The anatomy of wanderlust

At the heart of Spain, eighty miles north-west of Madrid, I found myself choking back tears in the small town of Torrecaballeros. I was pouring my heart out to a stranger. We didn’t know each other 24 hours ago. He was now the only one who knew about my separation anxiety disorder, professional ambiguity and warring parents. We were in a one-on-one ‘talking’ session, as part of a cultural exchange program. We walked the cold, cobblestoned streets, confiding in one another through the cracks of disparate languages. A week later, I was announcing my life’s ambitions and insecurities to a receptive Brazilian teenager in front of Francisco Goya’s ‘The Nude Maja’ at the Prado Museum of Art.

It was my first time away from India – from home – for more than 10 days.

For the next six years, the second I left the rooted bubbles of Bombay shores, I became a patient in search of the closest shrink. This ‘condition’ has somewhat concretised my understanding of exotic lands as legitimate narrative devices in cinema, and not just context-less, dream destinations.

Metaphor for change

As derided as today’s millennial relationship between wanderlust and lyrical introspection is, there lies a fundamental truth of human nature within its form. There is a reason that filmmakers fashion the honesty and conflicts of their heroes and heroines to peak in the anonymity of foreign lands. There’s a reason we see protagonists like

Queen ’s Rani Mehra (Kangana Ranaut), English Vinglish ’s Shashi Godbole (Sridevi), Dil Dhadakne Do ’s crisis-hit Mehra family, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara ’s three amigos and Imtiaz Ali’s existential lovers come of age in faraway exotic locations.

Someone like Rani, a frog-in-the-pond west-Delhi girl with a cripplingly limited worldview, is almost humbled into epiphany within the free-spirited confines of Paris and Amsterdam. Shashi, an under-confident homemaker whose inferiority complex is triggered by a casually patriarchal husband, acts upon her resentment only in an alien environment during a wedding trip to New York. Ditto for the repressed Mehra family members, who choose to address their hidden hypocrisies on a luxurious cruise ship.

Tamasha ’s Ved and

DDLJ ’s Simran display their true, unguarded colours to dazzled admirers in distant locales. Sejal opens herself up to a roguish Harry only because she is afforded the space, eons away from her shackled Mumbai existence. Even

Dil Chahta Hai ’s bratty Akash reveals his boyish, tender self to Shalini when he becomes a lonely NRI statistic in Sydney.

Into the unknown

It’s not just the culture shock at play in these cases. More than anything, it’s fear – of the unknown, unheralded and unseen – that galvanises personalities into a candid space of self-discovery. The moment we exit our comfort zones, we lose our sense of stability and self-worth. In Tarun Dudeja’s recent short film, Listener , we see the story of a man (Kumud Mishra) paid to patiently listen to strangers. Different ‘clients’ share intimate secrets with him every night – at a particular fancy restaurant. His ‘business’ might not have thrived elsewhere. A restaurant, by definition, is designed to recreate the aura of diverse (culinary) lifestyles. It channelises the core of travelling, thereby forcing the man’s jittery customers to drop all pretenses in untested conditions.

Geographical inspiration

The moment we leave our carefully customised tents of civilisation, we are no more writers, entrepreneurs, famous chefs or lowly interns. At immigration, our identities are temporarily suspended and our images, revoked. There is nobody to impress, nobody to be responsible for. There is, in essence, nobody looking at us – something that compels the Ranis and Sejals within us to expose ourselves in a heartfelt way that attracts curious ears. We embrace the truth of our own selves in an attempt to latch onto anything that validates the familiarity of our default surroundings. Breaking ourselves down becomes a survival instinct. Notice how Rani, initially circumspect at revealing her anxieties, lets it rip once she realises that a Paris-bred Vijaya (Lisa Haydon) is fascinated by the very same traits that might have invited scrutiny back in Delhi.

By the time she is in Amsterdam, she gloriously rattles off lame jokes and childlike emotions – she is almost urging these new friends to judge her, but remains gleefully surprised when they don’t.

Perhaps some of us seek out new lands every few months to experience this fear, this frightening lack of foothold. It’s not the romance or excitement of it, but the looming need to be reacquainted with the idea of weakness, genuineness and general unsettlement. It’s the urge to become vulnerable – but necessary – heroes of our own road movies.