In an era of information overload, if you are planning to visit a new country and looking for knowledge sources, where would you begin? Online/offline travel guides, newspapers, magazines, travel blogs? Most of the writing on travel are a combination of informative and experiential pieces that can provide handy tips and insights into a destination, its people and lifestyle, places to visit, and food. Beyond these realms, is there scope for a travel memoir, wondered Sunil Mishra.
Working with a multinational firm, he has travelled to 30 countries across six continents since the 1990s. He was eager to pen down his observations in a book form but was told that publishing houses may not be too welcoming of memoirs unless it’s of a well known personality. This was in 2007.
Intermittently, he began sharing his experiences on a blog and put the book on the back burner. “I started writing, recollecting from memory and from notes I had documented in a diary. I had given up on the idea of a book in 2010-11. In 2016, I revisited what I had written and felt that my perspectives, too, had changed. I reworked several portions,” he says.
Mishra wrote several chapters of the book in waiting lounges of airports during his work-induced trips. The book traces the transformation travel has gone through in India. Airports have gone from being extremely crowded, noisy spaces of mayhem to more comfortable arenas. The new airport terminals in metros have futuristic designs, and lounges have metamorphosed from waiting rooms to plush areas of fine dining and leisure.
Things were vastly different in the 90s, Mishra reminisces in his book Transit Lounge (Leadstart Publishing; ₹225). He presents accounts of serpentine queues to take the airport bus to get to the international terminal in Mumbai and the harrowing experience at immigration counters. And, does anyone remember tickets that resembled booklets? Details like these are peppered through the book, in which he describes the utter lack of enthusiasm among his peers and family when he announced his first international work-related trip — to Ghana! Eventually, his experience made him see beyond the disdain one commonly had for an African destination back then. He goes on to detail his observations on the Middle East, United States, Australia and New Zealand, western Europe and Latin America.
The book’s title is his ode to the time he has spent at airports across the world, and stands as a metaphor to the changes he’s observed in the travel arena. “Not many Indians travelled abroad for leisure in the 90s and early 2000s. I would come across leisure international travellers from the West or Japan more than from India,” he observes.
Transit Lounge , he asserts, was not written to be a tourist guide but more of an experiential account, with insights into local cultures, conversations, and economy. “A number of experiential travel books we have in India are written by foreigners who present their views on India. My book does the opposite,” he sums up.
