TRAVEL, BUT WITH AN OPEN MIND.

TRAVEL, BUT WITH AN OPEN MIND

The first interaction of a new born baby with the world occurs after coming out from the mother’s womb. The world, meaning friends and relatives, embraces and brings the child within the folds of the family. So for a new-born child, the world always means his or her immediate family. Slowly as the child grows up, ‘the world’ symbolises the outside world with its various charms and attractions. Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Laureate in 1913 for his ‘Gitanjali’, had written his novel Ghare Baire (The Home and The World). Here there are three principal characters – Nikhilesh, the landed zamindar, his wife Bimala and Sandip, the Revolutionary. The novel is set during the times of the pre-Independence era, in the British Raj days. Those were the days of intense turmoil, politically, economically as well as socially. Through his character Bimala, Tagore had tried to portray the eternal tug- of- war between the Home and the World. The novel had been adapted into the celluloid by none other than Satyajit Ray himself, who went on to receive the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement and that’s the last honour bequeathed upon him, while still alive.

Loving the world is but natural. If you don’t, then either something is wrong with you or the person may be under depression. The world has so much to offer. It’s not just people that the world is made up of. It is full of interesting places to visit and explore. The world had been created millions of years ago. So the discoverers and explorers who went around it, chanced upon places which had left them gaping as to whether these marvels were really the handiworks of mortals!!

Being open-minded is more of a lifestyle than just a state of mind alone. You become open-minded in order to embrace the world around yourself. Take for instance an example. This scene is oft repeated and enacted out in most homes today. The son or the daughter of the traditional minded parents’ duo arrives home with his or her selection of a life partner. It is of course left for their parents’ decision whether to accept wholeheartedly or refuse to admit the betrothal. Parents today are well aware that it would be far better to relent to their children’s wishes than become a pillar of dissent. Hence in most households, parents are accepting the choice of life partners which their sons or daughters, are choosing for themselves. They have perhaps realised that it has become far better to relent than dissent.

Travelling with an open mind set is a prerequisite for anyone in order to enjoy the travel as well as own personal good. Sitting down with age-old concepts, clinging on to them and advocating others to follow suit, are harmful and best to be avoided. The cliché, Old is Gold, hardly is applicable to practical reasoning. Time changes and so with time, habits of people, their culture and their outlook undergo radical changes. People today no longer travel with holdalls, which were the baggage of the past, the bygone era. We travel light, with the minimum of clutter. Talking about travel, the experiences where people of different segments come in can hardly be avoided. One instance comes to mind very clearly.

We, my parents and I, had gone on our last and only Europe tour during the late nineties. We had travelled by a big air conditioned coach, which we had boarded from London, to take us to countries like Italy, France, Switzerland and Belgium. Apart from the three of us, I can still recall, there had been a Gujrati family, again a parents-daughter duo. Our guide had been a ravishing Dutch lady, Golda, (how amazing I still remember her name!!) a tall, cropped haired blonde. Because we, the passengers in the travelling coach, were from different countries, Golda had resorted to English as the only language of conversation and guidance. Needless to say, the food offered all along the travel was of British and European origin. But the other Indian family, the Gujratis, had faced problems regarding the food. They had grumbled about it and had demanded authentic Indian platter, which seemed asking for the moon at the time. Anyway how their problems were sorted out isn’t the topic of my write-up.

As a World Traveller, I tried to soak as much experiences as I possibly could in that span of a fortnight. We were visiting the Palace of Versailles in France that day. The palace itself was an immensely huge edifice and bespoke of the glorious past of the country. After visiting the Museum there, we came out and were told to complete our lunch somewhere nearby. My father decided that we should experiment with some local French culture. So instead of stepping inside a Pizza Hut, a KFC or a McDonald’s, we decided that we would savour from an authentic French cafe with the meagre francs that we carried along. A ruddy- faced (probably form too much wine) person came to serve us. What we hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the menu card was in French!! So without more ado, I tried to ease my parents. My father had left the choice of the meal entirely to me. I put my index finger on the top of the chart.

“Poulet! Sil vous plait!”

Now I know that ‘poulet’ in French means ‘chicken’. When I expressed my inability to understand, he became all the more ruddy- faced. Then my father intervened and things got sorted out immediately. Baba passed away in the year 2005. Till that day, he used to poke with the jibe that I was unable to handle a tricky situation. I noticed that all the other members of our group had gathered there and having a good laugh at my expense, of course!!

I love the world because it has taught me to take everything at a stride. If someone laughs at you, your manners, that laugh along with them. You’ll probably notice that nothing can be more insulting than insulting yourself. Travelling broadens the mind. There can be no two ways about that. And it has provided me with a kaleidoscopic perspective through which I am able to see others as well as myself in and by an optical prism. I strongly believe in this famous statement by the French humanist photographer, whose shots are considered to the bible for all aspiring photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson: “I believe that through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us.”

This is my one and only entry to #SayYesToTheWorld competition being held by Lufthansa on Indiblogger.