They say memory wilts around the
edges with time.
March 2011. He wore a khaki
blazer and faded blue jeans, the quintessential wardrobe of a seasoned
traveller. I don’t remember what I wore, probably my Superman t-shirt, slightly
dulled with age, the blues and reds not as bright as they once used to be. His
bald-by-choice head glistened in the mid-morning sun (mere creative license for
airport tubelights) and his eyes were kind. He asked if I needed help and
gently pointed me in the direction of the right gate. I was at Rome
International Airport, and the air tasted of steely, sterilised
air-conditioning.
May 2012. I see her in a white
tunic, I am not sure why. I see all of them in white, almost like the children
from The Sound of Music leaning against the bed, and that just cannot be right.
The room had dull, moss green walls, and the wallpaper was a floral print. The
roof sloped down above us, outlining the shape of a
once-Russian-spa-turned-convention-centre in the middle of the hills. She told
us about ‘bride-stealing,’ a practice in the awkward limbo between tradition
and discomfort. Her audience spanned a colour spectrum, from the creaminess of
the Philippines to the earthiness of Egypt and India, all the way through the
chocolatey textures of Liberia. I was in Bavaria, and the air tasted of
embraced diversity and the chilly nip of a late spring.
May 2013. He had blue eyes and
brown hair speckled with the dust and dryness of the mountains. I feel like he
was dressed in a black-turned-grey t-shirt but it could barely be seen under
the sand-coloured sweater punctuated by stray thread, unravelling with
experience and age. He seemed perpetually bewildered, trying to make sense of
this phenomenon before him, a single girl travelling thousands of kilometres
from home. Yet even the confusion couldn’t dull the instinctive hospitality and
the well-intentioned attention. You must come to Kashmir, he told me. That is
where the real beauty is, of lakes and carpets and shawls. I was in Ladakh, and
the air tasted of strangeness and unusual amounts of salted chai.
July 2014. Her starched cotton
sari was adamant in its solidity. It just would not move. I see it in pastels,
either a pale blue or a soft green, maybe with a hint of pink. She stood by the
door of a crumbling classroom that posed a picture of contradiction. Strewn
about the cracked tiles and hung atop the peeling walls were ‘learning
resources’ from a different era, a newer time, and there she stood representing
all that was the Indian Classroom. She told us about her experience, a career
that had spanned longer than my life at the time, and we pretended to live up
to our image of authority, our conversation punctuated by the occasional cry
for attention from the toddlers who made up our audience. I was in rural Tamil
Nadu, and the air tasted of adjustment, experience, and the government Mid-Day
Meal.
June 2015. She wore an apron, the
kind that belongs in a cafeteria, and stood behind the billing counter. The
name tag on her chest has pixelated in my mind. Was it a Violet? Or a Viola? Or
perhaps there was no V at all. The boy ahead of me in line swiped his student
card and traipsed out with a couple of bananas and what looked like noodle
soup. I handed over a lemon poppyseed muffin. She paused the checkout to look
me up and down. Is this your lunch, girl? I muttered an apologetic acceptance,
my mind already back in my cabin and the afternoon’s tasklist. For Viola, for
that is what we shall call her, there were other more important things. She
told me I ought to eat more, take care of myself more, not neglect my health so
far from home. She reminded me of my grandmother, many miles away. I was in
small town Canada, and the air tasted of random acts of kindness and French
Vanilla.
September 2016. The car was
maroon, an Alto I think, and the man wore a blue t-shirt. We flagged him down
to ask for directions, and he offered us a ride. Six of us tumbled into his
car, a confusing knot of limbs and voices as we tripped over our sentences to
introduce ourselves. You have the entire country in your car, we told him,
almost a little pompous of this bubble of diversity. We asked to go to the taxi
stand, he took us to town. We asked if there was an ATM, he made calls to local
bank officials. We asked him if he was from the village, he told us its
history. I was in rural Arunachal Pradesh, and the air tasted of the mustiness
of showers not had and whiskey offered straight from the bottle.
They say memory fades over time.
