Truth, Fiction & Satori

Our co passengers in the train to Surrey formed a motley crew - a two year old boy, his mother, an old lady on the way back to her farm to feed an orphaned calf, and a well-meaning but odd Gramps from Australia with a broken tooth. On hearing our plan to ‘walk all night’, they proceeded to nod with incredulity.

The plan was to meet our ‘night walk’ organizer in his house in the country, cook dinner together, feast, walk all night, come back and sleep in sleeping bags, wake up, cook brunch together, depart – a master plan on all fronts that we couldn’t quite believe ourselves.

We met the rest of the group and spent the evening sitting in a kitchen of marvels, with little jugs hanging from the ceiling. We cut vegetables, smelt all sorts of Thai spices, learnt about lemongrass, sipped large amounts of Turkish tea and looked forward with enthusiasm to consuming coconut all night. Outside, in the garden, the fir trees caught the wind and promised a mild night.

When our feast was prepared by all sorts of masters (rice master, spice master, sautéing master, coconut master etc…), we sat down on the floor, took epic photographs, added nuts to our curries, and talked about the origins of different cuisine and spice trade.

After the dishes were done, dessert was brought out - ice cream, dark chocolate, Spanish nougat, and coffee. We gathered around the table and began plotting our night adventure. Our organizer knew the area very well and we revelled in exploring all the ‘path’ options he laid out before us.

We stepped out of the house, covered in many layers and feeling very full of food but then realized that it was a warm night and couldn’t wait to set out. Our spirits soared and our steps had confidence.

We passed through a Tudor village and the lights of the houses flickered in the dark. They suggested the warmth of domesticity, something that resonated with us, for we had just experienced it ourselves.

A bus passed and then we arrived at a graveyard. The idea of walking on graves at night was disturbing but someone remarked that everything below us was decomposing waste and we found the strength to continue.

After a while of walking in the graveyard, flashlights going on and off, we tried to walk without the light as our eyes adjusted easier to the dark. We arrived at some woods, the shapes of the trees dawning a veil, but somehow allowing us to see beyond them in a way that we couldn’t in the daylight. Our senses were heightened, and we could see and hear further.

Soon we came to a tree with a noose hanging from it. Someone in the group remembered finding a body in the woods some weeks ago - the suicide of a young girl – we were very still and stood close to each other. Some distance away, we saw a small red house. There were two chairs outside and a fork stuck in the ground. Peering inside the house, we saw the shadow of some beer cans and a bottle of champagne by the sink. We expected a witch to come out any minute and ask to look at our fingers so we could contribute to the second course after Hansel and Gretel. We wanted to rush and yet the little red house was overcast with such mystery that we stood a while thinking about all the possibilities. We didn’t leave till we had crafted some scenarios - poor hideaways taking shelter and drinking beer to pass their time, a couple having a romantic getaway, a witch on the prowl for unsuspecting people for a snack, etc

We chatted a while and then someone exclaimed,  ‘there’s someone there, a woman! And she's on one leg!’ Some held on to each other, some gasped. Then the phantom started walking towards us, with two legs and we finally realized that it was one of our group. Around this time, our organizer broke the news to us that we were lost.

We walked through fences, someone's private lands. A house in the distance had a light come on and we thought the farmers were going to come out with guns and let their dogs out on us. Up on the field, we saw another figure standing in the shadows. Hearts racing, we didn’t dare to go close. The figure grinned, and then we realized it was a member of our group again.  

We needed a break from all this trespassing and suspicion of each other, so we entered a path, deeper into the woods. An owl sounded its hoot, some birds flew away. Another owl. And we walked on without much event. The texture of the ground changed several times from dry ground, wet, beach sand, bog.

We arrived at the ruins of a Roman temple - some of us had been there on another walk. We sat down and some lay on the ground. There were clouds, a breeze, some soft conversation exchanges, and then a silence again. The joy we shared in that moment didn’t need any expression. Each of us had an understanding of that joy - the freedom that can only come with being outside, lying on the grass, in the middle of the night.

