stood, and over which no friendly hand raised a tribute to the memory of the lamented dead. The wanderer’s heart yearns at the sight. How soon may not such fate be his own?”
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