“Yes, you can do it.”, shouts his older cousin, pushing his bicycle from behind and providing him with some support. At the same time, he rides, for the first time, a 23-inch bicycle where his tiny legs don’t even reach the pedals. He takes off and, after 24 years, finds himself sitting in a central London airport while staring at his small laptop screen with a blinking cursor. That little boy is me. Meet me, who loves travelling, preferably with someone I can open my mind and heart to; otherwise, it is very much “solo”. I love the excitement of travelling, especially the preparation that comes before it. No, I don’t like “flying” long hours, which is, for the most part, boring; the crew members dragging some old iron narrow-sized trolley filled with unnecessarily expensive supplements, some children crying and their parents getting exhausted by that, my co-passenger sleeping his heart out with extensive snoring and some using their expensive laptops showing off how to not waste time – These are the people who spend 50 minutes in toilet to pee for 30 seconds but can’t sit in a flight without using their laptop. I just love the pre-flying routines that start with a bit of panic, arranging stuff to pack, and the little taxi ride to the train station and then to the airport. I love spending time at the airport. Today, when I said, “I love airports”, the gentleman (who turns out to be a professor of theoretical physics at Trinity College Cambridge) was surprised: “You can’t be serious.” I said, “But I am, sir! I just love airports and those glittering shops in there. The smell of coffee, the not-so-clear announcements. Moreover, I always doubly live the excitement of travelling.” We had a great chat afterwards on what it means to teach.

Nevertheless, as a kid, I mostly spent time with my grandparents, especially my grandmother. She was everything to me. She took me everywhere, to every marriage function she attended, every relative she visited, and every temple she prayed in. I was fortunate to be with her all the time. Perhaps that is the reason why I really love travelling. I must say, I always hated those stinking buses. Even as a kid, I always loved to dress well (well, not by myself, mostly by my mother). She would give me a nice cold bath, comb my hair, and prepare me with a mini-meal so I wouldn’t cry. But, afterwards, I am given to my grandma. She would be beside me on the bus, and I would be in the window seat (I used to vomit a lot, which was largely due to the burning fuel smell and stinking bus seats. But we didn’t have much money to choose an alternate option anyway. I guess one small unpleasant travel could help us sail through quite a lot for the month.)

“Maa, look, those trees are going backwards.” – I shout when the bus moves forward for my journey and call my grandma to show those trees. I didn’t realise what relative motion was at that time. She used to say, “Yes, keep counting them and tell me how many you counted until we reach.” I almost always fell asleep while counting. It now feels so cute. I grew up quite fast. I now fly big airlines. I earn well. When I used to sleep under a clear sky, whenever I saw blinking lights moving, I used to shout, “Maa, look one more rocket.” In last over 2 years alone, I have travelled exactly 1,42,390 Kilometers (and counting) in the past 1.5 years, which is equivalent to 3.6 times around the world. Hello, moon! This is almost 40 flights. Call Greta Thunberg and show her these statistics. (Honestly, I am not too proud of it. But, I make sure I book those flights with lower carbon emissions. That is the best I could do.)

OK, what does it (“the travelling”) mean to me? It opens my mind a little more. It certainly increases my patience with rather irritating things. I become better as a human. I become perceptive. I love coming out of my small shell and just swimming around the public. I love speaking to people in coffee shops and listening to what they say about various aspects of life, politics, love, failures, and even travel. Well, not all people talk; some are grumpy, some are egotistical, and some are just idiots. I love pushing their limits, too, sometimes.

Travelling and preparing for a good trip helps me see myself through a different lens. In a big crowd following a queue, you are neither a PhD nor a guy doing AI in Cancer. You are just “You”. Travelling makes me humble. I lived most of my early life in a remote village, which didn’t even show correctly on Google Maps. Travelling gives me that sense of pride that even one with a shallow scope of exploring a life can do so if he dreams of doing so. At this point in my life, I feel fortunate and am very grateful for this excellent life. I am fulfilling every possible dream one can have as a man and a researcher. I work at the world’s most prestigious university, and I eat in the world’s most sought-after dining hall of the Trinity College, where once the greats of Jawaharlal Nehru, Alan Turing, Ramanujan, Hardy, and Amartya Sen had spent much of their time. I work in a field which is at this point driving the world, “Artificial Intelligence”, to solve human’s greatest fear “Cancer”.

Above all else, I always (I mean it) miss my grandparents when I travel. They showed me the world, but I couldn’t do the same for them. I always feel a bit closer to them when I sip my coffee at 40000 feet. I wish I could show them what flying means. Now, my waiting time is running out at the airport, and I just need to call the most important person in my life. Thank you for reading. See you in my next blog.

TD
Cambridge, UK