Traveller
How a city quietly taught me what it means to travel.
When people ask this question: “What did the five-year-old you want to do the most?”
My answer:
Like any other kid, I watched a few cartoons I liked such as Oswald and Mickey Mouse. But what I did watch the most growing up was a bunch of travel channels and cooking shows. As a child, I had a very delicate immune system. I fell sick often and was a scared child who laughed when she wanted to, blabbered everything that floated in her head, painted for hours and someone who loved getting ready and dressing cute. I was always told how I could never be a traveller because of how weak my body is. (Dearest baby, you’ll grow up to be one of the hardiest, most mentally flexible persons ever, I promise you.) Every single time they said that, I took it to my head, but there was some part of me which didn’t care. So, I continued to watch those shows and seeing outings with family as a little adventure into the world, even if I got to see the same places. I did my best to pretend to be a traveller, being in complete awe of creation. It’s safe to say, I still carry the same awe to this day.
I loved travelling long before I thought I would ever be allowed to become a traveller.
I watched hours of travel vlogs and episodes. Manali, Bali, Paris, New York, Istanbul, Sydney, Hong Kong. Places my baby self couldn’t even pronounce but loved anyway. I did not know how but I knew I’d see the world someday. Somehow, I’ll find a way? I don’t yet have answers. I’m 25 now and the years spent in questioning and yearning continue to be counted.
I dream and have dreamt of seeing places. Meeting interesting people along the way, dancing around campfires with people from all around the world, collecting memories and objects, getting clothes with stories attached to them, moving and growing. That’s my thing and somehow that’s never something I share about myself. Why? To be considered a traveller, one seems to have to collect places and countries which I cannot yet do. I loved travelling long before I thought I would ever be allowed to become a traveller.
To be a traveller seems to require stamps, countries, airports, bus stops and tickets. I couldn’t collect Instagram highlights and places, so life made me embody the spirit of one instead.
How did I come to realize all this? You see, life tends to give things you wished for and things you believe in, and I got an opportunity to move to Mangalore for a couple years for my Masters.
We never know what we’re wishing for.
We realize that after our wishes come true.
I was a nobody in Mangalore. In the beginning, it was disorienting and lonely. I did not know who I was without my people around me. No one cared that I loved eating mutton, if I ate my meals, if I washed my clothes, if I got a goodnight’s sleep, if my teachers were nice to me, if I got home okay, no one to ask why I did not dress up in my usual with big ass earrings and a huge smile, what book I was reading, if I enjoyed the sunset that day, nothing. No one knew me and it felt brutal at the time. Almost like I wasn’t real if they didn’t know all these things about me. I’d cry for hours sitting in the dark, I realized my dream but who knew it would be so bad. And in that space, a vacuum-like void is where I learned to be a traveller. To live with the discomfort of being unknown but be in the pursuit of knowing the world around me. How else would one live with voids without attempting to fill them?
Every aspect of Mangalore was different in comparison to Bangalore. The weather was hot and humid, the air smelled different, the buildings had water stains on them, the roads were uneven and steep, and my PG room’s walls had fungus on them. I slept on a cotton mattress placed upon a steel cot for 3 months (let me tell you, my body ached every single day, flesh against bones on steel ain’t fun) before my dad ordered a beautiful mattress for me. Damn, didn’t I take my regular life for granted.
A month later, a nuclear family of rats crawled through the sink to come bite into my fruits for 3 nights where on the 3rd night, the rat’s tail dangled on my forehead and I woke up. I was so scared and I put on the lights because lights made them run away. The warden offered to shift to a different shared room but I refused because I already settled in and I’m very territorial, so it was me against the rats for another 3 nights where I slept with lights on and I called up my parents, told them the funny story and I was armed with rat poison and rat traps before it was fixed.
Maybe resilience isn’t something you decide to have. Maybe it’s what quietly grows after enough nights with the lights on.
Maybe resilience isn’t something you decide to have. Maybe it’s what quietly grows after enough nights with the lights on.
