Travel

Travel Gems

By in Generalist, Think About It 1 Comment Tags: , ,

Paul Theroux’s “The Tao of Travel” was a goldmine of perspectives on the subject. While I did write a review on GoodReads, I really didn’t stuff it with quotes as I would have liked. :) But since this is more of a chronicle, I can afford the liberty here.

“You go away for a long time and return a different person – you never come all the way back.” Paul Theroux

“Travel is flight and pursuit in equal parts.” Paul Theroux

“I think I spend more time thinking about what I don’t want to take with me: assumptions, iPods, cameras, plans, friends, (in most cases) laptops…… expectations.” Pico Iyer

“Unfortunately, the sort of individual who is programmed to ignore personal distress and keep pushing for the top is frequently programmed to disregard signs of grave and imminent danger as well. This forms the nub of a dilemma that every Everest climber eventually coms up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you’re too driven you’re likely to die.” Jon Krakauer

“My own feeling is that city dwellers invent the cities they dwell in. The great cities are just too big to be comprehended as a whole, so they are invisible, or imaginary, existing mainly in the mind.” Paul Theroux

“Travel is one of the saddest pleasures of life.” Madame de Staël

“I tend to think that happiness is a particular time in a particular place..” Paul Theroux

“It sometimes seems to me that if there is a fundamental quest in travel, it is the search for the unexpected.” Paul Theroux

until next time, wanderlust

The window seat….

By in Life Ordinary, mPhil, Yesterday 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

…at night. The sight of a person looking into infinity from within the confines of a moving vehicle. What sparked this memory was a single scene from a song in a movie (Malayalam) that I saw recently – Salt N’ Pepper. Not in this song, which is absolute foodpr0n, but in the other melodious song (2:50 – 3:05) You’ll probably not recognise Shwetha Menon. :)

In trains, it works differently for me. The lights are much further away, and flicker, as though desperately trying to get me to imagine their story. In buses, the lights seem much closer, and so are the people outside. Returning from work, knowing they have a night ahead to recoup before they face the daily grind the next day. On their way to meet friends, hoping they’ll have a good time. Rushing home, eager to see a loved one, whom they have missed all day. Stories of hope, stories with a face.

I don’t get to see this these days, but I remember when I was in engineering college and used to return home on weekends. My usual bus dropped me at home by 6, too early for this, but in case I got delayed, I’d be in a plodding bus, half empty, on a route and through a landscape that looked completely different when seen at night. Before I got the Kiney to Goa, the trip from Panjim to Ribandar at night felt just the same. The Mandovi just made it extra special. In my first job, there was a period during which I used to travel daily from Cochin to Paravur, about 20 km away. That was probably the last time I got the window seat in a bus, at night. Ironically, that was also the time I used to go back to an empty home. One of those times, when the spectator had his own story to tell. :)

There is something about the window-seat-at-night experience – romantic/ nostalgic/ wistful that makes it special. A feeling that I was not alone in the crowd. It used to give me a sense of peace, a feeling that everything would be alright.

until next time, the bus stops here.

More on the Uncertainty Principles

By in Life Ordinary, mPhil, Think About It, Yesterday No Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ok, so it’s not long back that I wrote about uncertainty, but in this real time world, I can’t blame myself for thinking of it on a regular basis. I wonder if it also has to do with the macro environment I grew up in – the typical 80s kid in India, whose ‘options’ across the board – from movie heroes to restaurants to soaps and television channels usually boiled down to one. (remember?)

From my own experiences, I know it is possible even now, but it’s a choice and a very difficult one at that, and one that might be difficult to reverse later. An extended trip to Kerala sometime back- home, made me realise that there are those who have made that choice, or rather, have for some reason remained in a lifestyle with minimum choices. Belonging to an earlier generation, but who have refused to let the ever changing world rock their boat. It isn’t that the boat isn’t rocked regularly in their ‘small’ world, but the rocking seems to happen within a framework – as though there is some tacit understanding with the cosmos, a reward for not adding to the cosmos’ complications.

Uncertainty has a permanent live-in arrangement with most of us, and now dictates the relationship so much that we take it as a given. I am not a comfortable partner, but for various reasons, can’t do much about it. I wondered what the future would hold. As is becoming a practice with me, I found interesting perspectives in the book I was reading – ‘The Mammoth Book of Short Science Fiction Novels’.

Asimov’s “Profession” had a world where a person’s station in life, and life itself is dictated by certain tests he undergoes at 2-3 points in life – Reading Day, Education Day and every individual is slotted basis the result of these tests. (not exams, mental examinations which figure out the natural aptitude of the individual’s brain) John Jakes’ “The Sellers of the Dream” has a world where companies sell a ‘fashion’ for a season, which includes physical and mental changes done to an individual and changes his/her personality. But in Larry Niven’s “Flash Crowd”, one of my favourites, I sensed the best summation of our current status “For each human being, there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt.”

I wonder if this is timeless, and am not too certain that the last sentence on losing the ability to adapt is very encouraging.

until next time, certain tees I can’t live without

A clocked up life

By in mPhil, Think About It No Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Time has always been one of the most important constructs for me. In most of my actions, it is probably the first parameter kept in mind. The debate on whether it’s a human construct or a dimension that exists anyway is still not resolved in my head. But I still swing more towards a construct because in the words of one Julian Barbour, “Change merely creates an illusion of time, with each individual moment existing in its own right, complete and whole.” He calls these moments ‘nows’ and further postulates that “Time is simply the measure of the space between two separate and unrelated ‘nows.’” Unfortunately, this seems to take us further away from any possibility of navigating that distance beyond the linear flow we experience.