We discussed how our adventure would evolve through the night and conceded that we had the energy and enthusiasm for more. We walked through the North Downs, drawing the outlines of tree giants. The area used to be under sea millions of years ago and we recognised it from other jaunts. The patterns of the ground were not predictable but as our eyes adjusted to the light, we took pleasure in our walk. Every break was savoured, and the Spanish nougat+ dark chocolate were treated like treasures.

Arriving at another village, we found trees in bloom, harking spring.  A lone, wooden bus stop, out of a western, beckoned to us. The moon sneaked out of the clouds for a few moments, making us realize that everyone was asleep but us.

We started the last leg of our walk, some falling asleep on their feet and we laughed about how far home was. We lost some of our group but thankfully we reached them and the crisis was averted. 

We reached home just after five in the morning. A dawn-feast took place - toast and tea, and then, a scramble for bed. As we went to sleep, daylight was breaking around Surrey.

We woke up at ease and embarked on the creation of a huge brunch - potatoes, starry toasts, vegetables and beans, coffee and tea, eggs cooked with unparalleled talent.

We sat in the sunlit kitchen, listening to music about coconuts, discussing travel plans, and channeling the contentment of an experience spanning twenty-four hours, day and night, friends and strangers, old places and new, and most of all, the childlike wonder of a perfect adventure.

Roma Termini bustled with an energy reminiscent of railway stations in India. The paint on the graffiti peeled off the walls. People bumped into me and to each other. The road to my hostel smelled like piss and a scooter almost hit me. The cappuccino I spent my last few Euro for the day on was nothing like I imagined. At the hostel, I met an American cyclist and we set about exploring the city together, young tourists in a daze. 

The Colosseum compelled us to imagine what it must have been like when a gladiator walked in to the hypogeum through the tunnels leading up to it, to the roar of the crowd. We walked around, transfixed, by a structure and society that were hard to relate to and yet moved us somehow. Outside, Palatine Hill, offered up a spectacular view of the city, the metropolis managing to look like a chaos of history and modernity.

At St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, people stood around holding up green balloons, handing out brochures glorifying the Pope. On an impulse, we went inside a random church to listen to the priest give an animated sermon in Italian.

We spent an afternoon walking along Via Appia Antica or the Appian Way, the remains of an ancient road connecting Rome to Brindisi in the South. Green pastures lay on either side. A small house called ‘Ave Maria’, creepers intertwined all around its gates, held our gaze, making us think about the lives of its inhabitants.

On returning to the city, we sat on a bridge and discussed our travels as the sun set over the Tiber. The food we consumed on those travels, enforced by a tiny budget that catered for trips over food, consisted mostly of microwaved pizzas and fast foods. The only saving grace was a gelato in Piazza Navona, as people walked around, staring at street artists painted silver to look like fairies.

I was nineteen years old on that trip, and delighted in its visuals and experiences. It didn’t matter that the food lacked taste – it fed my hunger and that was sufficient.

More than eight years later, at a business meeting in a suburb of Rome, I sparked up a group of Italians with the memory of that trip. It was a packed day full of presentations and although it was a working lunch, our clients had put together a delectable feast.

At the end of an exhausting day, I went for a walk through the pines trees, smelling the freshness of the trees.  There was a huge old building with big classical columns and a photographer was taking pictures of two models as the light danced between those columns. I passed a large tennis academy as parents took their kids for lessons. It was a suburban haven.

It started raining and I went to a local pizzeria. It was Valentine’s Day and the place was full of families and couples. The waiters and the owner didn’t speak English. I felt a pang, overcome by nostalgia for my first trip and at being alone after a day and a half packed with activity and people. As I waited for my pizza I saw the chef call some kids up to him and the kids squealing with delight looking at the pizza. Finally, after what seemed like a long time, another waiter brought the pizza to me. I waited for him to leave but he stood by my table, as though waiting for a response. He gestured for me to look at my pizza with a grin, and when I saw it, I laughed, for I realized it was shaped like a heart. ‘Buon appetito, signorina.’ The chef nodded at me from a distance and I nodded back, mouthing the word ‘grazie’. On a different day, in a different place, perhaps I might have responded differently, but in that local pizzeria in that suburb, after a busy day on my second trip to Rome, I was rather pleased.

