Why I travel

My motivation to travel, I mean spend your own money for vacation to distant places, is mixed with all kinds of confusion. I am almost always not sure why I want to go to someplace, where I end up anyway, later savoring it as a part of my personal history. Yet when I am in the process of travelling, that is constantly experiencing a kaleidoscope of sweet chunks of life, I enjoy. I take photographs hoping to capture the essence and don’t write about it. I almost always read up on the places I would visit, its history, culture and so on hoping to have a greater understanding when I am actually at the place, but it never happens. On my head, I just carry a junk load of information and images from the photographs that I have seen over the internet, that is all.  How can you understand a place when you are just taking a fleeting glance of it or can you? I just end up, doing a match-up of the things I visit with the information loaded into me hoping to etch the trip more thoroughly in my psyche.

Yet, everyplace has its own power and charm and that cannot be captured, duplicated and reproduced for mass consumption. Probably it is for this reason, even today, in the age of information, people travel. To gather, feel and relish the pearls of very life as lived out in a diverse environment. There was a time when human beings hardly ever traveled from the place of their birth, only in search of food and at the most a few miles. Only the daring ventured out, not only to forage for food but in hope of a life that is far better than they have been given to by their birth. Then there were the traders who almost always traveled far and wide in search for a better deal, profit, exotic stories. If they survived and when they came home, loaded, they would be the local stars, source of all new things for the inquisitive, variation seeking human mind. Even in my early childhood, growing up in a lower middle class family of a developing country, I faced the similar situation.

Every now and then, somebody who traveled some places be it the Ellora caves , the Taj Mahal or Egyptian pyramids would be a hero to me. This man has seen the things with his own eyes , the very objects we see as photographs in books and magazines or in movies. He was hero. Had it been a previous generation or two before me, he would have been an absolute hero, being the only source of information as no books or movies were there, only narration and hand drawing.

The very first time I travelled was for work. I had to leave the city I grew up to travel to a different city within India, Hyderabad. India is like Europe, each state in India is like a country, completely with its own language, culture and idiosyncrasies.  I found myself for the first time looking at conversation instead of participating in the dialogue, searching patterns in the written curves of alien language and savoring on the hot food of Andhra thali. I grew up in Kolkata , a cosmopolitan city and knew almost everything about Telegu‘s and have also experienced the culture to an extent but never like this. It humbled me , my urban, cosmopolitan , sophisticated attitude. I felt I grew, started to appreciate the world we share and embraced the vulnerability of the unfamiliar.

It is then I started travelling, connecting to the narcotic hum of possibility that starts breathing when I juxtapose the cool midnight air of Leicester Square, London with the stones of Qutub Minar, Delhi. I read about them , seen pictures, movies,  every one of them yet when you stop in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and next at Golconda Fort, next at Konark Temple, Orissa , India you start feeling the act of motion. The art of being ’on the road’, always, at least intellectually, deepened my life.  I did not travel just for scenery or for the food , for the history ,culture, for the people but for everything . The whole, the good the bad and the ugly .

I travel for inspiration. When you are inspired what do you do? Jump with joy, smile or keep quiet, walk away. I can do any number of things still I would feel an incredible mental simulation urging me to say aloud that this is life and I am alive. I still remember one day of the early morning sunrise on the beaches of Bakkhali, Kolkata , WestBengal, India. As the sun slowly rose from the horizon turning the sky red, like any other day , but on that day I was there , standing as usual with other tourists, I felt a deep happiness rising through my spine whirling and turning and merging with the deep red color of the sea water. It was the brief moment that I remember , it was the same fleeting moment when I was looking at Michelangelo’s painting through my binoculars in Vatican , Rome or standing in Key West sea shore , Florida watching a teenage couple dancing away a fine evening on the swinging Cuban drum beats,at Ellora, looking at the majestic rock cut temple. Yes I took photographs. Lots of them, but they cannot and will not be able to bring these feelings, maybe remind me of them.

