Travel in troubled families

And the sins of the Eastern fathers shall be visited upon the Western sons.
White Teeth, Zadie Smith

There would be better ways to start this, I'm sure. Something that Zadie Smith would say, maybe even an Arundhati Roy beginning with silver ropes of rain in Kerela, maybe a caustic over-witty, over-punning, tripping over itself language is out there. But its an admission, and sometimes like a baldly stated 'I have a crush on you' from the nerd in the backrow, there is actually nothing you could have told him to say that would have improved his situation. And this is that kind of admission.

So yes I would say this, I grew up around a table, a television, a house, a family that obsessed with travel, that pined and moaned about atleast once, atleast once seeing Paris or London. That on its jealous fingertips counted the names of those in the extended family who had traveled, where they went, and then pointing to decorative plates hanging on the wall, that were like proof, more emphatic than visas that they had infact gone there. Suffice to say, that that had to have had a grave impact on me. So I grew up with a severe non-interest in what is beyond the borders, what is beyond reachable, achievable experience. Hence 'abroad', the quiver, the orgasm of the great Indian middle class, was for me something I looked at with disdain. I didn't want this, or rather I didn't want to be this puddle of want, that I clearly saw my mother was. I didn't want to feel this sickening envy that I knew she felt for all those who had traveled beyond. I didn't want to be her, with the minute calculations down to minutes in her brain, of the men she rejected, of how she waited for the right man till her late 20s and then eventually decided to get married to this man, who promisingly had just returned from Germany, but if only she had paid heed to the shoe that he was wearing, and the hole in it that stared up at her.

Germany was his, Rosy – his landlady (surely old, cantankerous but nonetheless a motif in all his Germany stories) was also his. And never did that experience of 'abroad' repeat for him, and never did she get to travel. The burden is enormous, it weighs down on the family. A year ago, they struggled and went to Malaysia. There was a sigh of relief somewhere, some ancient scale of debts and burdens righted itself at that moment, some unseen race to disaster was surely averted, maybe even a tsunami or an earthquake was narrowly avoided.

But this pining for 'abroad' was part of a much larger pining in the house, a pining for a better life, for Sumeet mixie, for colour television, for that ache that characterizes most houses in India in the 80s, when this other obviously better life was coming into view, but was not yours yet.

The 80s have passed, so have the 90s. The child that grew up then, is now in her late 20s, 29 tomorrow infact...and she finally reached the Mecca of her mother's pining. She saw her Haj, She stood on a bridge across River Seine in Paris, and she saw the Notre Dame, and many hours of walking later, she saw the Eiffel Tower. At Notre Dame, I choked for my mother. A year of sexual anxiety and panic in my life, and two months of something like the hammer of loneliness coming down hard on my brain, to open it up and say - look at the rest of life. And this was its climatic moment (seems sexual metaphors still rule). Weighed down by my mother's desire, by countless tales of immigrants that I have now heard and collect like so much 5 pence coins in my pocket, I looked up and saw it. Monuments do not happen to me in their size and stature, as much as in their suddenness. The Sagrida Familia is surprising, because I climb out of the metro, wondering - okay, now how do I find it. And turn my head, to behold the temple Sagrida, still being constructed, purple grapes and kissing gods. But as a monument I like the Notre Dame more, the angry, winsome, lonely gargoyles, with long necks protruding out. And it too leaped at me suddenly from nowhere, while I was staring at the map trying to figure out where I am, a gargoyle's tail sliced through it and I looked up in the face of an awesome hiss.

I realize my reactions are not my mother's. She would not have liked what I liked, she would have infact pulled me away from rows of ancient postcards and towards prints of Van Gogh, Renoir and Klimt, while I silently groaned. While she would surely stand in awe at the Eiffel Tower, I must admit that in my walking zeal, tired and flustered, there was a moment when I stared at my map, and mumbled - I hope this Eiffel Tower is next to that thing that looks like a telegraph pole. In the stupidity of racism, that allows us Indians to forget momentarily that we are more black than white, till we face the judgment in a white man's face, my mother would cross the street on seeing a large black man. Just like I would on seeing groups of white drunk men in Amsterdam. And a special moment for me in Paris would be standing on the bridge across Seine River, flirting with a black man who leaves me saying, I don't know English, You don't know French... and we shrug and smile. Opportunities slipping by do not cause dismay and anxiety in me, as they used to.

But I look at all this now, and I realise how much the 'abroad' monster under my childhood bed shapes my experience. Have I chosen to look at all this with disdain, internalizing some ridiculous Hindu edict of 'that which I do not desperately pine for, shall be mine while I sleep'. Which isn't true, times have changed, it is just easier to travel now than it was then. Even as I speak, I know my father plans to steal all the family savings and go to England alone (I know he won't, these are his desperate evil plans that his family will not let him carry out)

But I realised today how my disdain of my parent's frenetic desire for 'abroad' has shaped my travel. I looked at the past few months and realise that I went from Barcelona to Amsterdam to Paris in one day, and what it meant to me was the same rush and anxiety that I felt when I had to go back from college in Bangalore to home in Delhi (things to be done, presentations/exams to be given, keys not to be lost etc.). Apart from the addition of the scary-to-loose passport, the difference in my experience is minimal.

