Seeing places anew, as a traveller of means
Public transport is great, but sometimes it’s cold — you are a ghost in an alien city, occupying a seat, barely anyone acknowledging your presence
Did you visit a country as a tourist long ago and ticked it off your bucket list? Visit it again, because now it will be a different country. Not because it has changed or developed, but your new income strata will unlock a different experience at the same destination. It suddenly becomes a different city.
I visited Europe in my 20s, due to a concept invented by package-tour companies called the honeymoon — an extension of the usual punching-above-your weight Olympics called the wedding festivities, where people take high-interest personal loans to feed their relatives three varieties of pasta at a Noida banquet hall. Evidently, I couldn’t really afford the Euro trip, but I went with the same irrationality with which we booked a poolside wedding venue to please foofajis (husbands of paternal aunts). Hence, I booked the cheapest possible return-flight tickets and hotel rooms. My partner was luckily from the same school of thought, and thus we kickstarted our hunger games. My post-MBA salary hadn’t seen many appraisal winters. So, we had to optimise.
An eight-hour flight later, we landed at the Schiphol International Airport (Amsterdam). As we waited in the serpentine immigration queue, we saw a couple with a baby skip the mile-long line and directly land at an immigration counter. I looked at my wife, and she looked at me, and in that silent moment, we decided we love kids. An immigration queue is one of the best arguments against contraception.
{{/usCountry}}An eight-hour flight later, we landed at the Schiphol International Airport (Amsterdam). As we waited in the serpentine immigration queue, we saw a couple with a baby skip the mile-long line and directly land at an immigration counter. I looked at my wife, and she looked at me, and in that silent moment, we decided we love kids. An immigration queue is one of the best arguments against contraception.
{{/usCountry}}Nevertheless, once we were out, we were hungry, but instead of heading to a cafe for our breakfast, we went to a supermarket. Cold panini sandwiches and free wifi — all of our subsequent tourism was chasing one of the two. Even if, by some chance, we sat down at a cafe table, we would read the menu as if it was printed in Arabic — left to right. Always the price first.
{{/usCountry}}Nevertheless, once we were out, we were hungry, but instead of heading to a cafe for our breakfast, we went to a supermarket. Cold panini sandwiches and free wifi — all of our subsequent tourism was chasing one of the two. Even if, by some chance, we sat down at a cafe table, we would read the menu as if it was printed in Arabic — left to right. Always the price first.
{{/usCountry}}That’s a great experience in itself. Adversity is the best ingredient of love.
But once you have graduated from that level, Paris will look and feel much different when you don’t faint if you have to buy bottled water, if you can afford a taxi, and don’t have to drag your luggage to the subway station that is a kilometre away. Taking a taxi is like entering a tin-house of a local you can interact with.
Public transport is great, but sometimes it’s cold — you are a ghost in an alien city, occupying a seat, barely anyone acknowledging your presence. In a taxi, you are a guest, often welcomed by broken English and stories. You feel the road, its speedbumps and potholes. You can peek inside the vehicles parallel to you at traffic red lights. You are suddenly breathing in sync with the city.
Singapore looks different from the top of the Marina Bay Sands than when you look at it from the waterfront.
And that’s true not just for travel, but also for books, movies, and experiences as well. The same art will show a new facet at a different life stage. Your lens keeps changing. People often go, “No doubt, it’s a classic. But I have already seen this movie 10 years ago; let’s watch something else.”
It’s a rookie mistake. Watch it again. Read that book again. Just becoming a parent resets your world-view. I realised after I became a parent, l could appreciate the emotions of an on-screen father more intimately, thereby accessing those emotional chords of the movie I was so far oblivious to. I could appreciate the tribulations of the Rajesh Khanna movie, Anand, after I saw someone in my family succumb to cancer at a young age. George Orwell’s 1984 gets more relevant every passing year of this de-globalised world.
The issue with socialist economies such as ours is that it turns us into hoarders. We are always in accumulation mode, not just hoarding money and resources, but also memories and experiences. A five-day itinerary of a typical Indian tourist might have 20 “things to cover”, which exhausts them so much that they crave for another holiday just to recover from the previous. We just want to increase the count of the books we have read, movies we have seen, and fridge magnets from different countries on our fridge door. This race leaves little time to reflect. Never shy away from re-reading, re-watching, or just re-experiencing. Hence, it’s okay if you stick two fridge magnets from the same country on your refrigerator.
Abhishek Asthana is a tech and media entrepreneur, and tweets as @gabbbarsingh. The views expressed are personal
