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On some nights, I stand by the window and lift my gaze up to the sky. I train my eyes to ignore the amber glow of the city lights and set them to seek out the position of the pivotal star. I take a long time to locate the familiar stars and constellations. I many times do not get past the ‘Ursa Minor’ or ‘The Great Hunter.’ I am not an expert stargazer. I often look up only not to see what I see. Within moments of catching a glimpse of the night sky, I bequeath my stationary self to the notions of cosmic motions. The thought of the expanding Universe, everything moving away from everything else, fascinates me. Everything is rushing somewhere, hurling through space, never arriving at a destination. I imagine the sun, the earth, and the Milky Way with outstretched arms whirling and drudging in a dark, infinite expanse. Slowly, the image of this perceived wild ride fades, leaving behind an eerie sense of panic. But once the disquietude recedes, a sense of camaraderie engulfs me, for my world of wandering is akin to the wandering of our world. Getting this point across effectively is not straightforward. But then, nothing is ‘straight’ or ‘forward’ to me. Everything strays.
I am a traveller in knots who loves travelling but dreads navigating. Years ago, I, a dweller of the tropics, landed at the Minneapolis—St Paul international airport on a snowy November evening. The first sight of snow was supposed to enthrall. However, I felt transposed. As my cab pulled out of the airport, I panicked. I have never been sure of my way in daylight on roads replete with landmarks. With a vast expanse of snow zooming past my window, my world had suddenly become grey and white. After an hour’s ride, the driver dropped me at an address. I toddled towards the entrance with my luggage, stopping to feel the ground underneath. My would-be flatmate, who was waiting up for me at the reception, stepped outside. She held the door open and helped me drag the suitcases in. “You will get used to it! Do not take long strides, and watch out for black ice,” she said and took me to the flat at the end of a corridor. For a decade, my work brought me frequently back into this city, taking me through its different parts and seasons. During each stint, I unravelled the place a little more, culturally, socially, and gastronomically. However, the extent to which the city was lost to me geographically did not change much.
During my first spell, I lived in a suburb and took a bus to work downtown. Whenever I was en route, I attempted to internalize the topographical details. During my breaks, I got out of the office, testily walked a few hundred steps in the skyway or on the road, and took in the business signs, logos, and the angle at which skyscrapers intercepted the sky. To help stop the gyration of directions inside my head, I surveyed the colours of the awnings, the scent of the perfumes in Nicollet Mall, and its unique display of Men’s shirts and ties. Nevertheless, I often found that the street scenery beyond the revolving doors would change. On certain days, ‘Wine & Spirits’ took up CVS pharmacy’s spot on a whim. Later, I realized that the relocation of the buildings may have had something to do with me. I was getting disoriented right at the bank of elevators. Stepping out, I would take random turns that landed me on different streets through different exits.
In the initial weeks, I timed my departure in the morning so I reached downtown when the probability of running into one of my co-workers was high. This ensured that I showed up to work every day on time. However, a smooth trip back home was beyond my manipulation. One evening, despite my best efforts, I missed my stop and got down at the next one. I walked back looking for a row of familiar-looking pine trees and a walkway to the right of a big mound of snow. The Public Works Department of Edina was consistent and always piled the snow to the left of my apartment walkway. After forty-five minutes of walking in the snow and wind-chill, I was hungry, exhausted, and cold, and I was sobbing on the sidewalk. In a while, a car pulled up, and Sameer, my colleague, called my name through the rolled down window. “Are you heading to the Southdale Mall? It’s almost closing hours,” shouted Sameer over the howling wind and snow.
“No. I am going home!” I yelled, shading my eyes with my hand to look at his face.
“Home?” He knitted his eyebrows. “I can give you a ride!”
“Thank you,” I said and got into his car. I moved his laptop to the back seat and clicked the seat belt as he veered the car out of the slush.
“Where have you been?”
“What?”
“I mean like now. It is snowing!”
I took a deep breath. I did not want to go over the details. I said, “Just heading back from work.”
“What! I saw you leaving the office at six!”
“The bus came late. Also, I was solving Sudoku and I missed our stop. I got down at the next one and was walking back home.” My voice choked.
