When Ritesh quoted from Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, I immediately knew that an 8 years old argument is going to be restarted.
This is what Ritesh quoted:
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a Motorcycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness ...
To which Vishal says:
I had to reconstruct the quoted phrase: replace car with motorcycle and motorcycle with running /walking The central argument still holds - You are closer to nature while walking/running as compared to riding a motorcycle.
I disagreed with Vishal back then. And I disagree even today.
Vishal, you’ve got to come out of the words that Robert Pirsig has used and try to feel what he is trying to say. It is the kind of stuff I tried saying in 44 hours of biking nirvana.
It is not about being close to nature. It is not about speed. It is not about whizzing past the other objects. It is about a lot of things coming together and creating that Nirvana like feeling.
Try walking down to Pondicherry damn it!