The next day I met my cousin, and we ran through the futuristic Roma Tiburtina station, to catch a train to Tivoli. We had no expectations from this trip and as the train passed through valleys and forests, we sat back in our seats, chatting and happy to merely look outside.

Tivoli with its old crumbling streets and buildings had an atmosphere that was so slow that it bade us to sit at some broken stairs, full of resolve not to move. There was a cat passing by, no one else in sight, and some old lace clothes moving very softly. Hunger finally took us to a restaurant where a mother and her daughter were finishing lunch. We realized they were the owners and they cooked up a feast. Antipasto, primo, secondo, contorno, dolce, caffe – now this was an Italian meal my friends and colleagues would be proud of.

In between these indulgences, we visited the Hadrian’s Villa, and made the acquaintances of more trees and fat cats.

On our return back to Rome, we took the bus and I was surprised by the poverty on the streets that is evident outside the cities. We were tired after our journey and took a break sitting on a bench in a courtyard of a church. We spent the evening walking around Capitoline Hill.

A few hours before my flight back to London, I had the opportunity to experience another Roman sunset. Bidding farewell to the sun’s fading rays, we walked in to a bookshop.  As I wandered around the bookshop, I found some Montalbanos and Italo Calvinos I wanted to take back with me. The man at the till called to my attention that I still owed him some money. ‘36 EUR not 6, miss’, he was saying. I didn’t have any more cash, and I paid with my card, a luxury I certainly would not have allowed myself on my first trip.

This trip provided so much contentment, that I began to question my sensibilities as a teenager. I thought back to the calm I felt in that courtyard that afternoon and the view of the city from Capitoline Hill as it spread out in all its splendor. It wasn’t very far from the thrill I had felt on a leafy green walk along the Appia Antica, imagining who lived in that little house called ‘Ave Maria’. We are often quite unforgiving when we dissect our youth. There is no excuse for eating microwaved pizzas when you are in Italy, but I knew that if I was forced to make a choice between a nice meal in a restaurant or a trip to some ruins, my allegiance lay with my nineteen year old self.

A first time visitor to London may be entranced by it; a reaction befitting a city that over its two thousand years of history, has been researched, dissected, served as a muse, so many times, that the visitor likely brought a lens and perspective to view the city with.

After a year in London, that visitor who evolved to a resident may be perplexed by its rules. Everything free has been explored and there is no money to be hedonistic like everyone else, for the money has been spent on rent and transport. This despair may be dispelled by the friendships and connections forged in that year gone. However, realization may dawn on that visitor-resident, that there are five airports in this city, over three hundred railways stations, all serving as studies in how people come and go, treating London as though it came with a personalized use by date. Unlike the freedom that came with being just a visitor, the daily life of a young working resident may seem ruthless. Everyone is in a rush, the tube stinks of puke, the shower is leaking, there are too many hipster joints and everyone seems to reek of success. Respite may be found on the weekends, in becoming a tourist again, but that calm disappears on Sunday night, with the prospect of another week of a big city’s realities.

After some years of living here and getting accustomed to those ‘London’ ways, that resident may be overwhelmed by the city’s perpetual opportunities to indulge oneself. Feel like trying some Georgian cuisine? Drink a Turkish coffee whilst listening to some Hungarian Electronic Jazz? Enjoy a foreign film in an Embassy? Meet people from countries you didn’t know existed? Practise a new language? Enjoy the world’s best culture for less than a tenner? Visit the New Tate and experience contemporary modern art in real-time as the building oversees some high rise curtain less apartments and the inmates present themselves to public scrutiny? Don’t know what you feel like? A pub and beer lie in wait at the end of every street. You could get some brunch the next day and visit the Buddhist monastery for some meditation to make some mind space for new hedonistic ventures.

As a walker friendly city, London offers free classes in reading the signs of modern society - those bankers made a lot of money except that one in the corner of the bar that looks like he lost out, that couple that was distant but is now close, that couple that seems close but is at the brink of a break up, that ‘minted’ mum who is thinking about shopping at designer shops in Chelsea, that teenager just got fired today, that homeless man is waiting for the girl inside the café to bring out the thrash.