Sameer slowed down and cocked his head slightly to look at me. “Our apartment is further up the road. Not behind.” A momentary sense of disbelief hung in the air. I did not talk anymore that evening except for a ‘thank you’ and ‘good night.’ It was unlikely that I walked past our apartment while looking for it. In my anxiety to not to miss the stop, I had got down ahead at Frances Ave instead of Gallagher Drive. The blur of fright had distorted my view of the transit display inside the bus. But that night, I was in luck. If it were not for Sameer, I may have unnecessarily rattled a random apartment’s door. At times, my trails become so entangled that I arrive at the incorrect address and desperately wish it to be the intended destination.
A month later I had to collect a parcel from the US post office, as I had missed the delivery. I decided to fetch it on a Saturday on my way to the library. It was hardly a mile away. After a twenty-minute stroll, I found a dollar shop. I bought things I had no use for and inquired about directions.
“The USPS?” asked the store owner.
“Actually, no. The post office?”
“Oh, okay, the U.S. post. It’s almost two miles from here.”
Walking a mile can take me two miles away from the destination.“Can you tell me how to go there?” I asked.
“Hmm. Lemme see. You head southwest….” He rattled off a few landmarks and then said, “You will see a McDonald’s. The post office is right across.”
Unfortunately, I lost him the moment he uttered “southwest.” I barely manage left and right. Southwest went over my head. I was tempted to go fluent on how fluid east, west, and the rest were. I had then recently learnt that the sun does not exactly rise in the east every day, but the position of the sunrise can either be northward or southward to east due to earth’s axis tilt. While the surety of the unknown guards me in a faraway country, a false sense of familiarity beguiles me at home. One such expedition in my hometown came close to being a financial mishap. Once, when my financially astute spouse was away on training, I set out to procure a loan statement from the bank. I found the bank without any trouble. The place had the air of new found affluence—two lush couches and repainted walls. Despite the day being hot, I could not resist a cup of free coffee from the machine in the corner. I had my second cup of the morning and asked for my personal manager, Chandra. I was told by an employee that Chandra was on leave. Nevertheless, he was happy to help. He took my personal details and handed me my document. To my horror, I found the numbers all wrong and the loan amount way beyond the actual credit. I freaked and repeatedly called my husband. After multiple calls with our manager, he figured out that our personal manager was indeed at the bank waiting for me; it was I who had gone to the wrong branch.
After a kilometer’s walk, I entered the home loan branch, where Mr. Chandra was waiting for me behind his timeless, deep-grained teak wood desk. I sat opposite him and after politely declining another cup of coffee, I handed over the document.
“This is all rubbish. Where did you get this?” asked Mr. Chandra.
“In the other branch. Can the loan statement vary based on the branch? I am confused.”
“I do not know. There is some confusion. You should not have this,” said Mr. Chandra, and he shredded the document. He printed my loan statement, signed and sealed it, put it in an envelope, and handed it over to me. The world had returned to normalcy. I thanked him and as I was about to leave, he asked, “You had to come here thrice with your husband to sign the documents, right?” He did not wait for me to answer. He smiled and probed, “You do go to the same office to work every day, I hope.” I smiled back. He was a busy man and did not have the time to indulge in my adventures. I simply said, “Yes, I take the office transport from home and back.” This episode is favourite folklore of my family members, who tend to ignore that there was a bank manager with the same name in the other branch, and I was issued a wrong statement for the same account number. With the empirical proof mangled in a shredder, the world thinks I made that one up.
After living for more than a decade in a place, one is expected develop a precise sense of geographical orientation for it. No, not me. I ceaselessly find turns and alleys in my neighbourhood that lead me to new destinations. I have come to believe in the fickleness and impermanence of topographies. Place is more like time. It has unaccounted dimensions that empower it to transform like shifting sand dunes in the desert.
One summer, my husband and I retreated to the beautiful hills of Kumaon to beat the heat and to catch a glimpse of the magnificent Himalayas. Though the stay was memorable and the weather was pleasant, we could not see the snow-capped mountains, due to a rampant forest fire. On the last day of our stay, I went to the deck before sunrise with a pair of binoculars in one hand and a cup of steaming hot tea in the other. As I settled into a chair, a gentleman in his early seventies walked up to the chair next to me. He wrapped his shawl tightly around him as he sat. We were waiting for the haze to lift.