I don't have the necessary rosy glasses that allow me to walk into Paris at the end of this day, expecting the romance of it or to hear La vie en Rose. I don't like every monument I see, I'm not stunned each time, I'm not an avalanche of blank undifferentiated happiness no matter which city in Europe, which monument or park I'm currently in, not overwhelmingly grateful at being given this opportunity (infact I secretly wonder about the motivations). I definitely don't stand tired near the Eiffel tower but if my friend from India calls that day, gush about how amazing my experience is. The 'abroad' doesn't have that gorgeous golden glow around it, I see it with hard eyes, eyes of having seen many Indian cities. Eyes that look for La Haine in Paris and not La vie en Rose. On both counts I was disappointed, the index of racism is not that high, but then the brown immigrants are hidden and tucked away, and the black speak French and blend in, like they always do everywhere they live.

But the 'abroad' minus the golden haze, is still an interesting sight. That much I will concede. And inspite of my ears being cooked (a Hindi phrase) with the pining of my mother, it is still nonetheless something that has stunned me. I do not stand there like the lost brownie clutching her husband's hand, or the London born desi immigrant, disdain and awe mixed in her 15 year old face, but I did stand for a minute, mouth slightly open, when the gargoyle winked at me. When Barcelona replaced the narrow skies of Amsterdam, with wide open flanks at Monument to Christopher Columbus, pointing one way and saying - This is it, dearie, the cleaned up city, but nonetheless more beautiful, more sexy than all the others. But cities, to me, are something for which I listen to my body. My body relaxes in some cities, it just gives in, it just takes it slippers off, and slips into the mood, the scorching skies, the hot streets, the tired street performers, the rub of brown skin against black against tanned against pink against brown, and the rush of children on skateboards whose race can't be identified. That is Barcelona, truly the crack in the earth below my feet, just when I was getting sure of what Europe is, what it meant to me, and how I would not want to really return to live here. And I stare at this crack, wondering how...how did this happen, only to be interrupted by loud conversations that a man strolling down the Ramblas, is having in pure unadultered unashamed Punjabi. Loud and clear. Immigrant, probably jobless (because this is a very tough city that way) but nonetheless confident, talking in his own language, not Spanish (even though that is one European language whose rhythm I do like). But language is important, there is nothing more bewildering than to see Indians talking to each other in Dutch or French, and their cold un-curious gaze on you for just a few seconds.

And in other cities, my body keeps its edge, it doesn't wear slippers so easily and trots around in high heels, and to borrow the metaphor of a bad poet, icicles are encrusted in the furrows of my skin that don't melt (forgive her, I think she was talking about heartbreak). But one city helps another. Barcelona helps Paris become warmer, inspite of the cold nippy breeze that rejects my revealing clothes and forces me into a shawl, this is a city where people drag your bag up the stairs because there are no escalators and here is a brown foolish smudge struggling with 5 bags. It is a city where the Moroccans wink at you, saying – ‘Its okay, how could you know’, when you do something foolish. And a city where for the first time, I spoke back to what I felt was unthinking racism, that allowed a blonde white child to jump ahead of me in a queue at a free toilet. The toss up was being able to bitch later and badly needing to pee. The latter won, and I atleast loudly complained, but let the child go ahead. It is a city which repeatedly tells you - you are pretty, whether it is with hands that gesture to your face and say - that’s why I stopped. Or an old lady telling the woman at the Thalys help desk - You are so beautiful, while she smiles and points to the map. Maybe its almost too much, I wonder about brown men, their gracelessness and laughter and how they might be ignored. And then remember how they walk in packs always, and are rarely alone. It is the single female who needs such affirmation from a city, and it is only fair that she should get the most of it.

So as 'abroad' ends, and as surely I look at my museum-less, fliration-full but nonetheless bereft of any serious romance (no freckled white man, with blonde eyebrows to call my own), I wonder whether this experience of mine, would to some extent satiate my parent's desires. Most of me, says No. The part that still believes that you have to experience for yourself, even though I know that is not necessarily always true. Some part of me says Yes, as I carefully pack the Gaudi plate from Barcelona for my mother to hang on the wall and point to. But then again, it is No... because I do not bring Paris, that is etched in pink light, but bring Spain, the memory of its foreign warmth, of Pareshan Raval and a little bit of immigrant lives from Amsterdam, in the shape of my black bikini (a shape that might actually be haunting my mother's dreams and frantic chanting) that says in gold bold letters across the bottom 'Luxury', surely a bikini that would only be worn by the Indian girlfriend of a black hood from Biljmer, Amsterdam.