travel musings

I remember a part of her catchy email id- something like ‘pinkcatzmom’, or close about; her real name is totally lost, however. I was travelling the Amtrak way from Irvine to Fresno, almost 7 hrs of train, bus, train, which is quite comfortable, even though it sounds otherwise. She was the last one to get onto the bus at LA, over- laden with bags and jhollas of various shapes and sizes, huffing away, dumping them in every nook of the overhead bins. I watched and thought: from this time on, I’m never going to be embarrassed about my family’s lack of restraint when packing. The whole world is a desi!
She sat down next to me, took one look and smiled and said she was glad there was a seat empty next to a woman. “Don’t take me wrong, I’m so tired I just need to doze off without having to worry if I’m touching a strange man or if he’s touching me”. We were complete strangers: she was a white woman in her 50’s( I think), me an Indian( as from India) in my mid 40’s… yet, just being of same the gender can create a feeling of security for women, even if it is sometimes so false. She settled in. I asked her what was with the piles of luggage, she asked me if I was Latino, I asked her if she was on a holiday, she told me my accent was not Indian (her first job out of high school in the early 70’s was with a Patel family who had just moved out of a village in Gujarat, straight into Santa Monica, and she believed every Indian spoke a similar English), I asked her(with some trepidation- we Indians are conditioned to believe every woman above 35 must have kids) if she had kids, she asked me the same, and slowly, but surely, we were connected.
Womanhood is universal. At the end of it, we cannot help but share the same concerns… relationships, loves, self-worth and the lack of it, approval, changing values and how it affects us as people, finding our place in the scheme of our lives and keeping it or rejecting it, parenthood… We lived thousands of miles apart, grew up as different as is possible with totally different experiences, and yet, our major most concerns of that moment were as if born from the same karma. My baby was about to leave for Argentina on a 5 mth study abroad programme; it was a nightmare... the distance, her being the only one from her univ to go there, etc, and I was petrified at the thought. Her son had just moved to big bad New York, leaving the tiny one hick town he had grown up in. Both our babies were our only kids. It only took a few minutes, and we were as if we had known each other forever- our fears and desperate
mommy- concerns bound us tight together. The disparity of our lives melted away, leaving us discussing our own frailties, those of our children, and our nervousness about what our children’s lives would unfold for them. She told me about the girl her son was seeing for the past five years, how smitten he was, and her worries about his heart getting mangled, because the girlfriend was such a ‘princess’ and now that he was roughing it out alone, she was already making complaining sounds; We shared our worries about the relationships they would have and the failures they may have to face; We talked about how some crazy alarm bells began clanging on not hearing from them for over a couple of days. We went back to our married lives and how the years panned out different from what we expected, both in good and not-so- good ways; spouses, and our expectations, spouses and their expectations, none of these were really very different, just because we grew up continents and cultures apart…. It was endless! Slipping into each others experiences came effortlessly, and empathy came fast and true. Color, accent, dress, values, cultural individualities... They paled away, insignificant and meaningless, in the face of the concerns of our women- hearts.
When we said our good byes, we knew we would never meet again. We hugged each other like old friends and wished each other happiness, for ourselves, and even more for our children. These were not formal well rehearsed words exchanged between people who had just met; we both knew these were wishes that came from that innermost genuine place far remove from the formalities of everyday life. After all, our hearts beat in one rhythm when it comes to hope, love, longing and pain.

oddtravelpants

so ever travelled long distances, or short ones, wearing pants with the 'seat' not willing to move to your accmodate your moving seat? (seat is a word often used by tailors in the indian sub- continent to describe the posterior regions; yes all the 'netherlands') its the worst possible way to go into your travel plans, whatever you may be...gender- benders included.

who gets it worse, though, is a problem travellers have grappled with since the first pilgrim's progress was halted, just an hour into what he thought would be a journey into his dying day. it was that day. well, almost; the pants moved up and the displaced odd and ends now had no place to move and so moved into remote recesses of the pants.. and therein lies a tale of itchiness, irritation, restraint- to -itch, pain in the arse and then.. a throbbing quite unlike any other he had experienced. Something had to give; naturally, it had to be the source of the torture. the pants had to go- now, right now! they did.... and the relief was divine. now remember, a brush with divinity was the lure of the journey in the first place; what the pilgrim hadn't reckoned for was that the brush would come so soon and in such an area!
naked pilgrims were not welcome, and our pilgrim was determined to progress, so something needed to be done- to the pants. luckily, right in time, the pilgrim's eyes fell on the recently emptied sack of potatoes, and eureka! two cutouts for the feet, they replaced the pants. yes, co- pilgrims stared, the amused gawkers twittered, sack-owner yelled hard and demanded a large down payment plus patent rights, but what the h*ll ( remember, pilgrims cannot take satan's name in vain)- oddtravelpants had saved his life from the purgetory that would have surely been his fate, in just retribution for abandoning the road to heaven.
travellers all the world over totally empathise with the pilgrim's progress into a forced revolutionary fashion statement, and so do i.... and this is why my blog got its name.