Going Away

The best part of travel is its anticipation.

For me, it has never been like this. I am used to getting phone calls in the middle of the night asking me if I can go over to Rio de Janeiro ‘in the coming week’. The ticket would arrive on the day of travel and I would make an international trip without insurance. That’s one of the scariest aspects considering my conviction that one day, sooner or later, I will die in a plane crash. In situations such as these, there is no room for anticipation because there is no time to nurture that emotion. Instead, there is a high anticipation of the trip being cancelled. And when travelling from India to countries such as Mexico, the visa nightmares leave place for neither romance nor anticipation, far less the anticipation of romance. The Mexican government somehow thinks that there are no honest travellers among Indians; all we want in life is to cross over to the US through the land border. My visa was sorted out at the last moment through some hobnobbing at the highest diplomatic level and once again, the passport had reached on the day of travel.

Not this time. Everything has been sorted out well ahead. The ticket reached two months prior to travel and even the last visa as well as the insurance were all done a fortnight ago. I even completed the purchase of 35 gift items for friends ten days before and even finished cataloging them (ie, which gift is for whom). For the first time in my life, I truly relish the romantic joy of the anticipation of a thrilling five-week travel schedule with all expenses paid except for my personal side-trips in Europe. All meetings, rendezvous, all lecture assignments, dinners, hotel reservations, encounters with old friends at airport lounges in cities-I-barely-know, all are fixed way ahead in time. It is as if I have scripted my own life with me as the protagonist, belligerently defying any potential unsettling uncertainty. I neatly print out the details of my itinerary, make multiple copies of it and distribute them among those who may have to contact me in case of emergency. And yet, two days before my travel, a Spanish friend informs that there is no way she can take the same flight with me from Madrid to Santiago de Compostela where we reserved a cheap ‘no-cancellation-allowed’ SpanAir ticket eight weeks ago. Even before I embark upon my journey, I see my eighty euros floating down the drain along with my misplaced enthusiasm. To what extent can real life be scripted? What’s the point in being so proactive! Isn’t it better to live impulsively and allow life to take you unawares!

Anuradha (my ex-wife) and Shagnik (my 8-year old son) come to drop me at the airport in the middle of the night. She had never seen me off at the airport during all the years we were married and yet she is here tonight. Neither she nor my son are visibly concerned about me going away but far more absorbed by the romantic atmosphere of the departure lounge of the international airport. I almost drift away, unnoticed. They are busy looking up at the itineraries of airlines as much as I am. There are no finer journeys than the ones provoked in the imagination.

When will you take me to Europe? My son asks me, by way of bidding farewell. When will you take me to Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona? - places he has heard being mentioned passionately at home and now sees some of these names in the itinerary chart glaring in front of him. He learns the names of some new destinations - Newark, Amsterdam, Johannesburg – words that evoke a sense of romance about adventures that await him. The travel bug his hit him too.

‘Study well and you will get to travel to these places and many more’, I tell him by way of consolation as well as inspiration like a middle-class educated Bong for whom giving lectures, attending conferences or film festivals, fellowships or scholarships are flimsy justifications for travelling around the world at someone else’s cost. At least, it is the easiest way to trot the globe.