THE HUNGRY TRAVELLER

The hungry traveller wandered the world to collect priceless stories to treasure for life. He soaked in the heritage of London, savoured the sharp Turkish coffee of Istanbul, lost himself in the forests of the Savannah, and scaled the Alps and the Himalayas alike.
But when his time came, his senile mind could not tell his mountains and his seas apart. The travelogues were reduced to wisps of inconsistent and inaccurate memories. When desperate relatives tried to regale him with a recount from a junket, he responded but with a name they had not heard before.
‘Where is Zahid?’
In a corner tucked far away from their universe was an old alley lined by betel-stained walls and an unkempt patch of grass that was once called a garden. The octogenarian kept up with his routine of visiting the milk bar for his daily rations, playfully swirling his walking stick at passers-by who called him Zahid Uncle. Taking a detour by the little mound of grass he’d then sit, reflecting upon what could have been just yesterday – when two best friends spent years in frolic. Until one set out to collect priceless stories to treasure for life, and the other chose to wait.

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