False Dilemma

I am stuck in a classic beast of a dilemma where I have to choose between two, undesirable choices. What do I do? Well, write a post on it, for starters. I need to make a trip to Vaishnodevi. If you don’t remember why, read this old post. Cutting to the chase then, I am making a trip to India in March. Just me and Chip. For a just little more than two weeks. After five and a half years long years. After getting married, after having a child, after BigGeek’s “little adventure”. Many people to meet, very little time.

To make a trip, from Mumbai to Jammu and then on to Vaishnodevi, in a schedule that is already stuffed to the brim, is no lilliputian task. But make do I must. As much as I would have liked to take a train and chug though sleepy little towns and their dusty train stations and crusty vendors hawking hot tea and show Chip these little nuggets of quintessential India from my past, I can’t. Not if I have to make a trip in three days. I have to fly. Fair enough. You can’t have everything. So, I fly out on day1 to Jammu, drive to Katra. Climb up the Trikuta Mountain next day to the shrine and then climb back down. Depart for Mumbai on day 3. The climb is about 14km (9 miles) each way. It took my friend and her mother nine hours to climb the mountain. I can do it; I am in fairly good shape. And I am sure if my mom/mil/aunts/grandma accompanies me they can always get a doli. The challenge is of course Chip. I cannot imagine not doing the yatra without him. But to keep him engaged for such an extended period of time, managing his potty and meals will no doubt be arduous, especially since both, he and I, will be jet lagged. There is of course another alternative. The heli ride. You can now get to the shrine in 8 minutes by a helicopter, instead of anywhere from 5-8 hours if you walked. It will be a breeze for Chip and me and the mothers. But I am uncomfortable doing it.

Pilgrimages are not supposed to be made in a chopper. They are supposed to be journeys. Where you travel different lands, meet interesting people on the way, experience adventures. Almost like a microcosm your larger journey in life. The journey is important; perhaps because in a sense it begets the final destination. It can’t and shouldn’t be fitted into an eight minute ride. That just doesn’t feel right. But rationale triumphs. How is the palanquin or a pony ride different? One is not walking with one’s two feet. But the journey takes just as much time, doesn’t it? And it is leisurely, is it not? Maybe at the bottom of it all, I am truly trepid of filling six long hours with nothing to do. Except of course entertain and feed and clean Chip and walk. Perhaps my life has become a macrocosm of the 8 minute helicopter ride.

I am wondering about how to deal with this. Should I ride the helicopter or should I walk? I want to walk. But I also want to ride the helicopter not feel like I am cheating. It is a classic dilemma. Or it could be that it is not really a dilemma at all. Most problems are analog spectrums. They are not binary. And perhaps there is a third answer lurking somewhere. But it is eluding me. Big time. Kahlil Gibran once said that the road to knowledge starts with perplexity. I am sure he meant it for people like Plato and Socrates and their bigger, important dilemmas that truly stood on the brink of great knowledge and wisdom. Mine seems like a joke in comparison. But then again, we all have our own dilemmas handed out to us by providence. Big and small. And perhaps it is the size of dilemmas that cast the difference between the making of a great Socrates or the insignificant me.