I often ask myself why I travel. I have no travel goals. No lists to check off and nothing I need to accomplish. And more recently I have started to wonder if the physical act of getting away so often actually represents a mental need to escape.
I started with trying to understand my relationship with travel. I love starting this story with the fact that I first traveled when I was 18 days old; on a train from Madras to Trivandrum. Army kid, I moved every 2 to 3 years. Changing schools, best friends and playgrounds in remote army outposts. My parents though mostly unenthusiastic travelers at this age, have for years thrown me and my brother into a jeep and driven to the nearest beach with friends after a party was over. On narrow tree lined 2 lane state highways I remember starry velvet skies and someone singing Muhammad Rafi songs. I grew up on the beaches of Mandvi and Marina and studied in schools set in green fields with streams of ice melt flowing through the playground. And life kept changing completely every few years. Sure, i remember feeling bad about saying bye to some friends in the days of no email and cellphones, but i don't remember being distressed about moving to a whole new place.
So, we moved like gypsies making our own rituals instead of celebrating the ones they celebrated back home. Birthdays over festivals and mess parties over poojas. I learnt kathak and how to play the harmonium in Bhuj and swam and attempted to learn to play tennis in Jammu. I did my lower KG in someone's house in Pragati Vihar in Delhi and acted as a wren in a play while studying in a convent in Kerala. And that is how I grew up. Traveling from place to place. Every place completely new but with a comforting amount of predictability.
And then, without warning my folks decided to settle down in the interest of continuity in our education. If I had known the word preposterous then, I am sure I would have used it in context to this. Giving up traveling every few years to settle down? It wasn't the Madras humidity or the culture shock or the first taste of civilian life I had problems with. I could so no good reason why we were doing this at all.
3 years after we had settled down, infatuated with accounts of life in a boarding school in Ajmer, I proposed shifting schools and going to a boarding school. The folks willingly did everything to make it possible. But knowing as little as we did, I found myself in a hostel in an upmarket city school in a neighbouring city as opposed to camping and horse riding in a private boarding school in a quiet town. I eventually came back home and moved again. This time, quitting a job, leaving behind a boyfriend and the folks just to do college in a place that was far away. And just like that, I fell in love with Ahemdabad. The distinct four seasons in the calendar, the warmth of the people and their love affair with food and fun. I found a part of myself in that little town.
That is when i realised, every place I have lived in, even visited is a time that has shown to me, a part of myself. I've learnt that when you are vegetarian in Paris happiness is the smell of a frying samosa, I have figured that I am not claustrophobic in 2 feet caves and have an immunity to the cold when it comes to swimming in freezing pools when the water is an impossible shade between clear and blue. I have learnt on a subway in Strasbourg that if you have even one recessive Malayali strain in your gene pool it will take only one look for another Malayali to ask you which part of Kerala are you from. I first fell in love with architecture when I chanced upon the Parliamentary building in Dhaka. And in the Orsay, I finally understood why people stand for hours on end eating a sandwich in front of a painting, when i stood in front of Monet's multiple canvases of a cathedral painted during different times in the day. In meandering through places and jumping into buses, trains and flights to destinations where I didn't have a clue as to what I would do, in surprisingly candid conversations with strangers, being in an all new place has connected me to things I wouldn't do, food I wouldn't cook and ways in which I never thought I could feel. It always reminds me, there is no defined me. I am a response to my where I am and what I am going through.
How can I not travel?
I started with trying to understand my relationship with travel. I love starting this story with the fact that I first traveled when I was 18 days old; on a train from Madras to Trivandrum. Army kid, I moved every 2 to 3 years. Changing schools, best friends and playgrounds in remote army outposts. My parents though mostly unenthusiastic travelers at this age, have for years thrown me and my brother into a jeep and driven to the nearest beach with friends after a party was over. On narrow tree lined 2 lane state highways I remember starry velvet skies and someone singing Muhammad Rafi songs. I grew up on the beaches of Mandvi and Marina and studied in schools set in green fields with streams of ice melt flowing through the playground. And life kept changing completely every few years. Sure, i remember feeling bad about saying bye to some friends in the days of no email and cellphones, but i don't remember being distressed about moving to a whole new place.
So, we moved like gypsies making our own rituals instead of celebrating the ones they celebrated back home. Birthdays over festivals and mess parties over poojas. I learnt kathak and how to play the harmonium in Bhuj and swam and attempted to learn to play tennis in Jammu. I did my lower KG in someone's house in Pragati Vihar in Delhi and acted as a wren in a play while studying in a convent in Kerala. And that is how I grew up. Traveling from place to place. Every place completely new but with a comforting amount of predictability.
And then, without warning my folks decided to settle down in the interest of continuity in our education. If I had known the word preposterous then, I am sure I would have used it in context to this. Giving up traveling every few years to settle down? It wasn't the Madras humidity or the culture shock or the first taste of civilian life I had problems with. I could so no good reason why we were doing this at all.
3 years after we had settled down, infatuated with accounts of life in a boarding school in Ajmer, I proposed shifting schools and going to a boarding school. The folks willingly did everything to make it possible. But knowing as little as we did, I found myself in a hostel in an upmarket city school in a neighbouring city as opposed to camping and horse riding in a private boarding school in a quiet town. I eventually came back home and moved again. This time, quitting a job, leaving behind a boyfriend and the folks just to do college in a place that was far away. And just like that, I fell in love with Ahemdabad. The distinct four seasons in the calendar, the warmth of the people and their love affair with food and fun. I found a part of myself in that little town.
That is when i realised, every place I have lived in, even visited is a time that has shown to me, a part of myself. I've learnt that when you are vegetarian in Paris happiness is the smell of a frying samosa, I have figured that I am not claustrophobic in 2 feet caves and have an immunity to the cold when it comes to swimming in freezing pools when the water is an impossible shade between clear and blue. I have learnt on a subway in Strasbourg that if you have even one recessive Malayali strain in your gene pool it will take only one look for another Malayali to ask you which part of Kerala are you from. I first fell in love with architecture when I chanced upon the Parliamentary building in Dhaka. And in the Orsay, I finally understood why people stand for hours on end eating a sandwich in front of a painting, when i stood in front of Monet's multiple canvases of a cathedral painted during different times in the day. In meandering through places and jumping into buses, trains and flights to destinations where I didn't have a clue as to what I would do, in surprisingly candid conversations with strangers, being in an all new place has connected me to things I wouldn't do, food I wouldn't cook and ways in which I never thought I could feel. It always reminds me, there is no defined me. I am a response to my where I am and what I am going through.
How can I not travel?