I was reminded of this because of an article I read in TOI and from my own recent experiences. The article was about an Amazonian tribe called Amondawa that had no concept of time. They live in a world of events and had no words for ‘next week’, ‘last year’ etc. Also, no one had an age. Instead, when their position in life changed, they took on a new name!!

For a fortnight in May-June, I was in Kerala, spending most of my time in a hospital waiting room. My entire routine had been changed. Nothing can be more disruptive for a creature of habit, but it did gave me a chance to observe time and my relationship with it. I noticed that time played an intrinsic part in my life because of associations – from mundane things like when I had to take a bath/ go online to things like when I would see D next. The associations make memories and our visions for the future, and those make up our navigation mechanism. If the associations did not exist, time’s importance could be reduced to a minimum, if not completely.

On those starlit nights, it was easy to remember Dr.Manhattan’s  line from Watchmen, though in another context ” I am looking at the stars. They are so far away. And their light takes so long to reach us. All we see of stars are their old photographs.” But for us, it’s a now. So which really is the now -the stars’ now or my now or both? But then again, if not time, what would be my main narrative?

until next time, anti-clock-wise :)

Insignificance

By in mPhil, Social Media, Think About It No Comments Tags: , , , , ,

I remember writing this post about 4 years back, with an insight on why I didn’t particularly like to travel. Things have changed since then, and I do travel as much as possible these days. The odd discomfort of viewing masses of humanity still persists, but the reasons are more nuanced.

What reminded of that post was this article that beautifully expressed the discomfort with the title “The Sad, Beautiful Fact that We’re All Going to Miss Almost Everything“. The article uses this in the context of books, films, music, television and art. But I relate it more to places and people. I still remember that the saddest part of leaving Leh was that it was perhaps my only visit to the place and I had not seen everything that had to be seen. In the case of people, the rise of the statusphere (Facebook and Twitter) has only added to the feeling that one is constantly missing something significant.

It is probably going to get worse, unless of course, we manage to do the Matrix-USB type thing of instant information absorption. Even then, it would probably go the way things are headed to these days anyway- consuming without experiencing. The real time challenge of being updated about people would still exist. And perhaps it will end up the way the line goes, “we will increasingly be defined by what we say no to”. But, as the author of the article I linked to, above, notes,

It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good………That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.

If I had to adapt that to places and people, I could say that the creator might feel insignificant if we could discover all of it in a lifetime. However, the collective advance of humanity is not a complete solace when it comes to the individual’s existential angst. As one of my fave Calvin strips go

until next time, insignificant choices too?

Tea and multiplicity

By in Internet, Life Ordinary, Travel 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

We sat in Infinitea, sipping green tea and munching fried momos. It was her first visit to Bangalore, and as my contribution to her introduction to the city, I had given her the experience of navigating the one ways of the city on a two wheeler. It was less than a month since we’d been first introduced to each other, and that turned out to be the subject of the conversation, at least the lion’s share of it. Of how technology had reached a point where one could perhaps land up in any city and have such conversations, because of the connections that pre-exist. No pre-exist for years or even months, but just a few days, thanks to the people we trust, who connect us. We perhaps have nothing in common culturally, but we can still relate to each other in terms of ideas and thought streams. Communication protocols are changing, and with that, relationships too. We discussed the subject of my post a fortnight back – evolution, and she told me the story of a guy who had a camera fitted into his glass eye!!

She’s traveled a lot and shared anecdotes of places and experiences. Her stories reminded us of how destinations have become like trophies, simply to be collected as part of a journey which we no longer appreciate, much like the beautiful sights that nature has created. We compared notes on clicking images versus capturing it in the mind’s eye. I could totally relate to that as I remembered the Leh trip from earlier this year and told her of how I paused before I took the step into the plane that would take me back, knowing that it perhaps was the last time I’d see the place. After all, there are so many places to see, never mind the trophies, because there may be some I haven’t even heard of yet.

I think that I might have come across as an absolute anti-capitalist, because at least twice I said that the only thing that stopped us from enjoying life fully was money, because it tends to become an end in itself, and we make the things it can buy, the things that hold value to us. If money wasn’t a constraint, I’d travel all over the world, write about the things I saw and be happy with the five odd people who read it. But it is, and so one has to save up, and choose from destinations, and hope one has made the right choice.

We debated a bit on what I thought was a paradox of sorts. She said that many people felt lonely when they landed in an alien city (work,not vacation), and they yearned for a taste of their own culture. I said that, with increasing connectivity, we were all moving towards global citizenship, where the individual cultures had blurring boundaries, or rather, the differences seemed to be becoming less important. Typical example being how we were able to converse on a range of subjects without getting bored. (though we have only my word for it) And how with each passing generation, traditional customs were getting packaged to suit lifestyles…until they will become ‘user agnostic’. (much like the platform agnostic technologies) But yes, that is more futuristic than present, though I may have more in common with a London based Twitter user, than my next door neighbour, on several fronts.

We spoke about the great divide that technology was creating, and how the human race has perhaps yet not identified that as one of our greatest challenges. A real time battle against time. Which made us realise that both of us were getting late for our (respective) next meetings.

I drop her back at the hotel where she’s staying. We have to take a convoluted route, thanks to the one ways that dot Bangalore. Its funny because in terms of actual distance its really close by. I wonder if the roads are a good metaphor. We bid each other goodbye. Its easy to remain in touch, connected. After all, geographic distances don’t really matter. Sometimes its the divide in the immediate vicinity that is more difficult to bridge.

until next time, a lot can happen over tea too :)

PS: The day had two wonderful conversations, and as I start out to share the other, I realise I am trying to short change the next one and crunch the content. That’s unfair, so we will do a Part 2 soon :)

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