People at times dress the same and expose their secrets by it – the women who wear sneakers have high heels in their bags, the men who wear sneakers have been running and haven’t had a shower. For a city that allows so much freedom of expression and choice, there is curiosity in the comfort its residents seem to take in consuming like each other.

Six years later, that resident may be fortunate enough to learn how to break the shackles off those realities and see London anew, every day. There is no dearth of experiences or enjoyment, even in daily life, with or without money. The seasons change visibly in the city’s parks and squares, a hill round the corner offers views on transforming skylines, the annual ‘Open House’ event even offers the opportunities to delve into how the city works - how it avoids floods with the Thames Barrier, how an area recycles majority of its waste, how the rich and successful meet at secret societies, examples of research groups that reconstruct entire cathedrals on software because they wanted to see what it would look like.

Something is starting to take shape.  It’s a breeze that wafts through your mind. It’s cold and then it’s hot. It rises and then it falls. It rises, then it dies, then it lives again. 

Perhaps you are on the sofa, nursing a cup of coffee, or lying in bed, reading. The clock ticks behind you. The sound of a second as it leaves to join your past, becomes more apparent. You remind yourself that time is a concept defined by humans for the most part. You recall something you heard in a documentary about how we can never experience the ‘absolute present’ - even the sun’s rays are eight minutes old by the time they reach us.

Right now, however, you are enjoying a moment of inertia and nothing can disturb you from this state of oblivion.

Or so you thought. You feel something moving in your mind. The nudge or breeze or whatever it was, is back. You give in and listen to what it has to say.

It is a spark. This spark has brought with it an outline, a sketch of some plan. As the outline begins to fade, you recognize it. It’s not the spark that demands that you change your life. The one that visits with perseverance wherever you are, asking you to change your career or your hobbies or your lifestyle or the people you spend your time with. That spark takes time to ignite and you interpret it with deliberation.

This one, has a shorter lifespan. It makes its entry with an energy that is unrivalled. Its demands are simple. Get out, and do something new. Or something old. Experience the freedom of spontaneity. It feels familiar and yet unknown.

Despite being precious about your inertia, this spark is managing to convince you to go outside. It’s also telling you to try and convince those around you. You begin to pass on that energy to the others in the room who may have been nursing a coffee in the past.

It’s not always a success, but this time, your spark has the power to influence, and you manage to articulate it in a way that is tangible.

When you are all outside, exploring some expanse of nature or urban life, the expectations are low, for your spark was a draft, ready to be edited and molded by the artists who perceived it.

So it doesn’t matter that it’s raining, or that it’s windy, or that you are talking about trivialities. The sea, the river, the little museum, a narrow road in the middle of a village, a crumbling temple, a tree from centuries ago, the street food in a crowded city square, conversation with a stranger, a water tower in the suburbs, ice cream at the stroke of midnight, looking for seals, secret gardens, climbing a stone pillar in a farm, last minute strolls before your train - pleasures abound. You are surprised by everything because you set out with no such expectation. 

This draft-spark overpowers the most elaborate of travel plans. It forces you to be agile. And when you have made of it what you wished to, it manages to stick in your memory with a sort of vividness that is unobtainable from organized planning. This memory is so strong that it can be channeled at any time, into a normal day.

For on that odd day that you feel a lack of spirit, and you can’t see that other more persistent spark that initiates bigger changes in your life, you think about this smaller one instead. The one that spoke to you in the past and made you see things anew without any reason. From this, you gain the strength and the courage to craft an adventure from nothing. You walk or run instead of taking the bus or you look outside the window instead of reading that book that you always read or you get lost on purpose. It is but an acquaintance of that spark from your memories, and yet somehow, it contributes in replenishing your spirit.  

*********************************************************************************

These trips came out of submitting to that spark of spontaneity - Bangalore, Étretat, Bandipur, Yercaud, Isle of Arran, Denkanikottai, Brockley, Devon (India, France, England, Scotland)

Arrival and cooking from scraps scratch

The only way to get to Flørli, a hamlet in Lysefjord is by ferry. From Stavanger, the direct ferry goes three times a week and I was on one of them as I was to join a small group of people from different parts of Europe on a week-long volunteering project.

