Good Girls and Bad Girls: Wanderlust

“Good girls go to heaven and bad girls everywhere” are part of the lyrics from the hit song “Wanderlust” by the Band The Weekend. I guess I get to go everywhere. I am really a gypsy at heart. So heaven can wait.

Though I’d love to visit every nook and corner of the world, yet when I step into an aircraft I turn into a chicken. I have no doubt that traveling by plane is the most unnatural way to go from one place to another. Cooped up in a small space like a caged animal and subject to the most foul smells and loud talking and most inconsiderate fellow passengers whose heads are practically in your lap when they lean back the seats in front of you is not my definition of fun. I’d rather lean back in my own chair on my deck and read Emily Dickinson’s, “There is no frigate like a book!” and be carried away by my imagination to every far away land there is. For good measure from time to time I’d glance at the Grand Canal twenty yards from my property and imagine it to be the Nile or the Danube or any other famous body of water that corresponds with the cuisine on hand.

These days, even before you leave home for any distant land, you can, thanks to Google Earth, virtually be there. So why must I subject myself to the indignities and inconveniences that travel entails? Millions of people do, however. The answer seems to be that virtual presence is not the same as the real deal. How does one smell the flora of a place on the computer or the television screen? How does one dip one’s toes in the river Amazon or hold an adorable sloth against one’s chest or nuzzle a dolphin’s bottle nose if one doesn't seek them out physically?

If one wants the direct experience of a place one needs to be standing on the native soil and breathing in the same air the natives do. There is really no substitute to savoring a place in person all your senses sated by the direct contact with every facet of the place. A book can be a frigate only up to a point. Sorry, Emily. Then again, you were a recluse. Or were you just too busy penning those timeless poems to be wasting your time traveling. Anyway, at least in my case, my boarding an actual frigate leads to material often worth a whole book. Not to mention the photos and videos these days to share with the entire world.

Would the modern world’s mobility and technological inventions have changed Emily’s perspective? And what a different take her contemporary Mark twain had on travel? “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” he declared. Often, I feel amused at the sight of people in public places where life in its many faceted splendor is happening right before their eyes yet they are lost in their books, or in today’s world more likely their smart phones or laptops. 

These days, before you leave for a place you can check it out as if you are already there and then when you return you revisit it as many times as you want in so many ways without leaving your home. How wonderful is that?

In March of 2012, I began my plans to visit Europe that May. Paris was to be our last stop. Because particularly in Paris it’s hard to find a place of your liking to stay easily, Paris is where I booked my apartment first, for three nights and four days using Waytostay.com. As the other pieces of my trip fell into place, I realized I needed a place to stay one more night at the beginning of my stay in Paris. The place I had booked was occupied that previous night. I was willing to book another place for that one night but wanted it close to my apartment. I used Google Earth and bingo, I found a room with a private bath at Le Montclaire Hostel across from my Waytostay.com apartment. I was thrilled. But this convenience of being close to my apartment came with more adventure than I had bargained for. My sleep was compromised to put it mildly. But the experience of hostel night life in middle age was still something to write home about. So was the unlimited breakfast buffet with fresh coffee and fresh orange juice and ooh lala, fresh croissant and a variety of jams in a quaint den-like basement setting and surrounded by youngsters from around the world lusting to wander in all ways possible.

Anyway, what’s travel without some adventure? When you plan a vacation all on your own with no travel agent to hold your hand, believe you me, you have more than your share of adventure. Sometimes enough to last a lifetime. You really need a gypsy’s un-moored DNA to withstand surprise-filled travel. 

Indeed, heaven can wait. I do plan to wander more once I get over my fear of flying. Until then I will curl up with Emily’s poems and call my own little Grand Canal across from my home the Grand Canal of Venice as I wolf down my spiced-up pasta.

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In the blink of an eye losing your wallet

At the promo price of $2.79/gallon, I buy more milk than I expected and so need one more bag. Once I am at the cash register, I transfer my stuff from the shopping cart to the counter, and handing over my credit card to the cashier, with her permission, I step out to grab a third bag from my car trunk. I am back in a jiffy making my way around a blond, slightly wobbly woman in a pastel (lavender was it?) pantsuit in the doorway, which, annoyingly, a few stacks of baskets that stand sentry at the entrance and a fruit stand on one side of the passageway itself have narrowed. I make a mental note of telling the cashier to widen the passageway by moving the baskets elsewhere. Something about the youngish looking middle-aged woman at the doorway, too, dressed to impress in her vintage clothing, makes an impression on my mind. For some reason, she doesn’t come across as a real shopper as she seems only to be studying the $1.99/pound cherries on the fruit stand.

Once I reach the register, I realize that my double-flapped, leather, checkbook-sized wallet I had held in my hand after handing over my credit card to the cashier is missing. Frantically, I look for it in the vicinity, run back to the trunk, check there and return dejected. Next, feeling stupid for not putting away my wallet in my pocket book, and thinking will I ever learn? I roll the cart out of the store, rest it against a lamp-post on the sidewalk, return to the car, and check the trunk again. Just then, my mind darts back to the wobbly woman at the doorway. Brushing past her, I might have dropped my wallet in the passageway and she might have picked it up. I leap toward the sidewalk. A few yards away weighed down to one side by a tote bag there she is, waddling away. “Miss,” I cry.