Over time, the fan was a problem so clothes became a problem. During the rainy season, my clothes were catching fungus too and I remember losing my mind. How does one stop this? I was ironing my clothes, washing them, putting vinegar and baking soda and washing clothes, Dettol, I tried a bunch of weird things before castor helped. Castor balls were a lifesaver and I just threw a bunch of them in all sections of my steel cupboard.
Travelling doesn’t ask you if you’re comfortable but only if you’re willing. Willing to show up, with this sense of failure and tears like a child and not leave.
Summers got so bad that water was becoming so hot and taking bath 3 times, a day was the norm. Oh, my floor did not have hot water so if I wanted hot water, I had to go to the ground floor and fill up my bucket with hot water and then come upstairs and use the said hot water. I gave up on hot water after a while and I’d just shiver and convince myself that hey cold showers are good for me.
Sure, science had my back. But, imagine telling this to the comfortable version which lived back at home? The bourgeois response that would come, “Oh my gawd! Really? That sounds really inconvenient.” My PG didn’t care and you begin to see how much of your life needs the drive to move. Given how demanding everything felt, with my studies and clinical work, I saw how far I’d push my body to put up with pain. I knew my limits and now, whenever I skip meals or take a cold shower, my body remembers. She remembers those old days and I immediately switch to self-care mode because I know how detrimental it can be.
On bad days, I’d go to a small restaurant nearby, get Chicken Manchow soup and Garlic bread and come to my room, watch a show and gulp all of it down, slowly, peacefully. When I fell sick, I’d gather every bit of energy I could, get myself medicines and some bread, fill up my water bottles and crash in my room.
It was a difficult process, so I pushed harder to enjoy myself. My life couldn’t just be different shades of suffering. Hence, I began watching the sky and lord, was it always beautiful. I frequented to a small number of places and they eventually remembered me by my name and order. My friend and I we’d walk in; the billing counter man would see us and literally bill 2 special tea and give it even before we asked. It was so funny but we also felt so seen.
I went to Mangalore to study but what I did more was I learned to truly enjoy my walks. Oh, I’m a walker. I love long walks. Walking became my way of knowing the city. I’d wake up and wander the streets and find new chai places. I’d rate the teas I found. I wandered inside the malls; inside the hospitals I was posted at. I took every opportunity to walk and get tea. I didn’t get as much of pocket money, so I did my absolute best to enjoy what I had.
The first time I went out on my solo mission to find good tea, I was disappointed. I am very specific about the way I have my tea. It must be 70 parts milk and 30 parts waters, brewed not to a really dark color but a medium shade with copious amounts of sugar. That is my basic chai. But this combination when served with spices, the infamous masala chai, I’m metaphorically on my knees, saying thank you. But safe to say, my tea did not find me in places I expected to find it. Not in decent looking restaurants, but in my hospital’s canteen, a dull café lit with golden lights, and a place where smokers went to. (P.S. I do not smoke. No, thank you. I’ve seen enough tobacco addicts in the ward and the no parts of the recovery process is easy or as cool as the movies make men look like.)
Curiosity began with something as simple as tea.
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It moved my feet to places I didn’t know I could go to. For the first time in my life, I knew what choice felt like.
I had to order my uniform from a place 2kms away from where I lived and all of us were confused. One day, after class, I decided that I’d walk to that place. I did. I found a route which was long but somehow got me to that shady uniform seller place, hiding in a back street. All good, order placed, money gone and I’m walking back. It starts to rain and I have my laptop, and my e-reader, my two precious devices on me. I held on to my backpack for my dear life and it was pouring. Another thing to remember, you always keep the umbrella with you because it can rain whenever. My inner critic came online and began scolding me, because who now is going to wait at the end to present me with my illusional award? No one. But as I kept walking, I noticed how beautiful it all looked. The houses, the moss-covered walls, the empty streets, the swaying trees, the pouring sky but slightly lit up with the sunset. It was perfect. That was all I lived for, the poet in me that day was quiet because she was overwhelmed.
The poet in me that day was quiet because she was overwhelmed.
