TRAVEL

I Lost My Way but Found a New Direction

Two generous strangers in the street taught me one key lesson in humanity

Human beings crave similarity. After our aimless wanderings, we settle at one place, surrounding ourselves with ‘similar’ people of ‘similar’ histories. We draw hard cultural lines around us that separate our ‘culture’ from the rest of the world. Over time, these lines take root and grow into platinum-grade hard bubbles, which filter out any dissenting ideas or challenging thoughts. We harden into a product of our surroundings, adept at filtering the world through these lenses.

For the first twenty years of my life, I lived seeing the world through such a lens and judged the entire humanity of seven billion souls via this single perspective.

I would have continued doing this had I not travelled. It was on my first travel, that I became aware of the suffocating narrow confines of my tunnel view.

At 21, I got my first opportunity to travel outside India. One fine summer morning, my manager told me to get ready to visit Seoul for a vendor visit. As I had never even visited my relatives without my parents, forget about travelling to a whole new country, an avalanchian fear gripped me at the prospect of traveling to such a far-off place and I decided to back out. I couldn’t — I was the only one available in my project to travel and my efficient manager had already initiated the visa process earlier that day. So a week later, I was braving a smile on my face while waving confident farewell to my folks while my heart fluttered in my throat.

But as I lived in Seoul for those two months, walking in its neon-light-bathed streets, and visiting its solemn Buddhist temples, while navigating my life with people with a whole new language and culture I was struck by how different these people were from me in dress, language, and customs, yet despite these differences so alike at the fundamental human level.

One incident, in particular, stands out in removing the blinds from my eyes and showed me a glimpse of the cultural diversity of this world.

On my third night in Seoul, I was strolling in one of its dazzlingly lit streets. From both sides of the street above me, neon-lit store signs poured out electric fluorescent lights bathing me and the surroundings in a hallucinogenic cocktail of colours. It had drizzled in the evening and the halo of light floated on the wet surface of the road like oil on water. The store signs inked with Korean script seemed like love poetry penned in exotic calligraphy.

Mesmerized by these stunning surroundings, I lost track of my bearings and soon wandered into an unfamiliar street. It was 2009, and I didn’t have a GPS-enabled phone to guide me.

I panicked.

I had forgotten to note my hotel’s address and became scared. I ran around frantically, cursing my carelessness. After some time, with fear boiling in my heart, I stopped and stared helplessly at the bright, bustling arcades.

My dejected posture must have been apparent because someone tapped my shoulder. I turned to find two young Korean girls standing behind me. The shorter one wearing a white t-shirt and light-blue faded jeans spoke something in fluid Korean that I couldn’t grasp. Then the taller one who was wearing a floral maxi dress smiled warmly and stammered in hesitant English, “You…know…English?”

I nodded, relieved.

“Name…hotel?” she asked.

I replied very slowly, enunciating the Korean name carefully. She smiled and said, “Go straight. Uhh. Traffic signal. Stop, okay. Take right — ten minutes. Walking slowly. Your hotel there.”

She jotted directions on a notepad and handed it to me. I thanked them profusely. As I was about to leave, the shorter of the two girls asked me in English about my job. I explained using gestures. She nodded attentively though doubtless understanding little. When I asked about her, she replied, “I study now…before, mechunbu.” I looked at both the girls, waiting for an explanation. Then she said, “I escort. In the city.”

I was shell-shocked.

Of all professions, I’d never have guessed prostitution. Back home it was a death hole from which no girl could come out and start a life over. But here, a girl had not only come out of it, she had also started her life again. Moreover, she was not ashamed to tell this to a stranger. I looked at her again, marveling at her ordinariness. In a white t-shirt over jeans, she looked like any other college girl.

I was so used to portrayals of escorts as outcasts lurking in the shadows that meeting one casually in a crowded market shook the foundations of my assumptions about the world. She spoke of her past life like any job, nurse or accountant.

Noticing my hesitation, she said. “I do, before. Now I study. College.” Smiling, she pointed her backpack as if providing evidence for her claims.

She started sharing snippets of her desires in life — graduating in psychology, hoping to travel, learning perfect English, and settling in the USA. The taller one chipped in saying she loved plants and her apartment was a jungle. I could tell they were interested in talking in English with me, so we went to a café across the street to chat more.

Just a month earlier, I’d have balked at coffee with an ex-escort. But now we traded anecdotes. She was just a normal girl, with goals and dreams like anyone else.

I wouldn’t have had this realization without travelling here.

We tend to see ourselves and our culture at the center, judging everything by our limited perspective. This failure to understand others, I believe, is the source of much hatred and evil in the world. The more people I meet and places I visit, the more convinced I become of this. Travel opens our minds to different viewpoints; we witness the diversity ingrained in the places. And this diversity permeates through the fabric of every place in this world.

In Madrid, medieval Catholic churches and nude beaches lay side by side. In Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum of Avant-garde post-impressionist Art stands five minutes from a sex museum showcasing pornographic phallic sculptures and erotic paintings. In Bratislava, the medieval fortifications ripe with history vie with the modernity of soaring glass towers.

The more I travel, this feeling of a shared culture grows stronger inside of me. That these boundaries of the world are artificial and that we all belong to one world of one shared culture. That all the different places, people, histories — all these are interactions that ultimately point to the same truth. All are sides of the same cultural core.

Around ten years ago I was in Spain, and here I found a physical embodiment of this feeling.

In 2015, I went to Spain for the first time and stood gaping at the foot of Sagrada Familia, this humongous beast of a monument. At first, looking at it looked like staring at many buildings huddled together in one place. Its design is all over the place. There is no sense of symmetry or harmony in its design. Arches, towers, and minarets emerge out of this mound without any logic or scheme. All this mishmash gave the impression that Sagrada Familia is less a ‘designed’ monument and more a ‘mishmash of discrete structures’ that grew out from the earth. A mad product from a mad mind.

Yet, these diverse elements — discordant facades, disproportionate towers, — shockingly fuse into one astonishing whole and compose a melody as vibrant and soothing as that of Mozart’s symphony. Sagrada Familia doesn’t just stand, it sings. It doesn’t merely exist, it lives, breathes, speaks — not just one voice, but a thousand voices, all different yet united.

Just like our world.

That’s what travel does to us — it pulls us out of the cultural wells of our daily lives and shows us the world in all its naked diversity, each unique facet part of a greater whole, like this cathedral.

We can’t help but learn such things when we travel to new places, and meet new people. Recognizing our shared humanity is travel’s greatest gift. It inspires us to open our minds and embrace the world in its diversity.