“Months immediately after the monsoon and the winters are the best time to see the Himalayas. The air is crisp and clear then, and you see the peaks as though they are the tip of your outstretched arm,” he said.
“So I’ve heard. But when we called up, we were told that we could still manage to get a view at this time of the year,” I said.
“It depends. Summers are setting in early these days.”
“Are you a frequent visitor?”
“Yes. I come here two or three times a year. Where are you from?” he asked.
I told him. He chuckled and said, “That’s a beautiful place. I spent a few years there right after college. I love those roads beneath the sprawling canopies, the eateries and the movie halls.”
I nodded. “Most of them are gone now—the trees, the wide roads, and those movie halls.”
“Huh. I used to go for a walk on the lake road and end it with an ice cream. Do you know the bakery there that serves those fluffy, moist Danish pastries?”
“No. I must have missed seeing it. Anyway, that locality is now the business hub. Old buildings made way for high-rises a long time ago.”
“Yes. I hear that city is fast changing.”
We both sat wrapped in our own private moments, staring at the horizon, waiting for the fog to clear. Time yielded to a multitude of geographic locations. While I sat there waiting for an immediate future to unfold a spectacular view, he was strolling in a landscape that was intact only in his mind. He had a map but no town. Our conversation had robbed him of that city of his youth, permanently eroding its landmarks. The haze never lifted, and I had to pack and leave.
As I got up, he asked, “What about the clock tower in the market?”
“Gone,” I said.
“It’s a shame.” He shook his head. His sense of bewilderment tugged at my heart. I felt he and I had traded places. I wanted to say, “Don’t worry. It is just two blocks away, at the other side of the revolving door.” But there are some doors that no one can enter twice.
Priya Rajan’s “Those Who Wander” appears in Flock 21.
On some nights, I stand by the window and lift my gaze up to the sky. I train my eyes to ignore the amber glow of the city lights and set them to seek out the position of the pivotal star. I take a long time to locate the familiar stars and constellations. I many times do not get past the ‘Ursa Minor’ or ‘The Great Hunter.’ I am not an expert stargazer. I often look up only not to see what I see. Within moments of catching a glimpse of the night sky, I bequeath my stationary self to the notions of cosmic motions. The thought of the expanding Universe, everything moving away from everything else, fascinates me. Everything is rushing somewhere, hurling through space, never arriving at a destination. I imagine the sun, the earth, and the Milky Way with outstretched arms whirling and drudging in a dark, infinite expanse. Slowly, the image of this perceived wild ride fades, leaving behind an eerie sense of panic. But once the disquietude recedes, a sense of camaraderie engulfs me, for my world of wandering is akin to the wandering of our world. Getting this point across effectively is not straightforward. But then, nothing is ‘straight’ or ‘forward’ to me. Everything strays.
I am a traveller in knots who loves travelling but dreads navigating. Years ago, I, a dweller of the tropics, landed at the Minneapolis—St Paul international airport on a snowy November evening. The first sight of snow was supposed to enthrall. However, I felt transposed. As my cab pulled out of the airport, I panicked. I have never been sure of my way in daylight on roads replete with landmarks. With a vast expanse of snow zooming past my window, my world had suddenly become grey and white. After an hour’s ride, the driver dropped me at an address. I toddled towards the entrance with my luggage, stopping to feel the ground underneath. My would-be flatmate, who was waiting up for me at the reception, stepped outside. She held the door open and helped me drag the suitcases in. “You will get used to it! Do not take long strides, and watch out for black ice,” she said and took me to the flat at the end of a corridor. For a decade, my work brought me frequently back into this city, taking me through its different parts and seasons. During each stint, I unravelled the place a little more, culturally, socially, and gastronomically. However, the extent to which the city was lost to me geographically did not change much.