I think travellers learn to stop asking whether the day went according to plan and start asking what the day is trying to show them. All I had to do was see, be there, and receive.
I once got lost while going to the beach once and literally walked 2.5 kms of the shore, late evening, talking to my best friend on call, and having dogs be territorial and bark at me and I walked so fast to reach the main entrance and I will never forget the sweet pani puri I had that day post the long walk because I tried to force my day into some kind of story where I turned a bad day into the best by going to the beach and have a caption ready “Oh the sea saved me” but hahaha I made a bad day even worse. The realization of the performance of it all, how fake it was trying to force my experience to be something it wasn’t. A breathing lie, standing in front of me and I couldn’t even run.
I think that’s when I understood something. I’d spent years imagining travel through other people’s photographs. Here I was, trying to turn my own life into one. Somewhere along the way I had confused witnessing an experience with documenting it.
Somewhere along the way I had confused witnessing an experience with documenting it.
Being a traveller becomes more about the experience and the one of the tourists is more about the performance of it. There are moments of awe that strike both, but one lives through it and the other wishes to capture it. The reality, going to a new place and trying to live in it, learning about yourself in a new environment, decoding a language you’ve never heard before doesn’t seem like a very comfortable experience. It’s during these arduous months; I’ve come to know about my limits. I think good travelling teaches you how narrow-minded and limited you’ve been so far, in terms of experience and self-knowledge.
Walking was my constant. That is one true thing about me. I walk. A lot. I want to always appreciate the place, just as it is, every single day. I wanted to love a place like you love a person, in all its shades. Mangalore will always be my first love, my first home, my first pain. I met the city through walking, but also somehow ended up meeting myself. I got lost very often but always found my way back and ended up finding new streets and new people. Being lost way too often, I noticed how I knew more ways to walk around and other routes.
I wanted to love a place like you love a person, in all its shades.
The first moment Mangalore felt like home was when my father, uncle and his friend surprised me. I vividly remember how I ran from my class, down the stairs and hugged my dad. After an entire tour of the hospital, where I get snacks and where I fill my water bottles, the local dog friend, my class and my usual hangout spot, we went to Panumbur beach. Since it was their first time going to this beach, they drove ahead and took a left at the wrong place. Remember when I got down at the wrong stop to go to the beach and ended up walking 2.5 kms along the shore with dogs barking at me? Yeah there. So without google maps, I guided them back to the main entrance. I was beaming the whole time. I know, I know, I know. That’s when I knew, oh I know this place. This is my place so I know my way around. Bangalore has never that place for me. I don’t know my way around as much and even while I knew, I’m always doubtful.
Home is not really a place where you’re protected.
It’s the place where it’s safe enough to fuck up and with time, find a way to bounce back too.
I wasn’t just learning Mangalore, but Mangalore was reading me too. Every city asks something of you. Mangalore asked me for patience; Mangalore asked me to slow down and notice. It asked me to stop resisting discomfort. It allowed me to be kind and not be taken advantage of. It didn’t change. The rhythm remained the same and I felt safe inside in ways I’ve never felt before. There was nowhere to go, no one to be but me and be where I am. No fear of missing out because no one is even talking about missing out.
Mangalore asked me what I valued and I wanted from life and asked me to shamelessly live according to it and work in pursuance of it.
It was me knowing the city but also me knowing my own self through the city.
I learned that home is me.
Mangalore taught me that I can build home anywhere I want because HOME has always been me.
I am home.
Looking back, I think that’s why I’ve admired travellers. They say less but somehow mean more. They talk of a place in their own experiences than discounting it to be below their expectations.
If one changes places but is not changed by the place, the point of travelling is lost. It’s a disservice to the place when one is not changed and moved by it.
Lessons and wisdom hide in corners, waiting to be found.
A true traveller offers themselves to the place and asks,
“How do you wish to inspire change in me, dear place?”,
“What answers are you waiting to reveal to me?” and
“Moreover, what questions will bring to me this time?”
I left with answers but many more questions. I wonder which place awaits to know and be known by me.
I wonder which place awaits you too.
