|
 Of
the six consecutive suitors who applied for the post
of husband, I chose J, the one who showed the most promise
of being adventurous, the one with the throbbing Enfield,
the unkempt matted ponytail, the scent of Sweat by cK
and the mien of a wandering, conquering Turk. I planned
extended weekends exploring the untrodden outskirts
of Delhi. I mapped out daring journeys into the secret
interiors of India. I detailed long holidays to destinations
where even that peripatetic Pico Iyer hadn't managed
to
slink in: one day watching the aurora borealis in Tromso,
another backpacking up Kilimanjaro, then rubbing noses
with Inuits in Quaanaaq, the next day measuring how
tall I had grown against the Great Wall. Instead I found
that the man I had sworn to cherish and follow had morphed
into a stationary thing, with roots going a hundred
thousand metres deep, like a corpulent baobab with a
subterranean empire. The potential for travel was there-each
time he went to work, he effloresced into longwinded,
celebratory goodbyes as if he were setting sail for
the New World - but the potential never ever transformed
into the kinetic.
When I spoke wistfully of travelling far and wide, he
would drive me to the local market and show me the new
Mother Dairy shop. Commuting to Gurgaon he considered
a weekend break. Once I looked over a sex survey he
was filling in. It asked: 'Where in the world would
you most like to have sex?' He wrote: 'In my genitalia'.
After five months of marriage, he took me to Udaipur
- forced at knifepoint by a friend (who accompanied
us to make sure J would stay and heel). We trundled
from weedy to seedy bar, watching Octopussy over and
over again, until the movie title began to seem to me
quite vulgar. J refused to take the boat to the Lake
Palace on the rather parched lake, saying he tended
to get seasick. When, later, we had children and I brought
up the issue of expanding their knowledge of the world,
he brought home an inflatable globe.
Meanwhile, ex-Suitor No. 5, who would earlier sit cross-legged
for 23 hours of the day writing reports on Good Causes
or meditating, became a tour leader. Every year, he
takes his wife to an exotic place, like Morocco or Papua
New Guinea. On their last such trip, they had breakfast
in Brussels, lunch in Lisbon, hors d'oeuvres in Hawaii
and champagne in, you know, Chambloodypagne. I cut up
my REI steel-frame haversack into tiny shreds.
Analysis has tended to reveal deep-rooted Oedipal reasons
for J's arborescent tendencies - more specifically,
birth trauma. I gathered from my mother-in-law that
J took so long to lumber down the rusty conveyor belt
from her womb to the outside world that it may have
distorted his perspective of travel. Then in his formative
years - that must be when he was about 30 - there was
this trip to Ladakh. J was forcibly shoved into a Gypsy
by three goon friends--one, a maniac at the wheel. History
has it that this guy, a cartographer by profession,
lost his way due to consulting too many maps and drove
round and round the same area so many times that it
pushed up a whole new mountain. When the foursome finally
reached their campsite in the barren desert, the temperature
was so many tens of degrees below zero that their pee
froze. The Maggi noodles huddled together and refused
to unwind in water. They had to hack away at their breath
with an ice axe to let in the next one. A fine white
dust settled on everything - their tents, clothes, food,
faces - and a photograph on our living-room wall shows
four young chalky yetis, their fur still to grow, leaning
uncertainly on a Gypsy.
The experience left J scarred forever. The coordinates
of his being moved back and forth between the longitudes
and latitudes of Office, Kitchen and TV Remote Control.
The last conversation we had about travelling, five
years ago, went like this:
Me: Let's plan a holiday to Oslo. My school friend
Ella…
He: Too cold.
Me: Then Egypt? I have always wanted to see…
He: Too cursed.
Me: Kenya? The big five?
He: Too hot! You can see them at the zoo.
Me: How about Chile?
He: Too far.
Too far is right. Like most anti-travellers, J hates
to leave his home behind, so it tends to get packed
into a mammoth blue bag, surely designed to be carried
by yaks. From its numerous pockets spew the beginnings
and ends of Life-Saving Things: water bottle, vials
of salt and pepper, mango pickle, bits of pencils and
erasers, ear-hair trimmer, half-empty medicine packs,
yesterday's newspaper, an old kabab … Anything
that doesn't look Indian is suspect, even dangerous,
and on the trip to Rome, we trotted on the cobbled streets
from risotto to risotto, catching a glimpse of David
in between.
We choose our own funeral, of course, but sometimes,
we even get the coffin designed in advance and step
into it to see if we fit. Ah well. You might like to
know that J sold the Enfield a couple of years ago to
the colony meat-shop guy. The registration number ended
in 786 and Qadir the Pathan was very keen on it. He
is planning to take it up to Ladakh this season.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
