European Escapade- Part 1

At 31 years, after what seemed like (and was) a lifetime wait, I stood at the emigration counter waiting for the first ever chhaapaa in my passport allowing me to travel abroad. Big deal eh? Of course, for someone who made her passport ten years ago and has waited patiently for this moment, this surely was a very big deal. Make no mistake of thinking that I am the archetypal drooler who is enamored by everything foreign. I am aware and appreciate the beauty of my country. I simply loved to travel.

At school I had idolized Phileas Fogg and prayed that I should be able to afford to travel around the world. Later, working as a sales professional I envied IT professionals who got plum jobs in exotic lands while I slogged to win sales contests only to fall slightly short of the target for Mauritius getting Mont Blancs instead (I have quite a collection of them, incidentally). Aim for the moon and you will reach the stars, they said. I did. Aimed for Mauritius and got Mont Blancs.Why did I not attempt to take a foreign vacation? Maybe I wanted it come easy to me. Maybe I waited to see in what manner it would happen to me, if I didn’t make a conscious attempt to break the jinx.I waited. And waited. Before I knew it, my ten year old virgin passport came up for renewal. That’s when I stopped waiting and took action. I applied for my first visa –for a Dubai trip with my family -in a tearing hurry.

When emigration finally cleared me to board the flight to Dubai, the event happened a tad too fast, that my weak heart struggled to cope. I wanted to prolong the moment. All at once I could see a million white doves breaking free, wings flapping. Some angels in white frocks waving their wands saying tata to me ( blame it on Bharathiraja). Some trumpets blew signaling my victory. After Dubai, I insisted on calling myself “Foreign Returned”. I had earned this privilege. I also made up my mind, that having broken the jinx, I wouldn’t let anything stop me from making my dream of traveling all over the world come true. A recurring fantasy I had was to set out one day on a backpacking trip with no plan in mind and no particular return date. The travel route would be chosen on whim and parts of my trip would be funded by work that I would find wherever I was. Had I revealed this to all my concerned folks, they would have been petrified. So two years after the Dubai trip, I reluctantly tweaked my fantasy to settle for traveling all alone to Europe.

I had friends in London, Scotland and Paris so those places were my obvious choice. Also, the thought of doing an all girls escape thrilled me. Yet Friends and family minced no words in expressing their disapproval about my desire to travel alone . “A woman traveling alone to Europe? That’s dangerous. Are you going with a group on a guided tour? If not you are making a big mistake”. No matter how much I reassured them, it did not stop them from narrating horror stories of people getting mugged or losing their passport or getting sexually harassed. I seriously suspected that my mom went around collecting a dossier of such stories to discourage me. For their every negative, I had a list of positives to counter:

• I would meet and interact with more people
• I could go where I wanted to go, when I wanted to go, with whomever I wanted to go with
• I have the flexibility to find my own travel techniques (as opposed to going with a tour group)
• This forces me to assert my independence.

There were another set of people whose eyes popped out because I was leaving my daughter behind. “Won’t you feel guilty?” they wanted to ask. These are people who have not known the joy of taking time out for oneself. Why, I myself used to be a victim of playing roles. I couldn’t have dreamt of enjoying anything alone without experiencing guilt and questions such as “Am I a bad mom because I am able to have fun without my daughter?” Yet over time, I have learnt that “me time” is not a horrible sin. In fact it is necessary for my well being. It helps me reflect. When immersed in routine, I hardly have a moment to stop and think.

Me time not only helps me charge my batteries and improves the quality of my relationships, it also helps me deal with my faults and foibles and appreciate myself better. Its peace time, rejuvenation time, load shedding time, introspection time.

Folks around me often look at me with incredulity and amazement about my varied interests and the number of things I get entangled into besides being a mom and a working professional. Some of them are sympathetic, while others tirelessly preach that I should slowdown my pace and not try to zip five years of living into one year. Yet I don’t learn. I would be adamant in cramming ten things into one day as if there was no tomorrow. But the way I compensate this pace is by doing “spaced out” days.

When I am “spaced out”, I am not a mother, wife, professional, daughter, sister, friend, boss, singer. I am just me. Can I steal me time without actually going out on a backpacking holiday? Of course I can. Most Sundays I take off on my bicycle and go wherever my heart tells me to go. Or if no one is at home, I cuddle up with a book. Sometimes I go on a metro train journey form terminus to terminus. It can be great fun. Or I would go to a coffee shop and hang out all by myself with a book and hot chocolate and mindlessly watch people.