-
Travelling is a shape-shifter. Commuting
is a clean box; the expected scanning of airport displays and the impatient
tapping in security lines. It is the feigned nonchalance that rattles off the
next month’s itinerary, the glazed nothing-surprises-me-anymore look as cities
blend into one another. Family vacations
are a knotted tangle. It is the carefully orchestrated dance of I-love-spending-time-together
against the rhythm of give-me-my-own-space. It is a choreographed coexistence
slightly rusty yet oiled by the emotional guilt that accompanies avoidance. It
is a rigmarole of commitment, expectation, and obligation. But true pleasure?
True pleasure lies in the solo. Real excitement is built in the evolution from
grey, many-times-mended, inappropriately unwieldy suitcases to the just-as-grey
but comfortably old, super-convenient rucksacks. It is hidden in the growth
from packing a grossly unsuitable and overly large wardrobe to chuckling at
anything more than two pairs of jeans and un-wrinkle-able t-shirts in dark
colours that don’t show dirt. It lies in the quiet moments, atop side upper
berths on the Indian Railways when I look around me and no one looks back, when
I am a Nobody and I couldn’t be happier. Travelling is a shape-shifter, but the
traveller, it would seem, is shapeless.
But don’t for a minute think
shapelessness is easy. It is complex, complicated, sometimes confusing. Time
and space, those deep philosophical categories that pose such layered
challenges to the academic, become disposable on the road. When you wake to the
sun and eat when you are hungry, when you walk a path just simply because it
appeared before you or choose a destination only because it is so far away,
what is space and time but mere romanticised words to throw out in travelogues
and personal essays? Yet even amidst this romanticism, this willingness to move
past categories and boundaries, there is the lurking need to acknowledge the
very same containers we are so quick to dismiss. I wake to the sun and eat when
I am hungry, yet I do not lurk after dark or take a midnight stroll. I choose a
path because it appeared and set out to a destination far away, yet I look
behind my shoulder to make sure no one else made the same decisions. I tell the
world I will be unavailable, that the only-too-familiar speech bubble
notification will not reach me, that I will not be refreshing my Gmail page.
Then I call my emergency numbers and tell them I will be unavailable except if…
There is always an ‘except’, a ‘Conditions Apply’ clause to my disappearing
act, an asterisk to this suspension of time and space.
-
Of all my travelling memories, my
worst is always walking out; of airports, railway stations, even just hotel
rooms, towards someone waiting some feet away. Walking in smells of expectation
and adventure mixed with the artificial steeliness of air-conditioning. Staying
in feels like long waits and carpeted floors, each one taken refuge in till the
automated voice announces final boarding calls. But walking out? Walking out
has an awkward stance, an uncomfortable glance to it. It feels self-conscious,
acutely observed. Walking out reeks of a person on the other end, standing,
while you shuffle out of the automatic doors, trolley first, towards them. They
wait, you feel weird. You shuffle. Even today, I breathe a sigh of relief when,
in the odd chance that someone picks me up, they call to say they are late.
Even today, I avert my gaze, pretending not to see them as they walk towards me
to save them the awkwardness, the acute observation.
Walking in smells of happenings.
Waiting smells of happenings. Walking out? It stinks of finality.
-
Travels, that quintessential
Indian English word, denotes transportation; late night buses with reclining
seats, and if you are lucky, an old 1990s movie. Travelling is an exercise in
grammar, present continuous suggesting movement, a line segment that stretches
between the start and the end. To me, though, the true form lies elsewhere.
Travelled, in past, hinting at a certain finitude, a completion. When you
travel, you always end. When you start, you always stop.
Yet every time I travelled, it is
hardly a straight line. There is neither a home nor a destination. Instead it
is a snaking path through foreign geographies and unchartered conversations,
exploring personal boundaries and shared memory.
hitchhiking in a lorry
in Ladakh
drinking in bamboo
glasses
in Arunachal
moving
closerto (elusive)
fluency in Tamizh
hoarding
collecting
storing
stories
people
and places and…
mine
all
if
only in narration
a tangle of
experiencesimpressionsopinions
newly
minted
Every time I travelled, it is defined
in plural all at once, hardly a straight line. Perhaps it is a maze. Better
still, perhaps it is not travelled at all.
Travelled is a verb, in past,
complete. Journey is different. Journey speaks of a serendipitous stumbling
coloured in the hues of promise. Journey is a noun, timeless, spaceless, always
present.
I do not travelled. I journey.
