Monday, September 16

Tasting Travelling

I've started putting into practice the concept of myself as a starving, growing animal. 
The kind that likes her teas alone, and books tickets before the dreaded changing-mind-stigma-stodginess sets in. This year has sufficed. So far. And there's Bhutan to look forward to, in the next entry.

Why travel
because it isn't enough without
unless i do.

Because i want to physically feel something
new and bright 
that hurts my eye.

i want to always close my eyes 
and lie flat on my belly in Morjim
when it's most deserted
and no one else is holidaying except retired couples
and the lone woman beached like a whale
baking softly in the sun.
the sunlight is white
i can taste salt and warmth and you.

i want to lose my way over 
and over again
making a new friend to meet the Maha Kumbh mela
and walk barefoot on silver sludge
silver sky.
orange robe are walking by in hundreds
because every one is leaving,
it's over.
the humans are gone,
this is the end and goodbye.
i've only just arrived here.
(i know there's a we somewhere,
i just can't seem to find it.)
we're wearing three days worth of rain-soaked
mucky yucky
clothes on us,
layered like stodgy iyengar bakery cake
because the bus from Ghaziabad to Allahabad
dumped us in Kanpur and we walked a mile
at 6 am in jacuzzi rain.
putting on lenses like a pro at the deserted bus stand.

i'd really like to pour my savings 
into another spur-of-the-moment
Leh trip.
and never think twice.
eat a fat red chunk of melon flesh
and breathe deephardfast
as the Stok range looms around me.
Mordor could be right ahead,
and the Shire's already
a distant basecamp memory.
(i wish i had legs like a donkey.
you can't feel pretty on a high-altitude trek anyway.)

Rough,crusty beach of broken shells
at Bekal.
This is another way of seeing Kerala.
Shedding inhibitions
 and hugging myself underwater.
Swinging on a wooden bed
above the backwaters
but smelling salt.
Walking alone,
walking in the rain.
Gobbling kozhi rasam because
ohgodyes
I still don't feel the Malyali connection
in my blood.
(I do feel something else though
rushing.)

Either the food is a strong connection or
i'm a livingbreathingmass 
which could travel the earth on fours 
to taste something 
new on my tongue.






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