Cold Brews and LIIT

Last Monday five people asked me, “How was your (first/solo) trip?” I found it terribly difficult to answer them. The more I tried to answer, the more it felt wrong. I told every single one of them, “I need time to process the weekend, let me put the experience in words before I talk about it.” It wasn’t acceptable, beyond doubt. They wanted the excitement, the stories of adventure, the amaze-feels of going alone to another place and also, the mishaps, if any. I felt none of that, precisely because I wasn’t on a soul-searching-through-bungee-jumping-trip.

I managed to say, “it was perhaps a much needed break to realize that I am not stuck, I am subconsciously choosing to remain stuck.” They responded that that’s the charm of travelling. I wondered if I could call it travelling at all. Going to another place to sleep in all day – does that really count as travelling? The most common emotion that I felt in the four nights-three days’ trip was anger. I felt that I was divided into two – a part was anxious about everything that could go wrong, and the other sassed her way out, ‘so what! Live a little.’  

So, basically, because I did not want to talk about it for two days after returning, here I am going to write something, hoping it will make sense.

The thing is that I have lived with many romantic projections since childhood. My ideal getaway might not be in a city far away from where I live. It might just be a night of a chance encounter – meeting a person, roaming aimlessly, having conversations that are reflections of souls, and never following up after the night is over. So either I want Midnight in Paris or the Before trilogy or nothing at all. In India, it might result in a rape case, but… that’s all the more reason to romanticize what you cannot have I guess. The walking, the talking...

There were a few take aways from my trip. Yes, I did roam the streets of Koregaon Park in Pune, aimlessly with another person for about an hour between cold brews and LIIT. I had been so hell-bent on accepting one of the assumed realities of the idea of love not being romantic, that I had completely forgotten what an ugly sucker for love I am. So, when she began talking about how relieved she was to have found love in the years without raging social media and instant gratification, I knew I had found an old soul like me. When she saw me just staring at her words, trying to tell her how I felt about my life… she simply added, “It is going to be difficult for you, because you need meaning in everything but hold on, you’ll learn the art of small talks to survive till you find what you need.”

To think I almost wouldn’t have met her had I not been infuriated with my ‘emotionally bonded over loneliness ages ago and still hung over’ person. When everyone around me was busy coddling me, protecting me, calling me to be in their safe spaces, this guy broke the shell of stubborn anxiety that had encapsulated me some time ago.  It was a process full of awkward but perhaps intended silence, frustrating confrontations, ugly realizations, simple comments and old perspectives in new voices. One night I told him, “Is it weird that I prefer trains over flights, because I need time to process that I am in a different city?” All that he said was, “why are you asking, just say it is weird if you think so; it's just you.”

On my last night at his place, when I told him that I might be having a long moment of weakness but that doesn’t mean I have stopped fighting. I haven’t given up. I want people to stop looking at me as a basket case who is lonely and needs to be fixed. It drives me crazy! In between my monologue, he let these words slip out – “Now you are talking like Akankshya.” I did not know what it meant, all I knew was that I want him to look at me the way he did in the moment that passed by in less than a jiffy. The next morning when I left for the railway station, I did not know what to feel. From expecting it to be a break from the suffocating life in Hyderabad with people my kind to chill with, it turned into ‘I am looking for things where I won’t get them right now’ trip. As I boarded the train, I knew that I am not alone but I need to stop being blind towards being different from others around me.

Every time I look at this photo of the light in Krusty's, WTC, Pune,
all I feel is that the whole world is in this tiny sphere of light and darkness.
I am not sure how much it makes sense, but I haven't been able to
 stop looking at it since I first saw it. 

And, as I looked at the window from my seat, I began recognizing the reflection in it. I was never looking for world’s validation; I was just trying to come to terms with my inability to accept myself for who I am and not who I thought I was. So, when my reflection smiled back at me, I knew that this trip was about the beginning of this acceptance.

PS - My bittersweet relationship with the idea of love can be totally summed up in the dialogue sequence in the car in Before Sunset (2004). That's exactly how frustrated I feel in being 'me'.