Rome to....home!

All the world's a memory:

The trip has been reduced to a memory. All the exotic places and people that we visited exist as just another thought. In fact, that’s the most enduring thing in life-thoughts.  Our entire past, till this moment is a collection of thoughts. Thoughts are wonderful. As time goes by, we can pull them out one more time and all these places and people will come alive and twirl in front of us, just as they did when we visited them. If we want, we can color the water at Venice a deeper green or the Alps a deeper purple or the Mona Lisa a more mysterious smile! 

It is not as if we need to go to Switzerland and Italy for a family vacation every time. This time, it was possible. It would be perfectly fine even if we just went to Kabini and Byndoor. What is important is to have a collective memory of events as a family. Perhaps, the children will grow up and remember that we made this trip and recall some completely irrelevant fact- may be how we panicked when we missed the connecting train to Venice or when their father picked a lemon flavor for an ice-cream and struggled with it only to throw it away finally! It is the recollection of these details which makes these trips fulfilling.

Travelling light:

Leaving aside this philosophical verbiage, for sure, I am not going to miss a few things- luggage! The hands are coarse and rugged and the ankles (for almost everyone) have slight bruises as we dragged the suitcases across streets and hauled them over trains, staircases and lifts. At times, we silently wished the thief had taken away our biggest suitcase (now that it is intact, we can always conjecture!). At least, the rest of the trip would have been that much easier! There looked no way to travel lighter- we had to carry winter gear and rainy wear both of which proved indispensible during the trip. May be, we should have dumped the jeans and carried formal trousers which would have been a lot lighter- but then, given the laundry woes, jeans are the most rugged and I doubt whether a substitute would have served as well.

How about the rice cooker? It occupied space all right but we owe one meal a day to it! How fondly we looked forward to a meal of rice with just MTR puliyogare and yogurt! The laptop? Well, at the outset, it seems totally useless and a candidate we could have dumped into the River Seine, but it was the only window into our familiar world. At times, we were loitering like Tom Hanks in the Castaway- no clue about which day of the week it was, what we did for a living or how we were all related! All that was important was to follow the blessed itinerary and ensure that we were still on track. Given that, we would have all gone crazy well before the trip ended without the laptop and internet connectivity. At the end of the tiring day (as everyday invariably was), the kids could access their favourite sites, Usha could still catch up with her facebook and I was reassured to see that Mumbai Indians were still on track in the IPL (and dabble with the newfound interest in blogging)!  

Gadget challenged!

Once you pick up a gadget, it comes with its paraphernalia- that’s the whole problem! We need the laptop, the laptop needs a charger and the charger needs an adaptor for European style sockets. That’s how the luggage multiplies and ensures that our backs are broken! The camera needs batteries and a truckload of them since we don’t want to carry a charger for rechargeable batteries, the camcorder needs a charger and an adaptor;  it also needs cassettes for replenishment - now you get the idea…. It is a hair splitting exercise (and a wire splitting one) to keep just these gadgets in good humor. When it comes to cell phones, it’s the same issue. Two cells phone are minimum, you need to retain an Indian SIM card, a French one for receiving calls, another Italian one for the same and to complicate it, a separate UK SIM card to make outgoing calls!

Next, come the vouchers- There are separate travel vouchers for taxis, trains and planes. There are hotel vouchers for each day. There are vouchers for each guided tour. Sometimes, we purchase additional metro passes and bus tickets as well.  

And of course, I haven’t spoken about the passports that you need to hang onto as dear life itself. It is a bewildering amount of detail that you need to keep track of everyday so that you don’t do something silly and mess up the entire trip! Thankfully, Usha is programmed to handle this. There have been times when I would be seized with a panic attack- where did I keep the hotel voucher for our stay tomorrow? I just saw it in the black folder and it isn’t there presently!.... Oh, you just put it in the strawberry short cake bag a moment ago- would come the reply! I never contest a woman’s ability to multitask. Men are typically clueless when it comes to handling detail. They are meant to potter around in the backyard wearing a tweed coat and corduroy trousers like Lord Elmsworth does at the Blandings Castle!

The children have easily been at their best. They enjoyed when they should and put up with hiccups without protest. This trip is for them. 

We are approaching Dubai as I type these lines. In a few hours, we will be home.  It will be great to catch up with Cricket, with work, with conversation at work, with painting, with music and with discourses! I love routine! Meenakshi temple, Meenakshi mall, Shopper’s Stop, Bannerghatta Road… never did all of you appear so inviting! Italy can wait. Bangalore, here I come!