Mridu Khullar

Sorry for the random updates, people, but I’ve been a bit scattered and have been on the road for a bit. I see and hope that there won’t be an end to this schedule any time soon, so I’ll be sharing my experiences on and from the road here, along with my usual writing stuff. I’ll try to be regular. (Thank you for the encouraging e-mails. You have been missed, too.)

**

There are some places you just don’t want to leave. Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) was one such place for me. It wasn’t as much the city itself that I fell in love with (to be completely honest, some days I barely made it out of the cyber cafe), but its inhabitants. Tourists, volunteers, expats, locals. I intended to stay for four days. I ended up staying fourteen, coming back only because I’m already booked for more travel next week.

I arrived in Calcutta depressed, heart-broken and in a professionally unenviable situation. So, I found myself in a place I didn’t know, on my own dime, in tow with a photographer who’d I’d only once met and who for some insane reason believed something good was going to come of this. I, on the other hand, was ready to throw myself under a bus and be done with it.

Within a day of our arrival, we had found a new story. Within three days, we had reported it, photographed it and sold it. But the excitement and the energy of the experience stayed with us, and we decided to stay on for a few more days, just enjoying the city at our own pace.

My days in Calcutta were not lazy. But they were laidback. They usually started with someone knocking frantically on my hotel room door. Someone wanting breakfast. Someone having a relationship crisis. Someone needing to clean the room. Someone insisting that 9 a.m. was no time for a grown woman to be sleeping. My days ended no sooner than 1 a.m., also preceded by someone wanting food, someone having a crisis, or insisting that 1 a.m. was too early for a grown woman to be sleeping. In between, I filled up the blazingly hot summer mornings, afternoons and evenings with endless cups of tea, hours of Internet (interrupted only by frequent power outages) and long conversations with strangers who would later become friends. These friends would then show up at the cyber cafe where I worked and practically force me to either take extended breaks from my writing, or just bring their own laptops and work with me. I had found my tribe.

It’s true. If there’s one person who’ll make you lose faith in humanity, there are a hundred others who’ll come and convince you otherwise.

I met some incredibly fantastic people who made me wonder what I was doing wasting my time pining for one relationship, when there were so many right here vying for my attention. An African-American writer told me a couple of meetings later that he knew as soon as I’d opened my mouth that I had to be a writer/poet/some creative professional and had parallels to his own life and thoughts. Over breakfast in the morning, we discussed American politics, why Obama wasn’t really black because he hadn’t been exposed to the “black lifestyle,” and why he thought his vote wouldn’t count anyway. Over lunch, we discussed tourists in India, laughed over cultural differences, and quarreled over silly aspects of life. Come to think of it, we never really did have dinner.

A brilliant photojournalist from Canada helped me move out of my crappy hotel and into a place so rich with history, I felt I’d been transported into a C.S. Lewis book. Every time I’d climb up the creaky steps and into my room with a high ceiling, lovely open windows and a resident mouse, I felt I could be happy there forever.

My Swedish photographer, who’d convinced me to make the trip in the first place, instinctively understood my need to spend a lot of time alone, and other than waking me up in the middle of the night with some emergency or the other (I’ll admit to doing that also), was a great companion on the days we did hang out together. Along with blessing me with endless rounds of second-hand smoke, he argued fervently about McDonald’s, going vegetarian, and bad parenting, and assured me that we’re all doomed anyway, relationship or no relationship, and I had nothing to worry about.

I met a Taiwanese woman and a Californian man who were both writers and had met during their travels. They quickly teamed up and were now exploring the world at their own pace, writing and reporting stories from the road. A true partnership, I felt. I ended up convincing them to explore Mumbai, a city I was fascinated with myself, and they in turn helped me see that when you truly love someone, you are happy to push your boundaries for them.

And I continue to miss Samson, a waiter at the restaurant I dined at everyday. After two days of my visiting there, he told me that I always looked so happy and content that it made him feel happy and content, too. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that two weeks ago, I’d been contemplating whether jumping off a building or walking into the ocean would be the easiest way to end it. He’d come up to me sometimes as I read my book with my morning tea and say, “Stop reading and talk to me.” And we would. And then he’d read me my horoscope from the newspaper and push me out with the order that I must have a wonderful day. A day before I left, I told him I’d come by to say goodbye. When I went, he was intentionally absent. He hadn’t wanted to say goodbye.

But thanks to him, I had many wonderful days.

**

I am now back in New Delhi. Out again next week. More updates as and when they happen.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.