I could've been a different person

It had been a few hectic weeks of moving about and here I was, finally, drinking fennel chai to feel better. It struck me that I was sitting facing a balcony door and all around me was quiet. It was really really pleasant. The kind of quiet and pleasant that heals you. There was space around me and emptiness. But there were chairs to sit on and a table to put my cup on. There was a cute dining table where I could sit and have dinner. I was still sitting facing the balcony door and now the only difference was that the balcony door was open and there was so much breeze. It made me even happier, like a Sims character that was suddenly discovering interactions with every object in the house and gaining happiness points for it. What might not be apparent to anyone reading is how my happiness is tinged in great part due to my own changed relationship with material objects over years of staying in hostel dorm rooms, shared rooms but especially in the past four years, when I've have had my own apartment so to speak for at least a few months at a stretch. The last four years have also marked intense periods of precarity, of living in hotel rooms for months and more recently, just not having a home at all. Of course, all of this is marked by the kindness of strangers and friends, their willingness to let me stay put an extra week even after the monthly rental dates have passed. It is against that kind of a wash, a sea of constant change washing over me that I found myself sitting facing the balcony, more amused with every passing second at the incoming breeze, the affordance of all this breeze and nowhere to go. I casually gazed around in disbelief and relief. And my gaze rested on the dusty ukelele under the table. It's hard to really start describing where these self-imposed beliefs materialized and just settled as if they were mine, as if I cultivated them as my own personality traits or beliefs. But a person like me would not know what to do with the ukelele. Almost suddenly out of a half instinct of someone who has never touched, nay, who has never dared touch a ukelele, not in the market in Hawai'i, not in a music shop, not been in the house of someone who casually has a ukelele or a piano or a guitar lying around, with the half instinct and the full baggage of a persona whose habitus has never had access to a ukelele, I grabbed it. I knew what I was going to do, I was going to cluelessly strum it. I had, in the past, cluelessly strummed at a guitar somewhere and pretend-played a piano in a harmless setting somewhere. Almost immediately I had realized that I was not one of those who would live to tell the story of how they were meant to be playing music. The second that followed was the stark reminder of my painful days with the harmonium. I fucking hated it. I had no idea what it would take to start instinctively playing a tune. Who was going to ever teach me how to just play any tune that you want to? And if it could not be taught then was my first encounter also supposed to be the simultaneous painful realization that I had just met an object, nay, a world, that I do not belong to? I am being slightly dramatic but in the moment that I grabbed and strummed at the ukelele in an empty house, I was reminded of something else.
I was reminded of the times when I had heard young parents of young children talk at length about cultivating habits. They said habits but you might as well say habitus. Crudely summed, habitus is a concept that French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu has written at length about, and it refers to a kind of second nature, the kind of practice, a way of being in the world, one's preferences of food, clothes, brands and just living that are actually very complex sedimentations of one's upbringing in a certain class, gender, caste, region  -- environment really. The kinds where for some, a guitar of an uncle or a set of oil crayons as birthday gifts or a well-stocked library - these make for entire future possibilities of who people turn out to be. Isn't it amazing? I could've been an entirely different person had my mother forced me to continue with the karate classes or, had my father been obsessed with collecting music cassettes. But this isn't an account of regret. On the contrary, I laughed self-mockingly because after a few minutes of strumming, my nagging instinct took over. I needed to write about it (haha!) and I had notebooks. I knew where to find my notebook and arrange for a pen but I finally settled on just typing it out on the computer. And voila, I was back to my habitus. I literally grew up with a computer. But this isn't even a post about my upbringing.
This whole little episode is about materials, that I have been looking at and thinking a little more deliberately about in the past few weeks at least. I have always been very inspired by those who write about material cultures and objects - wires and tables and mugs and cables. And my little journey from the room to the ukelele to the notebook was really about that. I had once very adamantly and defensively asserted to someone that I don't buy books. I genuinely couldn't afford to buy books then and nothing in my upbringing had made me an insider to the lettered world. I have come a long way, I feel at ease with books now and references aren't lost in me. But that has entirely been my own journey and for a young person who will grow around me, I will be that person who gives them a library to grow with. I oscillated for a while between the books and the ukelele, I had just yesterday read on someone's dating profile, a musician's dating profile. I had also often spoken of the world of possibilities that one must feel when one can play an instrument. You can play it anywhere, it's not a book. It doesn't get over. You can always do more and new and you don't need anyone. I guess by the time I am done writing this, one could argue that being able to write isn't finite either. I just wrote this whole thing up :) 