During my first spell, I lived in a suburb and took a bus to work downtown. Whenever I was en route, I attempted to internalize the topographical details. During my breaks, I got out of the office, testily walked a few hundred steps in the skyway or on the road, and took in the business signs, logos, and the angle at which skyscrapers intercepted the sky. To help stop the gyration of directions inside my head, I surveyed the colours of the awnings, the scent of the perfumes in Nicollet Mall, and its unique display of Men’s shirts and ties. Nevertheless, I often found that the street scenery beyond the revolving doors would change. On certain days, ‘Wine & Spirits’ took up CVS pharmacy’s spot on a whim. Later, I realized that the relocation of the buildings may have had something to do with me. I was getting disoriented right at the bank of elevators. Stepping out, I would take random turns that landed me on different streets through different exits.
In the initial weeks, I timed my departure in the morning so I reached downtown when the probability of running into one of my co-workers was high. This ensured that I showed up to work every day on time. However, a smooth trip back home was beyond my manipulation. One evening, despite my best efforts, I missed my stop and got down at the next one. I walked back looking for a row of familiar-looking pine trees and a walkway to the right of a big mound of snow. The Public Works Department of Edina was consistent and always piled the snow to the left of my apartment walkway. After forty-five minutes of walking in the snow and wind-chill, I was hungry, exhausted, and cold, and I was sobbing on the sidewalk. In a while, a car pulled up, and Sameer, my colleague, called my name through the rolled down window. “Are you heading to the Southdale Mall? It’s almost closing hours,” shouted Sameer over the howling wind and snow.
“No. I am going home!” I yelled, shading my eyes with my hand to look at his face.
“Home?” He knitted his eyebrows. “I can give you a ride!”
“Thank you,” I said and got into his car. I moved his laptop to the back seat and clicked the seat belt as he veered the car out of the slush.
“Where have you been?”
“What?”
“I mean like now. It is snowing!”
I took a deep breath. I did not want to go over the details. I said, “Just heading back from work.”
“What! I saw you leaving the office at six!”
“The bus came late. Also, I was solving Sudoku and I missed our stop. I got down at the next one and was walking back home.” My voice choked.
Sameer slowed down and cocked his head slightly to look at me. “Our apartment is further up the road. Not behind.” A momentary sense of disbelief hung in the air. I did not talk anymore that evening except for a ‘thank you’ and ‘good night.’ It was unlikely that I walked past our apartment while looking for it. In my anxiety to not to miss the stop, I had got down ahead at Frances Ave instead of Gallagher Drive. The blur of fright had distorted my view of the transit display inside the bus. But that night, I was in luck. If it were not for Sameer, I may have unnecessarily rattled a random apartment’s door. At times, my trails become so entangled that I arrive at the incorrect address and desperately wish it to be the intended destination.
A month later I had to collect a parcel from the US post office, as I had missed the delivery. I decided to fetch it on a Saturday on my way to the library. It was hardly a mile away. After a twenty-minute stroll, I found a dollar shop. I bought things I had no use for and inquired about directions.
“The USPS?” asked the store owner.
“Actually, no. The post office?”
“Oh, okay, the U.S. post. It’s almost two miles from here.”
Walking a mile can take me two miles away from the destination.“Can you tell me how to go there?” I asked.
“Hmm. Lemme see. You head southwest….” He rattled off a few landmarks and then said, “You will see a McDonald’s. The post office is right across.”
Unfortunately, I lost him the moment he uttered “southwest.” I barely manage left and right. Southwest went over my head. I was tempted to go fluent on how fluid east, west, and the rest were. I had then recently learnt that the sun does not exactly rise in the east every day, but the position of the sunrise can either be northward or southward to east due to earth’s axis tilt. While the surety of the unknown guards me in a faraway country, a false sense of familiarity beguiles me at home. One such expedition in my hometown came close to being a financial mishap. Once, when my financially astute spouse was away on training, I set out to procure a loan statement from the bank. I found the bank without any trouble. The place had the air of new found affluence—two lush couches and repainted walls. Despite the day being hot, I could not resist a cup of free coffee from the machine in the corner. I had my second cup of the morning and asked for my personal manager, Chandra. I was told by an employee that Chandra was on leave. Nevertheless, he was happy to help. He took my personal details and handed me my document. To my horror, I found the numbers all wrong and the loan amount way beyond the actual credit. I freaked and repeatedly called my husband. After multiple calls with our manager, he figured out that our personal manager was indeed at the bank waiting for me; it was I who had gone to the wrong branch.
