Assam

As a child I looked forward to the yearly summer school break as the family would pack a couple of steel trunks, a big wicker basket of food and bedding rolls and get into trains to impose ourselves for a few weeks in the houses of people whose only fault was they gave birth to one of our parents. While we were there some more people who were also who were born to these unfortunate elderly persons would join with their children. I enjoyed travelling in the trains with open windows that ensured a steady stream of soot, burning cinder bits and grimy bars that would leave permanent stripes on your face. Within an hour of getting in the train a schedule of how many hours each kid could sit at the window would be drawn up to ensure that violent bloody wars did not break out. It was magical, all normal life melted away as one stared at the racing landscape, time seems to wrap itself in an infinity symbol around ones smarting eyes. It was then that I thought that this is what I want to do when I grow up just go from one place to another.

I started to read about travelling, about the time when it was considered a must do among the young male elite in Europe after they completed the requisite number of years in musty buildings to round off their personalities. About the time when over population and diminishing land parcel sizes obliged many of the second and third born sons to seek adventure in the colonies. I read about the time of the great migrations to the new world to escape prosecution; religious and economic.During the cold war the flower children poured out of the west in their quest to seek the eastern light on to the beaches, ghats and towns where their grandparents had tried to beat civilisation into. Then came a spurt of books based on the obsession to go to places where no has been and do things no one in your neighbourhood has done which created a growth market with professional guides and agencies that tailored these now end of the world places travels to groups who could leave home without every having to as all these places now catered everything that you left behind.

There was a time in India where a rare person would leave the country to travel for pleasure; it was either to study or to seek new economic pastures. But with falling travel costs and more disposable income this too changed over the last decades. Now the newspapers advertise packages that promise to fly you over 20,000 kilometres, show you 6 European city capitals, pack visits to 25 museums and allow 2 half days of shopping bonanza all in 3 nights and 4 days travel with nights in 3 star or equivalent hotels whenever there is a night stop.

Over the years of travelling I never stopped wondering at the motivation of the people who just got up one day and decided to come to stand in front of the little mermaid to munch crisps while letting their well fed kids dressed in identical clothes make a public nuisance of themselves. Like when you are standing on the lip of a crater of an extinct volcano in the cold pre-dawn with your full bladder threatening an imminent public embarrassment but you hold on for the silver light over the pacific is starting to stir in some colours and line of gold is popping over the rim. Then you hear a clear and carrying voice discussing how and where she got a bargain yesterday. All this could be endured, brushed off as the magic of travel was still a solitary pleasure of moving where in some of the more frequented stops you had to share the space.

But over the years in the name of bringing security to the world, travelling has become an experience of harassment, humiliation and panic. From the point you call to enquire about the procedure for obtaining a visa, a voice that is been picked out of a million for its ability to mock you for the very idea that such information should be available to people like you, you know you do not want to go anywhere. On persisting you will be asked to produce documents that will state that you, your parents or any body in your clan has never sympathised with groups that wanted to annihilate the civilised world in the last 2 centuries along with financial statements proving that you could bankroll a civil war in a medium size country if the need arose. You would have to provide 20 photos of pre-requisite size, texture and colour as stated in a web site that not accessible where also the on-line visa forms would be there if there was really such a web site.

At the airports you have to master the technique of waving your tickets at the security personnel, holding out your arms away from your torso for a quick body check while holding on to your luggage trolley and keeping your body at 90 degrees to line of movement to keep your Achilles tendon from being seriously damaged by the trolley behind. At the check in counter the man looks at your passport photo and back to your face a dozen times while you hold his eye unblinkingly and smile a different haircut, same person, please smile. The passenger before you had been lead away by 2 airport security guards into one of these windowless rooms for his passport showed no moustache and now he has one while fitting into the age and ethnic profile of people who are a threat to share a flight with.

At the security check before going into the aircraft, it is an equanimity test to see how long you could be a passive bystander while an elderly couple have their bags ripped open by ham handed men who bark questions in rapid fire while they pull out their turn of the century undergarments and throw it around on the counter. When they have had their go they shove it out of the way and give the old folks 5 seconds to pick it all up and clear out as the next security risk profile person they need to check is a mother travelling alone with a toddler who is wailing and a drooling infant.

Sometimes I crack under the pressure like when the flight that was supposed to have a stopover of 2 hours in Frankfurt had to be delayed for 6 or more hours as the connecting flight from Rome was delayed so everybody was ordered off the flight to the holding lounge. As we filed out with our hand baggage in the middle of the night you come across a hulk in a beige and brown uniform with a pasty complexion highlighted by the cold neon light asking each passenger hare yhou een thranseet hzere? When it was my turnI heard a voice saying no, when your back is turned I am going to leap over the barrier, go to the toilet to climb out of the window, jump down 3 floors to disappear into your cold and cheerless country forever to find a Hans of my own. My passport was taken away from me during the 8 hours we had to wait and a female security officer went with me whenever I had to visit the toilet.

Over the last years I have discovered that when questions like Are you visiting this country?, What is the purpose of your visit?, did you pack your bags yourself? Is this your travel documents?, who provided you with this visa? could you take of your shoes for me? that same voice takes over. So, after many hours in windowless rooms and multiple examinations of my papers I have decided that I will stick my face out of the window in my house and try to achieve time warp at home when ever I feel like travelling.

Or at least till such time that liberal democratic countries have finished invading enough sovereign nations to bring security, democratic values and global blandness to all nations to put an end to these questions.