Besides these weekly escapades, I badly wanted a longish “me time” break, somewhat like an annual maintenance shutdown. So after much postponement and deliberation, I blocked my tickets to London, and Paris. There! I had done it. Now I had to go. I completed the visa application and all other documentation in a daze, all the time, feeling uncharacteristically pessimistic. I almost expected something to go wrong. For instance, when I had to shift my dates of travel from the first week of May to June because of some bizarre reason, I almost gave up. The second obstacle came in the way of deficient documentation. But even then I wouldn’t give up. I had to see this though to fruition. Otherwise all my anticipatory excitement would vaporize. When my visa came, I finally allowed myself to get happy and started packing with full gusto. My sister came over to assist in packing as she wouldn’t trust me to travel light. She kept teasing that I was packing for an army, yet I went on stuffing jackets and knit pullovers that were sleeping in the loft waiting for such a trip too.

Living it up in London

At London I was staying with friends. On landing I took a short nap and started planning for the next day’s itinerary. I decided to go on a hop-on hop off tour all by myself. It was great fun. My friend with me on the tube and explained the tube map to me. Once she left, I set off on the bus around the city. I had bought a London Pass that allowed me access to over hundred places in London. But I focused on favorites like the Shakespeare’s Globe, Baker street, Hyde Park and Scotland Yard. After watching the change of Guard at the Buckingham Palace, I befriended Julienne, a Brazilian lady who like me, had set out on her own. She and I became traveling companions for the day.

Together, we went to the most unbelievable Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum and took pictures with the world’s ugliest, tallest and shortest men. Julienne was fascinated with my bindi and I drew an elaborate snake like pattern on her forehead. Walking down the quaint Covent Garden, we watched some outrageous street performances. The sidewalk cafes were so charming and I introduced Julienne to bondas and samosas at Sagar vegetarian restaurant. By the time Julienne and I polished off our softy cones on the banks of the Thames, I noticed that the time was 8 p.m though it was bright as noon. Reluctantly we bade goodbye and I made my way back to the Tube. There as I recollected the day’s events and all that I had accomplished, it struck me that I hadn’t visited a single attraction covered by the London Pass that day. And I had paid 48 pounds for it. My heart bled. I swore that I would only visit London Pass attractions the next day.

As I sulked about the 48 pounds and the grumpy railway officer, my eyes rested on a beautiful poem

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity`s sun rise

I instantly brightened up. As a believer of stichomancy, I was also intrigued by the message this poem was conveying to me. Looking around, I found another poem. This one was written by William Wordsowrth on Westminister Bridge in 1802

Earth has not anything to show me more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields and to the sky;

I later learnt that these Poems were put up in the trains as part of an initiative called Poems on the Underground, The brainchild of American writer Judith Chernaik, this program wanted to bring poetry to the wide ranging audience of passengers on the Underground. Awed by this idea, I was wishing that we could do similar stuff in India, when I suddenly remembered, we already do. Our Chennai MTC buses too have the Thirukkural, the pithy two line words of wisdom to enlighten passengers. Don’t know whether the English picked this up from us or vice versa, but I realized that commuting by car has deprived me of these simple pleasures. Anyways, thank you Judith and co. for enriching my Tube experience

The next morning with renewed vigor, I went to the Tower of London followed by Thames Cruise. Sat on the pews of St Pauls Cathedral musing about how blessed I was and calculating how much I’d got of the 48 pounds London Pass. As I proceeded to the Tube to meet my friend at Madame Tussads, I found I had misplaced my day ticket ( cost me ten pounds!!!). I appealed to the ticketing officer to issue me a duplicate, basis my credit card charge slip, only to be snubbed and ticked off. Cursing him in chaste thamizh, I walked three km to Madame Tussads.

In the evening I watched the musical Billy Eliot and boarded what I called the Parveen Travels of London” bus for an overnight journey to Edinburgh. But it turned out that London’s Northern Star bus service couldn’t hold a candle to our Parveen. For starters, it did not even have a reclining seat. Also the size of the seat was so tiny that only size zeroes could travel comfy in them. Also the size of the seat was so tiny that only size zeroes could travel comfy in them. To make things worse, the smelly German lady sitting next to me kept interrupting my sublime thoughts with her snores.

I began to wonder whether all the museums, art galleries and historical sites I had seen had succeeded in broadening my horizons after all, whether dealing with a size zero seat and a stinking German with equanimity was God’ hidden lesson for me in London!!!