A ‘unique’ companion for your morning walks

Recite The Daffodils of William Wordsworth or The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam or Sonia Gandhi’s opinion about Mahatma Gandhi on Monday. Start your Tuesday morning walk with Jawaharlal Nehru’s “tryst with destiny” speech or Swami Vivekananda’s 1893 address to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Recite on Wednesday excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech or from The Book of Psalms. And walk on with John F Kennedy’s and Voltaire’s quotes, and Chinese and Japanese proverbs over the next three days of the week.

The Tribal Affairs Minister’s suggestions have come in his book, Walk With Me, which was released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last Tuesday.

If Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal’s anthology of poems released last month was arguably the first-ever “literary” work written entirely on a cellular phone, Kyndiah’s book is unique in the sense that it does not talk about the virtues of walking.

The Prime Minister found it a “unique book”; Congress president Sonia Gandhi found in it a “unique message”; and Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss who wrote the foreword termed it as a “unique achievement”. If they did not have much to comment about the book, it was apparently because its contents are already well-known. One of the quotes is borrowed from the Parliament Office of the Prime Minister. The 96-page book is divided into six chapters for six days of the week.

Born in Shillong, Kyndiah says he often wandered in the hills and dales. The habit continued even after he moved from one place to another. According to Kyndiah, the book is “a sharing of my own experience over the years on the goodness of walking”.

The two-page introduction talks about his favourite haunts for walks: around Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, Nariman Point in Mumbai, Marina Beach in Chennai, and Kumarakrupa in Bangalore. But that is all when it comes to ‘experience-sharing’. The rest of the book comprises quotes of Pope John Paul II, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Robert Frost, Swami Ranganathananda, Guru Gobind Singh, Jesse Jackson, and Andre Guide, among many others.

“I found out that the secret of walking is not allowing your mind to remain in a vacant or pensive mood — reciting favourite quotes or verses from the holy books and even wise sayings can constitute a friend or companion. Each one seems to cry out ‘Walk With Me’. Hence, the book,” explains Kyndiah.

The book costs Rs 495.