After a kilometer’s walk, I entered the home loan branch, where Mr. Chandra was waiting for me behind his timeless, deep-grained teak wood desk. I sat opposite him and after politely declining another cup of coffee, I handed over the document.
“This is all rubbish. Where did you get this?” asked Mr. Chandra.
“In the other branch. Can the loan statement vary based on the branch? I am confused.”
“I do not know. There is some confusion. You should not have this,” said Mr. Chandra, and he shredded the document. He printed my loan statement, signed and sealed it, put it in an envelope, and handed it over to me. The world had returned to normalcy. I thanked him and as I was about to leave, he asked, “You had to come here thrice with your husband to sign the documents, right?” He did not wait for me to answer. He smiled and probed, “You do go to the same office to work every day, I hope.” I smiled back. He was a busy man and did not have the time to indulge in my adventures. I simply said, “Yes, I take the office transport from home and back.” This episode is favourite folklore of my family members, who tend to ignore that there was a bank manager with the same name in the other branch, and I was issued a wrong statement for the same account number. With the empirical proof mangled in a shredder, the world thinks I made that one up.
After living for more than a decade in a place, one is expected develop a precise sense of geographical orientation for it. No, not me. I ceaselessly find turns and alleys in my neighbourhood that lead me to new destinations. I have come to believe in the fickleness and impermanence of topographies. Place is more like time. It has unaccounted dimensions that empower it to transform like shifting sand dunes in the desert.
One summer, my husband and I retreated to the beautiful hills of Kumaon to beat the heat and to catch a glimpse of the magnificent Himalayas. Though the stay was memorable and the weather was pleasant, we could not see the snow-capped mountains, due to a rampant forest fire. On the last day of our stay, I went to the deck before sunrise with a pair of binoculars in one hand and a cup of steaming hot tea in the other. As I settled into a chair, a gentleman in his early seventies walked up to the chair next to me. He wrapped his shawl tightly around him as he sat. We were waiting for the haze to lift.
“Months immediately after the monsoon and the winters are the best time to see the Himalayas. The air is crisp and clear then, and you see the peaks as though they are the tip of your outstretched arm,” he said.
“So I’ve heard. But when we called up, we were told that we could still manage to get a view at this time of the year,” I said.
“It depends. Summers are setting in early these days.”
“Are you a frequent visitor?”
“Yes. I come here two or three times a year. Where are you from?” he asked.
I told him. He chuckled and said, “That’s a beautiful place. I spent a few years there right after college. I love those roads beneath the sprawling canopies, the eateries and the movie halls.”
I nodded. “Most of them are gone now—the trees, the wide roads, and those movie halls.”
“Huh. I used to go for a walk on the lake road and end it with an ice cream. Do you know the bakery there that serves those fluffy, moist Danish pastries?”
“No. I must have missed seeing it. Anyway, that locality is now the business hub. Old buildings made way for high-rises a long time ago.”
“Yes. I hear that city is fast changing.”
We both sat wrapped in our own private moments, staring at the horizon, waiting for the fog to clear. Time yielded to a multitude of geographic locations. While I sat there waiting for an immediate future to unfold a spectacular view, he was strolling in a landscape that was intact only in his mind. He had a map but no town. Our conversation had robbed him of that city of his youth, permanently eroding its landmarks. The haze never lifted, and I had to pack and leave.
As I got up, he asked, “What about the clock tower in the market?”
“Gone,” I said.
“It’s a shame.” He shook his head. His sense of bewilderment tugged at my heart. I felt he and I had traded places. I wanted to say, “Don’t worry. It is just two blocks away, at the other side of the revolving door.” But there are some doors that no one can enter twice.
Priya Rajan’s “Those Who Wander” appears in Flock 21.
Priya Rajan is an enthusiastic reader and is hungry for stories. All genres interest her and she believes in the parallel reality of it all. She is an amateur balcony gardener, though many a season the only harvest is a bunch of spinach. However, such lack of empirical evidence does not bother her. By a similar stretch of imagination, she is striving to be a writer as she believes she has a way with words. She worked in the software industry for thirteen years and quit it for personal priorities. She lives in Bangalore, India.