I travel for uncertainty. Like the commuter bus that I ride to work every day my life in general is bound by rules and predictability. A structure that do not allow sudden drafts of whispering breeze , it is for this, I have to step out into the world of events that can occur at random. Travel. Travel for pleasure. Travel for freedom, complete total final and absolute. I felt it , the essence of unknown when in one evening I got lost in the streets of Tokyo , when on a sudden turn of events in a zoo we witnessed the birth of a giraffe and always when walking down the streets of Kolkata , India , my favorite city, the people , the colors, food ,light ,dust ,always discovering new things.  I see what I see, I do not arrive to see.

I travel to indulge in my addiction to aesthetics. The beauty , the intoxication of it , I still remember one of most fascinating moment of  my life watching the setting sun on Grand Canyon. It was like music of gorgeous light be played on the rocks of the canyon, at a very grand scale. I remember the lamp , the beauty of evening Ganga Puja on the Varanasi Ghat, India, candle like structure of Bryce Canyon, a beautiful girl painting on cobbled street corner in Sienna, Italy, fall colors at the Kancamgas Highway in New Hampshire, the sound of Buddhist humming at Asakusa temple, Japan or the feel of soft white sand and blue waters of Bahamas. So many of them, like rag pieces, they hummed, murmured and drugged my aesthetic sensation over and over. It was hallucinatory, allowing me to float on the smile of the truth.

I travel to love. As Tagore put it beautifully ‘You live the world you love it.’  I love the world and want to love it more with all my integrity, passion and emotion. The world is an endless mystery and to love it I will need to discover it and so I travel. From walking barefoot on the green grass lawn of leaning tower of Pisa , to enjoying sumptuous cooking at Lucknow restaurant, to talking to an astronaut at Kennedy Space Station I would like to embrace the life of the world dancing on the edges of time . A passionate embrace of love of this simple reality is the only fulfillment of my life.

For all of the above etches a celebration of journey of the world into my mind. I create memories. I travel to create memories of my own.  The recollections, which I can think over and over again like the notes of various ragas enriching my various moods and transcending, merging my soul to the eternity of life and universe.

Meritocracy or Privilege

All along my life, till this day, I struggle with this notion of meritocracy vs privilege. In my early child hood, I was born in a lower middle class family of 1960’s Kolkata, India. My family was not rich, barely getting by but was very happy.  Earliest memory I have on this was at elementary school.  We had to write in pencils and thus erasers (which we called rubber) took an important place in our pencils boxes. One of my friends had scented erasers and I did not have one, it is just that my parents could not afford one. I was not jealous of my friend but nevertheless spurred myself to the fact that I will try to save some money and buy one. I never did and never could have as I did not have a pocket allowance. So when today when my son went to school, first thing I did was to find out and buy some scented erasers for him.  This is not an issue of meritocracy over privilege but just the fact that my friend’s parents were wealthier than mine.

In my teenage I use to play soccer both for my school and at the Kolkata soccer league.  Compared to my age, I was fairly adept at my game and loved it with furious passion. Playing for my school was not a big issue for me after all I was already in the top league of junior soccer in the country. In spite of all that the first time I tried to play for my school team my candidacy was rejected. I was surprised, so was my parents, friends and all who knew me and my game. No reason was given to me as to why I was dropped.  I still remember my school losing to a mediocre team while I was standing at the sidelines as a spectator, yes literally as a spectator with all my skills. Later I came to know that some wealthy parents kid was taken in in my position. I really felt sad that my school would rather loose, than apply the principles for meritocracy.  Little did that young teenager, that I was, knew about the intricacies of influence and wealth.

In my higher secondary school years, those months of intense academic competition to get into the professional schools of engineering and medicine I felt myself on the privileged bus as compared to many. I was living in the city where there good schools and colleges, and environment of positive peer pressure, could afford the books (though marginally) whereas millions of kids, around the country, lived in poverty, could afford neither. Then again , when contrasted with some others I was not privileged at all , not having affluent parents who could afford specialized academic coaching and so on. However, with consistent hard work and a little bit of smarts I did manage to get myself admitted to one of the leading engineering schools of India. It was there for the first time I discovered the Government of India’s affirmative action program , a program by which certain section of the societies (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes )  were given priority for admission to the professional schools.  ‘To uplift them from the years of suppression’ definitely a noble gesture, a privilege. I saw how it was abused where generations of very rich people sons and daughters holding certificates of Scheduled Castes/Tribes thriving and taking advantage of these dispensation, generation after generation, whereas the real poor languished in the labyrinth of hopelessness, opportunity less world and struggled. It made me sick to the core, I revolted, but kept quiet and with time learned to overlook it and carry on with my life.

