“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody.” Anthony Bourdain
Akash, Sameer, and Sid in Goa. Kabir Thapar, oorf Bunny, a jet-setting creative ‘free-soul’. Ved and Tara escaping themselves in Corsica. Zeenat Aman seeking freedom and community in Nepal. The conceited and tortured Mehras, for whom a Mediterranean cruise brings on the realization that it helps to let the heart lose.
Of course, one of these is not like the others, and the good sanskari elder brother must bring his wayward sibling back into the fold.
The India of our parents and grandparents: the single and steady job, life-partner on family’s terms, children to carry the lineage, a house to spend all our life in, and enough food through all of this, is this still the country that we live in? When I take a pause and look around, their world, the world of my childhood, has slowly but surely gone from techni-color to a wisp of a line-drawing.
For some 30-odd years, we’ve seen our beloved actors portray people who are longing for more than can be found in the humdrum of daily routine, and now it’s in the zeitgeist to go beyond the template. In our own lives, every so often, we register the need for change. We open up our calendar. Is it a weekend I can get away, or maybe a full week off? Maybe it’s time for a relaxing family trip. Or, why not renew the vows of old friendship with fresh experience? Do I want to feel sea-breeze on my face, or trek up a hill? Am I going to the other end of the country, or are the stars aligning to put that passport to use? We decide on the destination and the duration, and move onto the Deal Olympics (if I lose out on the better deal, then who am I even?). Then there are the places I’ve got to go to. What, you were in Delhi for a whole day and a half, and you didn’t see the Qutub Minar?What, I was in Delhi for a whole day and a half, and I didn’t see the Qutub Minar? Sacrilege.
Wanting to escape the prison of tedious daily-life, have we willingly put ourself in a new prison of hurried scampering? I look at monuments and feel a sense of awe, but I wish I had more than 40 minutes to feel it. This hurry saps away the wonder I long for. The speed of sight-seeing isn’t matching the pace of my heart. I want an adventure that will change me, but I suddenly realize that I am no different from the Mehras. I am not dil-dhadakne-do-ing.
So, what is the solution? How can I plan my trip in such a way that I have the space to encounter these new places, new ways of living, and new perspectives, and allow it all to change me? I know that there’s more to me than I know, and I want to know aspects of me that I either didn’t even know existed, or the qualities I forgot I had as life took me along. I want to open up to the world because that is the same as opening up to my self.
I believe that the answer is to plan trips not just by a checklist of landmarks or sights, but by experiences. There’s more in Delhi than a day and a half. There’s more in Delhi than a week. There’s more in Delhi than a whole life. This world is so vast that it is innately impossible to consume all of it. And, isn’t that the thrill of it?
More than the impressive physicality of India Gate, I remember my conversation with an old-lady on the grounds nearby. I remember the moment of finding two attars that blended in symphony. I remember the exact second the fellow traveler on the upper-bunk and I became friends. It is moments like these that make me say – yes, I went there. Yes, it was such a great time.
