Yet Untitled 095 - Anchor-less, but not Rudderless
Thoughts on travelling through the same place - first solo, and then with family, 20 years apart.
Dearest Yet Untitler,
Greetings from Sri Lanka!
20 years ago I was here working as director’s assistant to Deepa Mehta on her Oscar nominated feature film ‘Water’. Today I’m here on vacation with my family - my wife, my mum-in-law and my twin girls.
While prepping and shooting for ‘Water’, I lived here on the island continuously for around 4 months. We shot mainly around the capital Colombo, but I did manage a few excursions to other places around the island. Notably, once shoot was done, I went on a solo trip to the old Buddhist kingdom of Anuradhapura and climbed the Sigirya rock. I also stayed a couple of nights in the fantastic Kandalama hotel, built by the genius architect Geoffrey Bawa, literally straight into a mountainside.
This time, we made the seaside city of Galle our base and went for day excursions from there. These were amazing days full of nature, nourishing food and long walks around fortifications, rainforests and up waterfalls. But they were also very exhausting days that needed planning and ‘execution’, and by nightfall I found myself beat and sleeping the sleep of soldiers after a siege (I’m guessing such soldiers sleep long and sound, not accounting for any possible blood-guilt insomnia).
As I went around Sri Lanka, revisiting sites and tasting the tastes I tasted here 20 years ago, I could not help making comparisons to how I experienced travelled back then and how I’m experiencing it now.
Back then I was single, solo and agenda-less. I could park myself where I wanted for as long as I wanted, change plans easily, travel on the cheap without too much hassle. I was also very alone and pretty much making do with my own company. I remember how much I had been thinking about what it would be like to share the experiences I was clocking with someone. This “someone” was a nebulous entity who didn't have a shape, identity or voice. But the thought of this person very much existed in my head.
Now, 20 years later, I am deep inside the manifestation of that beseeching wish; so deep inside that I ask my from-20-years-ago self to beguile the shape of his wish and agree that it’s something he could have barely have imagined back then. For example - he could never have imagined the little irritations of rousing two ten-year-olds from their beds with repeated entreatments, only to be met with blank looks that have completely sidestepped every ominous warning you’ve thrown at them. He could have never anticipated the negotiation of itineraries, menus and permissions that comprise a single afternoon of a trip such as this.
20 years ago, with my pockets full of my collected per-diems from the shoot, I was bopping around an emerald-green island surrounded by serenity, peace and nature. However, I wasn’t actively seeking what any of these things had to offer. In those days I was seeking something else - some version of what I would have 20 years onwards, but none of it seemed clear back then.
It all became clearer when I met Suresh and Mandy again.
They were both roughly in their 40s when I last saw them, now they both touch their 60s and make the number seem a lie. Suresh was just a few years older than I am now when I stayed in their beautiful home as a 24 year old. We had shot parts of ‘Water’ in their house and I had become very fond of them and their children - Rehan and Francesca - who were roughly around the same age then as Ananya and Aahana are now.
I didn’t know this then, but perhaps Suresh and Mandy had showed me something that I was seeking, perhaps not coherently at 24, but seeking still. It was like being in a magnetic field that my internal compass aligned to. I was at a point in my life when I was suddenly living apart from my family more and more, being thrust towards independence. I think, suddenly, I was looking for a refuge in this new scenario; though I had no idea who or what this refuge would be.
It wasn’t as if I was lonely back then. I would get through the days quite well, savouring the time as it oozed past in a thick flow, languorously and without urgency. In retrospect, I feel grateful for this time I was granted to drift without sinking roots, but - to tell you the truth - it felt precarious.
Perhaps, I thought that work - words - could be an anchor amid this sense of drifting. I remember carrying lots of notebooks with me on that solo trip, documenting things then even as I do now, trying to write. But back then I had no audience as I do now. Somehow, the words I wrote then didn’t really stick - I remember trashing those notebooks some years ago. Perhaps they reminded me of something I did not want to remember - like the sense of being adrift, so apparent in those words that made me uncomfortable each time I read them.
But, in retrospect, I think I’m being a bit hard on that self of mine from 20 years ago. I mean - of all the places I could have visited in Sri Lanka, I chose to visit - solo - not one but two ancient Buddhist kingdoms - Anuradhapura and Polonaruva. Again - I’m astounded by now compass-needle-in-a-magnetic-fieldy all this is. You, my dear Yet Untitlers know how Buddhism has informed almost every instalment I’ve sent your way for the past two years.
So, adrift as my 20-year-old-self may seem to me now, I have to give the boy credit for responding to his deep instincts - like a baby turtle moving towards the ocean the moment after exiting its shell. That 24-year-old may have been adrift, he may have been without an anchor, but - as is apparent - the boy definitely wasn’t without a rudder.
My God, what does this all mean?
I think it’s this: if we try to read ourselves as we existed in any particular moment in time, I think it emerges before long that we were definitely moving towards something, even if it wasn’t clear to us back then. I think this reading also speaks a lot for listening and acting on our deeper instincts, that it moves us in the direction of our happiness.
I’ll take a moment to talk about such ‘happiness’ now. Let me say that Ananya and Aahana drove Vani and me up the proverbial wall on this trip. There were scenes, there were tantrums, there were raised voices and even moments of terror while thinking about what lay in store for Vani and me with their teenage years right around the corner. When superimposing this with the uncomplicated solitude I remember from travelling through the same places 20 years ago, it’s easy to see the older scenario as more desirable, romanticised as something lost and never to be found again.
Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.
Walking up a waterfall in a rainforest on one of the days, I thought about these two kinds of experiences a lot, rolling them over in my head. The reminiscence happened to the soundtrack complaints from the girls about the heat, the sweat, the leeches and how boring everything was 😄.
Then we reached the summit and drank the clear, fresh water from the waterfall. Before my eyes, Ananya and Aahana’s tone changed. Suddenly, they interpreted the whole climb, the whole experience, as their triumph, sounding genuinely happy and upbeat. And there I was - a dad with his dad jokes and his dad bod - smug and smiling to myself, sparing no pats on my back for my parent-win, convinced that I had contributed towards A and A’s essential core-memory and identity formation.
On the drive back, I remembered a photograph I had take of myself - a selfie, before selfies were a thing - while travelling solo through Sri Lanka. I had taken it while swimming in the Kandalama hotel’s amazing swimming pool, which felt more like it was a re-appropriated mountain pond than anything man-made. There I am in it - twenty four - patting myself on the back for scoring that experience - scoring the pool, the trip, completing the film - giving a 24-be-like smirk to…
…who?
It’s ironic that the only person who has ever given more than passing attention to this pre-social-media snapshot is…me.
But it makes total sense. This photograph, like many of the others I have referenced in this instalment, served a very worthy purpose. It made me reach across 20 years to that boy in the pool and give him a hug - saying: it’s ok. You’re fine now and you’ll be fine later too. Keep going.
Thanks for listening.
Lots of love
V
P.S. - I’d love to hear from you about your travel experiences and how they have changed with the altering stations of your life. Drop me a comment when you can.
What a lovely tale of contrast. And I love the story of your Dad victory!
Loved reading this... takes me back to a sabbatical when I travelled partly with a cousin and partly alone to Gokarna and Coonoor... i often think of it and wonder why I can't get myself to just take off for a month... again.. . it won't shake my world... the one month absence will not even be noticed...
I will... I will...