Travels with Family

Fisherman Boat on the Beach, Sri Lanka

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”

Mark Twain

This year, I started with something brave. I went on holiday with a motley crew which included my hyper and hyper- organised sibling and our respective partners, who are laid-back and chilled out. I was reminded of Mark Twain for most of the trip. And here’s what I have figured out: It’s wonderful to go on holiday with family. Even when everyone has their own idea of what constitutes a holiday – a strenuous trek, a slow walk, shopping, surfing, sea-gazing, sampling local fare – it somehow all comes together in fun and laughter. As celebrated Hindi poet Dhoomil says, “On holidays I hate no one. I do not have to fight on any front.”

Here’s to travel.

How can I forget Walt Whitman’s absolutely brilliant, Song of the Open Road ? The poem is a lengthy celebration of that great equaliser – the road. The poet is, “healthy, free,” and “the long brown path,” before him leads to wherever he chooses. He will no longer ask for good-fortune because he is good-fortune himself. He will, “whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing/Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms/Strong and content I travel the open road.” The sheer joy with which Walt Whitman embraces the great outdoors is an emotion most travellers have experienced.

What’s travel without baggage, both literal and figurative? In,

Luggage , Constance Urdang writes an amusing poem about three women who travel, “past outposts of empire,” and who carry with them interesting things, including, “starched shirtwaists, backaches, insomnia, a handkerchief damp with wifely tears.” One of them trades, “tobacco and hooks for fish and fetishes.”

Adam Zagajewski writes about his observations about travel in a series of poems. In En Route , the station in Bytom has an underground tunnel that, “stinks of loneliness.” In another piece ( At Dawn ), the poet says, “The world’s materiality at dawn—and the soul’s frailty.” In Mont Blanc , he observes, “It shines from afar, white and cautious/like a lantern for shadows.”

Anne Waldman creates a lasting impression in her poem Cabin : “cabin becomes someone’s idea of a good place/discretion you pay for it wasn’t mine either/but sits on me imprints on me/forever splendor of fog, snow shut strangers out/gradual turn of season, ground stir, pine/needle tickle your shoulder, peak curve, fresh air.”

Travel leaves its mark on us and I don’t mean sunburn. It’s sneaky, how a trip holds on to our mind space.

Travel is also about taking in the sights and a holiday could be either the regular touristy route or you could meander down the untrodden road. I am reminded of R. Parthasarthy’s poem, Taj Mahal , where he describes the monument as, “… this marble flame/ Earth’s other moon, how/ it rubs expensive delicate salt/in the wound of unrequited love?”

“Come, my friends/ 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world,” go the lines in Ulysses . The poem, written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, speaks of the king’s searing need for travel and knowledge. As Joy Harjo says in, A Map to the Next World, “for the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.”

Mark Twain was right. You do learn about love and hate when you travel. But that's a story for an another time.

(Srividya is a poet. Read her work at www.rumwrapt.blogspot.in)