After an hour or so of being awestruck by the fjords, the ferry came to a halt in front of a small dock where a family with expectant faces seemed to be awaiting the arrival of someone. When a teenager got off, we assumed that she was the guest of honour but everyone greeted a small-ugly-dog that was accompanying the girl instead. As all the passengers of the ferry looked on at this odd reunion at the banks of the Lysefjord, it was clear that we were going somewhere remote. 

That evening, I was in charge of cooking dinner. There were no shops in Flørli and our supplies for the week were arriving the next day. I was unfazed. After over seven years of living alone and some occasional trips to People’s Kitchen (a voluntary project in London where volunteers collect surplus food from shops and everyone comes together to cook up a feast), I am getting closer to mastering the art of creating a meal from anything in the fridge or the cupboard. I looked through the cupboard to see what we had – two cans of chickpeas, a bag of potatoes, half a bag of rice, cans of tomatoes, varied spices. It was a simple dinner but we were hungry and full of energy for the week lying ahead and I like to think we enjoyed my random meal.

Sitting around the table in our apartment on top of a hill facing the fjords, we assessed each other – a group of five young people – two boys (one Polish, one British), three girls (one Polish, one Russian living in Prague, and one Indian living in London). The youngest among us was 18 and it was fascinating to listen to his perspective and questions about life.

Our project leader, Hessel (Dutch, living in Norway for some years), who was one of the only two long-term residents of the hamlet, announced that the Grand Plan was to transform a school building into a school pub to add more appeal to the area for visitors. We discovered that this wasn’t as non-charitable as it sounded because there were no children in Flørli and the inhabitants of the hamlet, an artist (67) and Hessel (37) didn’t need to avail the services of a school any more.

The School Pub

Hessel told us that he had planned an opening of the pub in six days, the end of our volunteering week. This seemed over ambitious because when we saw the building, the paint was peeling off, the windows were gone or non-existent, the roof was falling apart, and the inside was a total mess.

But despite all this, I noticed that we all called what seemed to be an old building in severe disrepair, the ‘school pub’, in all manner of optimism. We had to learn the varied skills of a handyman/construction worker and learn them fast. Hessel helped us do this with his eternal cheerfulness and patience.

Over the next few days we came to appreciate the challenges of renovating an old building, the travails of a construction worker, and how dependent we all really are on nature.

I learnt how to use a high pressure jet to wash the outside of the school-pub and later learnt how important this task was because it helped remove the algae and other dirt from the walls to facilitate painting.

A scaffolding was constructed and stood shaking in the strong winds to the backdrop of the fjords.

Whether it was raining or not was irrelevant. We stood in the wind or the rain and scraped windows.  The boys had to balance themselves on the scaffolding and fit planks of wood on the roof so that it would be strong.  The windows needed putty so that the glass stayed in place.

One day, Hessel discovered that he had the wrong paint colour so he had to take the ferry to Stavanger to buy some red paint. We were out of our natural city- computer-dependant-jobs/studies, and felt a bit lost in this construction world in the middle of the fjords. We tried to do what we thought was best, but it was a slow morning. When Hessel finally arrived, we greeted him as if he was family. He brought with him some new cans of bright red paint and that meant we could start painting!

There was balancing on ladders, climbing up the scaffolding, using long sticks with brushes and different methods applied to reach difficult corners. We realized how hard it was to paint a whole structure.

Spontaneous and planned adventures

This hard work was interspersed by several varied adventures every evening, cooking and enjoying spectacular meals, listening to all genres of music and having open conversations about everything.

One evening, we took a boat out into the fjords on a seal safari, everyone skipping with joy and laughing at everything.

Another day, we went to climb the 4,444 steps to the old hydropower in Flørli. We had been working the whole day and it was a hard climb as the stairs were narrow and made out of wood. But the fact that it was well past 10 PM and the sun was yet to set made us appreciate the views of the fjord on either side even more.  We returned around half past two in the morning and it still wasn’t completely dark; there were goats with bells walking around outside the apartment-house and we fell asleep to the sound of their bells.