Self check-in flights

Travel is most certainly a privilege. Given my life choices and circumstances, travel has become more than a hobby or even an obligation but rather a lifestyle, an independent factor that shapes almost everything in my life right now. It determines what I can do and how I feel to such an extent that it repulses me to hear that someone else likes travel or thinks of themselves as a "world traveler". If you travel a lot, too much, then you either do it in economy (cheap flights, trains, buses, shared rooms, cheap food, heavy bags on your own back) or you are even more burdensome to the world than you need to be (fancy hotels, comfort in long flights, all that plastic and money spent). Regardless, traveling alone or as a single person is the worst, it is everything - wasteful, expensive, uncomfortable, scary. I travel so much that I cannot even afford to have friends or a relationship because I don't live in one place. None of this is really of my choosing but in the beginning, I was really excited about international travel. A tad scared about visas but generally acquired the confidence, taste and attitude of someone who is very comfortable navigating airports around the world. I even have stored wi-fi passwords for some cafe in a Moscow airport because at some point, all my cheap Europe flights had long layovers in Moscow and it is a really cold place (even inside the airport) and having internet really helps when you have to be there for eleven hours. My longest layover so far has been 17 hours and I have managed to entertain myself to live through it. But I hadn't cried at an airport, like sobbed, until yesterday. 

It was at the Toronto airport at midnight. My mother has a habit of second-hand anxiety, having conversations with me about topics that already are on my mind, making me anxious. Worrying with me, talking about it, perhaps because it makes her less anxious or more, if she didn't talk about it. With help, I have learned to turn her (mother) away from these topics in my life, different tactics every time. But she still does it, to the extent that I don't pick up her phone calls during such phases when I know she is going to bring up the exact thing I am already worrying about. I started last month in the UK attending a conference, changing a thousand (three) flights, skimping on hotel stays and meals. The goal of the trip was to enter the US after that, pack up my entire house in Irvine, sell bits off, sell furniture, donate belongings, account for every post-it, pen and spoon and empty it out of a beautiful apartment that my roommate had already gradually been turning to her taste without checking with me. Could I have complained since I barely stayed there? Should she at least have asked before hiding, pushing every bit of me and mine into storage? Does it matter at this point now that I have left? This, what you are reading, is emotional exhaust. What remains and cannot be stored or succinctly conveyed after I have diligently packed, vacated and moved. Who would even want every detail of this story? I dare not tell my mother or father. Dad has second-hand fatigue unlike mum. His face turns a certain expression of discomfort as if to ask me if all of this was necessary, if I could not have just spent some more money or asked some friends to help. As if. 

Anyway, as per plan, after Irvine I moved on to my last stop, Michigan, collecting some more exhausting by way of weird flights, scheduling tension, then 2.5 days of intense academic conversations and constant emotional availability. I was done and then awaited 40 hours of flying with three stop-overs, emails in-between. Except, this was my first ever attempt at self check-in flights - where it isn't a single itinerary. You have to clear immigration at each stop, then wait and re-check-in, like every flight is its own thing. If you miss a connection then the tumbling chain breaks and you could risk being stranded, unaccounted for, stuck at one of the airports. 

My very first connection from Detroit to Toronto got cancelled. I was bound to miss my Toronto-London flight and then London-Colombo-Bangalore. It was okay, I wasn't gonna panic. I called the booking website and asked them to help. They gave me a rescheduling guarantee, told me I would have my next ticket before I reached Toronto. If I reached Toronto without a ticket, I would have no cell coverage, wi-fi (maybe) and be stranded in Canada without any hotel or food or plan. It happened. I reached Toronto, still no ticket in hand after 5 calls to the website. I sat down on the floor of the Toronto arrivals, near the bag belt, opened my laptop, still in control, connected to the wi-fi, used my skype credit to call the website again. My skype credit was low, I didn't know how long this would last. As the phone rang, it hit me. Someone answered, another new operator asking me what happened. And I sobbed. I started sobbing to her, told her I was panicking and I was going to have a breakdown because I had no way to get home. Home seemed so far away and I knew there was no bed at home. I just cried to her for a few seconds. And I lost wi-fi signal. I called again, still sobbing. I spoke to a guy named Paul. Told him everything. He told me he was going to take care of me and make sure everything would be alright. My throat is choking up as I write this from the Hong Kong airport, much closer to home but in a much better place. But Paul came through, he booked me my new flights: Toronto-Hong Kong-Bangalore. It would take me another 25 hours of flying but I would be home and he would get me refunds for meals and hotels. I was still sobbing, some man and his wife stood beside me as I cried still sitting on the floor. I told them I was okay. I spent the next ten hours in the airport, with a wool cap covering my eyes, checking and reorienting myself to Indian time to avoid jetlag when I finally get home. Today has been better, I have a paper that got accepted, new meetings, new emails, the usual emptiness that sets in my eyes when I travel - the kind that focuses on avoiding dark circles, staying hydrated, avoiding acne and window shopping while I wait for my final cheap flight to Bangalore. Imagine if I had to explain all this to someone, how much of this as circumstance and constraints and how much of it my own choosing. It would be exhausting. I can't wait to not travel again. For now, I am focusing on: finishing reading a book, thinking about hugging a cat when I get home, eating dosa when I get home, taking a bath, getting my legs waxed and when I get to the new house and find a bed, I will cry some more. Not induced crying but the kind that I could not stop at the Toronto airport. 

Self check-in flights are cheap but very stressful and not advisable unless the next available option is 500 dollars more. In which case you will not have a choice and you must be prepared for all of this.