College was a big arena, with vast conflicting forces, so its ups and downs were also considerable.  The gap between privileged and meritocracy also grew. I saw rich people sons and daughters with all their nurturing from early child hood blossoming in the prime of their youth. I saw them shine as millions of others who stood outside the gates of our college looked at the promise of a better life slowly but surely fading away from them. Even when compared to me, a young man from lower middle class family who somehow got into the same arena was jostled around, almost always loosing.  It was never about of meritocracy rather privilege.  They got the better job, better pay, better position, better career path, better and more authentic promise to live a comfortable, fruitful and meaningful life.  I also got something, not left empty handed; after all I was in the same college as they were, at the least, that far did my meritocracy take me to.

Further on in life, in the broader society, we all know how the idea of meritocracy has been bent, stampeded and diluted by the societies vested forces. If only anybody, who has exceptional abilities can really thrive and live upon meritocracy as a pillar of life. For all the lesser mortals like us, if we cry meritocracy then we can find ourselves shoved deeper into the perils of uncomfortable life and insecurity. Thus to stay and  survive where we are, we keep quiet, allowing a full reign by the privileged few to pile and hoard wealth, opportunity and everything that come with it. Not going into the details, I can rehash the definition and say that, success in life is also about meritocracy, but not a definite skill rather a good to have factor in a plethora of skills. 

Then again, looking back to the millions of others who stood outside my college gate, for whom well-heeled, consequential life slowly glided away because they were ordinary and were not privileged, I feel empty.  Is that the difference between first world and third world? Then again within the first world also the same exists. Is it like earth itself, with the deserts and tropical forest, the heat and the cold? Opposite extremes will always exist.  Only thing we, our human endeavor can do is to create and maintain the balance not surrendering to any of the extremities; the complete rich, or complete poverty; all privilege, or all meritocracies. Can that concept exist at all? Can society be built completely on meritocracy? What will it look like?  In human history there was none, even the early Greek Spartan society was not. It had some institutionalized privileges.

The very human (rather for life itself) nature of accumulating and giving everything to its progeny stand out against the stringency of meritocracy where fairness is singular. Then how can we build a society on those principles. We don’t know, but what we know from the evolution of human civilization and its political organizations, (from tribal leaders, to kings, emperors, presidents to modern democracy) is that the notion of fairness creates a more dynamic, stable society and in time builds a powerful country. Probably it is the only core difference between developed world and developing one in terms of implementation of the concept. US is more just in its dealings within intra-race, at least amongst the euro origin white Americans than say Europe are, in its dealings within its white citizens. In countries like India, China fairness, the rule of meritocracy is much less when equated with US and Europe but lot better than African countries. A step further, US at least theoretically, is trying to evolve this concept into inter-race relations, way ahead than any other country in the world. What about transfer of accumulated wealth to its children. Every developed country has some sort of scheme in place, in US it is much more intense as compared to Europe and to India , China . It is the time, it changes things towards better allocation of financial resources. Aristocracy on the other hand suffocates the redistribution channels and conserves the riches for one’s family and multiple generations. A rich man may give all his collected wealth to his not so smart children , who to his/her children in the process over time and generations, that wealth do not get re-distributed to meritocracy creating opportunities for a new generation to arise.  This is possible, that is why the existence of aristocracy has been denied in America. Reverse happened in pre-colonial India, China creating huge disparities between rich and poor leading to a weaker, fractious nation, and was subsequently gobbled up by the colonial powers of Europe.

I do not know whether it will be ever possible to build a perfect society based entirely on meritocracy, at the least we can try to evolve towards it.  While acknowledging the fundamental human nature of giving ‘ all that we have’ to our children , we are sure that it is only through meritocracy, as a society we can make our present life better and our future world ,that which our children will inherit , best.