There were more hikes with grassy paths, solitary huts on the top, a suspension bridge on a waterfall and rings of snow clad mountains.

Final day of the project

On our last day in Flørli, we took a ferry to Forsand and were picked up by a Norwegian taxi driver, an ‘acquaintance’ of Hessel, who took us to Preikestolen, the famed hiking spot. There was a dog in a cage in the ‘taxi’ and the man had several scars and a strong Texan drawl. It could have been a ride out of a Coen movie. But thankfully, we all survived.

It was raining the whole day and when we reached the top of Preikestolen, we didn’t have much of a view, but we enjoyed it all the same. Our ferry back to Flørli had the same golden haired ferry boy that we had seen a few times on our ferry-travel. He didn’t seem to do much but check or issue people tickets and hop from ferry to ferry and hence fjord to fjord.  A wholly entertaining imagination about his life led to much laughter and joy.

Checking out the School Pub

That evening after our return to Flørli and a warm-hearted dinner – I was pleased that I managed to make an apple tart of sorts which I was told tasted like autumn by some and winter by others – we went down to take a look at our glorious school pub. And boy, was it glorious. The last week’s activities finally came together and every menial or non-menial job made sense. Our efforts of painting the outside bright red made the school pub look inviting and ready for a party. The insides were spotless and bright. Large maps of Norway were on the walls. The scraped and well-fit windows provided shelter to the warm insides of the pub. The planks of wood on the roof seemed to hold it all up together.

We were proud of our work and our contribution to the creation of a new meeting space that will hopefully trigger much Norwegian+international banter and laughter.

Returning to Stavanger, and then to daily life

The melancholy of our departure from Flørli was slightly dispelled by the appearance of the fabulous s-f-b, shiny ferry boy who sent us into a flurry of giggles when he asked us if we were all going back to Stavanger.  As we explored Stavanger and slowly parted ways, I felt like I was returning to my ‘normal self’ again – travelling solitary through exploration of the culture and ways of working of a place by going to museums, reading, writing,  going for rambles in the suburbs and taking public transit to new places. 

But wherever new I went, I seemed to spot a scaffolding or someone painting the roof or scraping their windows.I realized that a new perspective of the world had been awakened (yet again).

After a few days of going back to our respective lives, there was a round of e-mail exchanges filled with goodwill. It was apparent that our lives were very different from each other. But something else was apparent too - the richness of our experiences shared while we painted the roofs and reconstructed a school pub in the heart of the Norwegian fjords using a shaky scaffolding as support, reminded us of other sources of happiness.

Working in the rain, listening to the sounds of the fjords, planning and executing spontaneous adventures with new friends, cooking and eating meals together, having humour for daily life - this trip, was much more than just about the scaffolding.

Three years ago, I started the practice of creating ‘year logs’ and ‘year plans’, a calendar of events that was crafted out of a need for documenting life without resorting to mundane daily diary entries about what I had eaten and how sleepy I was. These were essentially spread sheets with key goals and life events, all recorded with limited details. The idea was to have one line describing what I recalled as being the most memorable in a week or a month. If I couldn’t describe it in one line, it wasn’t ‘essential’ enough.

A few years ago, I was thinking a lot about an ‘all-encompassing passion’ and about ‘truth’ in people and in experiences. This year, as a way of investigating if I was any closer to those objectives, I deemed it fit to survey those documents and pin down emerging, common themes.

The highlights of my life from 2012-2014 mostly fell under the following themes, in no particular order of priority:

Travel(where I had been, what I had done, the people I had met, with ideas for where I want to go next)

Walking(many walks in Britain and elsewhere, all of which seem to have been summarised down to distances, people, places)

Creative Projects (Short stories, longer fiction attempts, photography projects, song recordings)

Learning (Japanese challenges and successes, hardly reading any fiction at all except children’s literature and reading more nonfiction than ever before especially in the fields of history and nature.)

