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Journalism of Courage
Its the age of wanderlust. But is travelling worth all the worry?
Among the people I hang out with,one of the last remaining heresies is to admit you dont care that much for travel. Everyone seems to be itching to get out,swapping tips,exclaiming over albums. If some are more housebound than others,thats just out of financial circumstances or a consuming job or family,and they never cease kvetching about it. If they could,theyd be out there absorbing the world from every pore. Travel is fun and improving,so why would you not seek it out?
Me,Im with Philip Larkin,part of a strong tradition of literary homebodies,who once said,I wouldnt mind seeing China if I could come back the same day. Is it worth the dislocation and hassle and expense,the sense of feeling unhoused and anxious?
Not liking travel very much is considered a sign that you are incurious and dull,your mind is as cramped as your life. But thats a shallow assessment there have been bold and roving minds that lived enclosed lives,just as you can meet some inveterate travellers and marvel at how mentally sealed off they are.
I know that going places on your own can be sumptuous and memorable,your senses are on alert,more stuff happens to you. It takes you outside of your own self-involved skin for a while. Whether youre suspended mid-air or being rhythmically rocked on a train,something about being in transit makes you think better,deeper. But Im too wussy to really enjoy being alone and away. Travelling with someone,though,is a whole different thing if you forge a real companionship and like doing the same things. Or not Ernest Hemingway ruefully concluded after a French auto journey with F Scott Fitzgerald,never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
My reluctance to venture out probably stems from not travelling much as a child,apart from a yearly swing between Delhi and Kochi on a train. Besides,going anywhere with my parents was lavish torture. But even later,when most of my friends scrimped and stretched their money and devised ways to go places at every opportunity,on vacations or study trips or meeting people,Id prefer to stay put. Airports and railway stations fill me with low-grade worry,and hotels leave me cold. And so now,I end up in the middle of conversations about a muscle-wrenching trek in Peru or a godawful pit stop between Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi,and wonder why.
Why do they do it? Why dont they just read about it,or watch a slide-show? Online,you can explore museums and monuments,gawk at street fashion and find recipes from nearly every place under the sun,so why bother with the visas and the disorientation and the full-body immersion in an unfamiliar place? I love what travel sounds like new fruit and markets and high white rooms over harbours but the experience usually doesnt match up to the words.
Paul Fussell,in his beautiful book,Abroad,draws a distinction between exploration,travel and tourism. All three make journeys,but the explorer seeks the undiscovered,the traveller that which has been discovered by the mind working in history,the tourist that which has been discovered by entrepreneurship and prepared for him by the arts of mass publicity. As a tourist,you seek the cliche,you find the cliche.
In England,the Defence of the Realm Acts in 1914 and 1915 effectively constricted private travel abroad,leading people to feel acutely boxed into their tiny island,causing an entire generation to yearn for the breadth of great continents. Travel writing flowered in the 1920s and 30s with storytellers like George Orwell and DH Lawrence and Graham Greene. Visual culture was full of the imagery of palms and sand and voluptuous summer,a poignant counter to wartime privations.
Of course,in the 20th century,many mobilities were not freely chosen. They were forced brutally upon people,through colonial exchange,or they were part of trade or pilgrimage. But leisure travel is a different phenomenon. There are all kinds of reasons to want to set out. The desire to immerse yourself in a different culture,to dare wilderness,to stretch and luxuriate at a beach,or,in Carol Ann Duffys words,away and see the things that words give a name to. Travel accounts,from the hurdles to the triumphant return with souvenirs,fit into old narratives of the quest romance.
Many people travel to give heft and dimension to their own associations,gathered from books and movies and conversations. Think of the Japanese tourists who flock to Prince Edward Island to imagine Anne of Green Gables,or the Da Vinci Code tour of France,the Sex and the City crawl in New York,the Slumdog Millionaire tour in Mumbai.
I sincerely hope they find what they seek. Speaking for myself,Im learning to deal with my attraction-repulsion to travel but only until teleporting becomes an option.
amulya.gopalakrishnanexpressindia.com