The woman stops and turns around as if a police command has been issued. Held up at above head level something black in an open position dangles from her left hand. Voila, it is my wallet! Lowering her hand and extending it and heading toward me, in a flustered voice, she says, “Uh, I was just about to figure out whom to return it to.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” I say and rush toward her and as I take the open wallet back, I notice my paper money gone. I have no qualms about instantly accusing the woman of stealing it. She protests, which is when, I notice a walking stick in her hand. Is she disabled? I wonder. Normally, a fighter in the face of perceived injustice, I also pick my battles. This was definitely a battle to be overlooked.

Looking ghostly (suddenly, she looks bleached head to toe; do I l strike her as a monster?), she drags, “You have your cards . . ..” 

Feeling guilty for calling, possibly, a disabled person a thief, yet not letting go completely yet, I persist, “You did take my cash, didn’t you? . . . Twenty three dollars.”

She protests again but I halt when she says, “I was at the store to find out if they take EBT cards.”

My heart sinks. Having seen at many stores, “EBT accepted here” I figure EBT is some kind of a welfare card. Still, like a woman possessed, I ask, “You took my money, didn’t you? . . . But, I guess you need that money.” Cheeky words, while still kind, substitute for any other possible action against her. I am a Scorpio and thus known for my stings. By now, I am by my car. I don’t care for the money anymore but I still wish the woman had admitted her guilt. Under the circumstances, stealing seems excusable but not lying. I am owed at least honesty from her. Being robbed, and then to be lied about it, feels like injury and insult in one punch.

All I hear is, “Do I look like someone who would do that?”

I yell back, “None of us look like who we really are.”

Before I get into my car, I stick my head into the store and ask, “What’s an EBT card?” The cashier tries explaining and says,

“Yes,” when I interject “It’s something the government gives out, right?”

Though it was ultimately my fault, I still feel lousy losing the money and calculate the number of gallons of milk I could have bought or any number of other things with it. Charity too enters my mind. The poetic justice in someone truly needy receiving manna from heaven does not escape me either.  However, for all this noble sentiment, this would be the last time I hold my wallet in my hand once its business being there is over.

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The 1/10th Second

The gash on the philtrum was the last straw. The cut was the result of a typically quick, jerky turn I made a moment earlier to avoid locking eyes with the un-announced visitor at the front door on this peaceful Sunday afternoon.

Splat! Next, a shooting pain. Reflexively my hand reached for the philtrum, that narrow gutter between the lip and the nose, the spot that hit the wall corner in the hallway as I turned around to hide from the stranger. I felt something wet perched precariously on my upper lip. It was blood. My left cheekbone area too throbbed. I felt stupid. I ran to the bathroom mirror and checked the cut and the reddened cheekbone area. The cut was bleeding still. I asked my husband to get me an ice pack. My usual impatience wondered why he was taking so long. Unlike me, he never did anything in a hurry. Often, I had wondered if I did things fast to make up for his slowness. Not that my speed has ever got me anywhere faster, that is, if at all I make it to my destination. Because of my tendency to speed, on any occasion, though, the two of us might begin our walk or stroll together, within the next few minutes, I am usually, a, few steps ahead of him and the distance only increases. 

I don’t know at what point in my life I began to skip, hop and jump. I also used to speak too fast. Then at some point, I noticed that important people took their time in delivering their thoughts. So I too began to speak more deliberately but with respect to movements, whether I walked or just used my hands, I tended to move faster than I really had to, my mind feeling stressed out as well. My hands may be focused on the present activity but my mind had already traveled mile a minute to the next several tasks at hand. My poor hand trying to keep up with my lunatic mind would invariably drop the object in its possession, or spill something, or tear, or crack or break. You name it and I’d have done it at least once. Sometimes I would step on my own toes. When it comes to eating, though, I am very slow.

Another person who always was in the express lane was my late maternal uncle Neelu. A bright and successful man, once, he stepped on my right eye while, as a seven-year-old, I slept on a futon on the floor in his bedroom. It was the middle of the night, pitch dark, and suddenly I felt a heel grind into my eye socket. So being a close relative of this literally cross-eyed uncoordinated man, I assumed that I had inherited his genes and so that was that. This tendency on my part to drop, spill, crack, break, and so on also made me over caution others. I constantly issue warnings: Be careful. Don’t leave the cup on the edge. Don’t walk around bare feet even inside the house. Many more such dictums constantly emanate from my lips. The best one is, don’t hold the knife pointing out unless you plan to stab someone. Of course, this last one is sane advice and there are people who hold the knife the wrong way. Common sense really is not so common.

Anyway, that Sunday, it was a peaceful afternoon. I had just finished listening to the selected shorts on NPR. Sunday afternoons is often guilt free for me, especially if I have caught up on most of my New York Times reading and the house is clean. I felt like napping a bit and just as my head hit the pillow, I heard my malfunctioning doorbell let out a feeble ring and instantly, I jumped out of bed thinking it was possibly John, our next door neighbor who sometimes shows up at the door unannounced. As I reached the top of the staircase that led down to the door, through the glass transom above it, I saw a young African-American man I didn’t recognize. So, before this stranger could spot me I tried to make a beeline for my bedroom. However, when I swung around, what met my face was the metal reinforced wall corner.

Just as I began to feel alone in this world for not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time like most of the world could, out of the blue, I came across a report on TV. According to research, by slowing down by just 1/10^th of a second, one could avoid many accidents, and that, one/third of the population was klutzy like I.

Now I use an extra 1/10^th second to complete every movement of mine and not surprisingly all my parts are intact.

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