The Soaked Salt - The Salt That Hasn’t Washed Off
The group of walkers has gone suddenly quiet. But the first few posts that appeared immediately after the completion of the March were worth lingering over.
Some walkers shared small, quiet disruptions that began sneaking into everyday life after the Dandi March — harmless, slightly ridiculous, yet persistent enough to make you pause and smile.
This is not about the Dandi March anymore. This is about what the march did after it ended.
Sandeep says “I find myself scanning the sky for the sun at 5 a.m., instinctively seeking a banana by 6. There’s a reflexive search for a band-aid the moment my feet touch the floor. Water tastes better from a bottle than a glass. My bladder seems convinced that the neighbour’s garden is a perfectly acceptable hourly stop. Legs go up on restaurant tables without apology. I still look for “Dandi Path” painted on pavements to reassure myself I’m on the right road.”
I have been afflicted too. For me, vegetable shopping has turned into chi-walking. Obviously people give me vague looks. Cows on the road (which are a plenty in Bangalore) are viewed by me with a veteran’s caution. Despite six idlis for breakfast, there’s genuine anxiety about whether two boiled eggs will appear at 10 a.m. Tea cups everywhere now look absurdly oversized. I even catch myself stopping the car at exactly five kilometres, half-expecting a tempo traveller to pull up alongside. My wife is wondering why I am self medicating myself so often with Fast & Up hydration tablets. Mornings now feel unusually quiet — no calls to assemble, no shuffle of tired feet. Some days it doesn’t feel poetic at all — ordinary routines feel strangely inadequate.
In the midst of these shared after-effects, Lalit sent something that felt deeply Indian and deeply human. It wasn’t disrespectful at all— it was affectionate. He picked up the refrain from the poem Girish had earlier shared which I’ve written about separately in my post Gratitude To The Path but gave it a more colloquial, observational, and playful voice.
Where the original poem speaks of breath, fatigue, and inner restlessness, this one brings in hunger, food, sweat, and the small indignity of washing clothes at night. There is no denial of tiredness or discomfort, yet the tone remains celebratory.
No one is portrayed as a martyr, a sage, or a lone seeker — just a group of tired humans eating, walking, sleeping, and moving together. Through these lines, the march shifts from individual experience to shared memory.
The first poem tells us why we walk. This one shows how we actually walked. One is timeless; the other is time-stamped. Together, they complete the Inner Walk.
And here it is with its meaning
Yoon hi chal pade yaaron ke saath,
Haathon mein haath, karte hue bahut si baat.
Jab-jab padaav par mile khajoor aur ande,
Hum sab raahgiron ke pharah uṭṭhe jhande.
Din mein kabhi khaaye rotla, gur, ghee,
Toh kahin dabaayi swaadisht khichdi, karee.
Shaam hote-hote thake-haare gantavya par pahunche,
Kintu tab bhi sabne dho daale kapde aur kacchhe.
Yaatri-niwaas par soye chain ki neend,
Bhor uṭhe saath mein liye nayi umeed.
Jis-jis se path par sneh mila, Uss-uss raahi ko dhanyavaad.
Plain English Translation
We simply set off together with friends, hand in hand, talking endlessly along the way.
Whenever we reached a halt and found dates and eggs, the spirits of all us travellers rose like fluttering flags.
Some days we ate rotla with jaggery and ghee, and elsewhere we quietly relished delicious khichdi and curry.
By evening, tired and worn out, we reached our destination, yet even then, everyone washed their clothes and undergarments.
At the travellers’ rest house, we slept a deep, contented sleep, and woke up at dawn carrying fresh hope together.
On every path where we received affection, to every such fellow traveller — our thanks.
Somewhere along the way, without formally declaring it, we finished an experiment in detachment — almost an echo of The Story of My Experiments with Truth, though far less eloquent and far more blistered. And Anil listed it down with precision:
For fifteen days, life was stripped to essentials:
• No cash, no cards
• A different bed every night
• Every meal in a different place
• Khichdi dinners that lasted the night
• Prayers twice a day
• Clothes washed daily
• Dinner at 7:30 p.m., sleep by 8
• Waking at 4:30 a.m.
• No television
• Rotla broken with like-minded friends
• No non-veg, no alcohol, no cigarettes
• New strangers every kilometre — new thoughts, dialects, food habits — diversity not discussed, but lived and respected
All of us were held together by a living entity called the Dandi Path. It had its own standard time, its own rhythm, its own quiet patriotism, its own salt.
Returning to the “real” world feels oddly unreal. Normalisation will take time — and perhaps it should. After all, this disorientation too is part of life. Perhaps this is the Inner Walk — when the salt refuses to dissolve back into routine.
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