Work (all small and big successes were celebrated, some volunteering was done, skills and learnings were logged for future career paths. At some point, (thankfully) I also seem to have stopped comparing my LinkedIn Profile with others)

Relationships (Time spent with friends and family and the relationships I have with them has always been important to me. In the last three years I seem to have come closer to being peaceful about the various paths people take and when those paths cross or ‘un’cross my life. I was fortunate to spend some time with my grandfather in September, just a few weeks before he passed away. I got to participate in the weddings of two of my dearest cousins back in India and shared many traveling experiences with my parents and my brother. I met some fascinating new people in my travels and also made some trips with some old friends)

Cooking(making bread, experimenting with different cuisines, duplicating food experiences on my return from travel, cooking for others were all ‘life events’ (past Sneha deserves a pat on her head for this charming self-congratulation)

Sport(the first time I ran a 10K and persistence with weekly tennis sessions were marked)

These were the themes that spanned the last three years and they came as no surprise to me. They are things and experiences that I consciously hold dear to me, that give me joy and that challenge my body, mind and soul and I hope that they will stay in my logs for many years to come.

Among these themes, some of them were slightly more special and I decided to document why.

Learning Japanese –

A lot of people ask me why I learn Japanese. I started learning this language in October 2011 out of curiosity for putting meaning to the words I heard all the time in my weekly doses of anime-viewing. This is the honest reason; there is no grandeur to it. I didn’t know much about the culture/history/politics of the country or its people.

I think learning a language opens up a new perspective and way of experiencing the world.  I have always loved languages and I think I will learn them my whole life. It was the same with Japanese and by 2013 summer, I knew I wanted to be fluent one day.

In April this year, I went to Japan for the first time.  I explored the country like a total rail-pass-bad-ass, loved every minute of  my time there, vowed to return one day and tested my ‘overconfident’ basic Japanese skills  in real-time, by chatting with a grandpa in Miyajima.

It was a trip of dreams, one I had contemplated about for a long time and it didn’t disappoint in the least. It added a new layer of energy and enthusiasm for my Japanese learning and I ended up sitting the JLPT level 4 exam in July. I have a very long way to go and it’s a challenging journey but random conversations with Japanese people on the train or in a restaurant in London, understanding parts of a song,  understanding a bit more about a very complex working society, catching some words when I am watching a drama or anime, make it all worth it. Next year, I want to aim to give the JLPT 3 exam and have longer conversations with my Japanese friends. One day I will be totally sugoi at Japanese for sure (excuse my indulgence, but I do keep having to tell myself this:-)).

Creative Projects –

I did a lot of traveling in the last three years in Europe (England, Northern Ireland, Wales, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary), Asia(India, Japan) and the U.S.A(New Orleans, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California). I wanted to find a way to remember my travels in a straightforward manner without documenting one single event in an article or blog and forgetting the rest.  So, I started keeping daily travel journals and sending myself postcards.

In September, I celebrated five years of living in Britain by collating 100 photographs of some of the most beautiful places I visited. As autumn gradually took hold of London, I decided to document my daily lunchtime walks around where I work by a series of photographs, taken every week for a month. I decided to work on a photography project for my other travels too.

I wrote a few short stories in the last three years and decided to spend time thinking about a longer project. My aim next year is to do this with more focus.

Travel -

I love discovering new and old places but I realized this year, that I also loved coming back home.  Life happens every day and I want to enjoy every moment wherever I am, not just lie in wait for the weekend or sunshine or  that big trip that I have been planning forever.  One Friday evening, I went on an impromptu adventure to the end of my ‘daily commute’ line and this set the tone of many adventures in the year.

I learnt about the types of travel I enjoy the most, about how to create and make the best of adventures.

My trusted young person’s railcard served me well these last five years in Britain and I can safely say that I made the best use of it I could. What better way to bid it farewell than going on a solitary adventure to the South Coast?

I took the train down from London to Dorset, was the only one in a beautiful hostel, had the aid of hand drawn maps for my walks and enjoyed my time of reflection.

 Today, as I walked along the Jurassic Coast, looking at cliffs and rocks formed 66 million years ago, the sun was shining and I realized how lucky I had been with this exceptional weather. That intuition to make this trip, that intuition to trust myself, made me realize that my perception of ‘truth’ has changed since I was 24 but I think I’m learning, slowly and surely about how I want to live and how I want to spend my time and that’s a very satisfying feeling indeed.