Gang aft agley. I keep forgetting how to pronounce it, but it never fails when it comes to the best laid plans of mice and men. Last year, I travelled almost every month until May. And so I promised myself when I came back from a long holiday at the end of May, that I would leave home no more for the foreseeable future. Enough of living out of a suitcase; home comforts were what I wanted.
And then, gang aft agley.
As in, when things go wrong, they go wrong badly. For instance. I had ordered new windows for the family home. They were supposed to be installed by the time I was back from my holiday. Obviously not. But the house was in chaos. The old windows were removed. Gaping holes everywhere. An endless nightmare of flying biters, creepy-crawlies, as well as mammals, humans and so on. Netting was procured and the windows were semi-sealed. The new ones are arriving any minute now, “maam”. When you are old, you get called maam, which may or may not be better than various familial honorifics like dadi, bhabhi, maasi etc.
The minutes became days. The house was unliveable anyway. So before the suitcases were unpacked, we had to move to a kind friend’s home. There was a fantastic heat wave on at the time. So a house with gaping holes and workers everywhere was a double horror story. When it’s very unseasonably hot, there are all kinds of atmospheric movements in these parts. And thus arrived a massive storm, even as the new windows were about to arrive just now maam. To add to the flying biters and creepy crawlies, we now had mud, dust and lots of flora to add to the new décor.
But then one day June is over. And I’m home, all good, safe, secure, great new windows. Suitcases put away. Along comes a call, why not visit, it’ll be fun. July, out come the suitcases. September, October, November, December. Every month, the suitcases worked over time.
I can hear the editor muttering “get on with it, enough about suitcases already”. I would have too, with a few “*&%$#” added. She doesn’t though. Far too polite.
Apart from never tempting fate with sweeping “never again” statements, what did I learn? That’s the whole point, isn’t it? To learn something. The most obvious was not to tempt fate. I should have known that because it’s why I never make New Year’s Resolutions. Promises to yourself you know you will never keep. Plus they’re usually the same old boring nonsense about losing weight and diet and exercise. The Western world which takes itself very seriously has already coined terms like Veganuary and Dry January to fool itself. Since they don’t really care about the “global south”, we don’t need to worry about their trends either. As it is, they’re over the top about yoga, turmeric, something bizarre called mango lassi and eating a samosa with butter chicken. Not in Veganuary, obviously. Duh.
But no more promises to inanimate objects like my own bed, suitcases and so on. They show no appreciation and evidently succumb to gang aft agley.
That’s the chief lesson learnt. But boring.
How about the many questions which travel throws up? Why do you go back to the same places, people ask. The main reason is family. The other is familiarity. Like known and unknown at the same time. Maybe it’s a test? Can you bear the sameness? Or must you challenge yourself with newness all the time? What makes you jaded and what makes you a cookie cutter traveller egged on by the diktats of those around you?
Aha!
I travelled to Ranthambore after over 20 years and had a completely different experience from the first time. Mainly because I saw two stupendously beautiful tigers, compared to all those pugmarks made by pogo sticks in the past. I say “completely”, but screaming tourists on the open “Canter” buses have not changed in two decades: as over-enthusiastic, loud and completely unaware of their surroundings. Ah well.
I travelled to Meghalaya and was mesmerised by the natural beauty and horrified by the concretisation and “wirification” — is that a word? I think it should be — of Indian towns and cities. Everywhere you go, the same grubby, unimaginative buildings and coiled up, haphazard wires from the ground to the sky. It’s not different here in Dehradun. It was not different in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Shillong and Sawai Madhopur. Or Mapusa and Arambol for that matter.
I also learnt that you can hear more Bengali in the Paris Metro than in Dehradun which was a “ear-opener”. And that people are still so unaware of how idiotic they look as they speak into their little earbuds, sharing their life stories to strangers around them, in any language. To be honest, this happened to me in the bank the other day, when I couldn’t tell if the bank manager was speaking to me or someone in the earbud. That’s why I’m called maam, dadi, maasi, etc. I don’t get the bud thing.
The French as we know are no less racist than any other white nation. But they celebrate their colonial oppression very differently from the British. I visit the UK almost every year and I have yet to see a sumptuous glamourous statue of an Indian woman to celebrate India, as you see in Marseille of “Afrique” for instance. My understanding is that most young Brits barely know that their little island colonised and oppressed a good portion of the globe for hundreds of years. Although they do have many statues of colonisers and oppressors scattered about.
In Graham Greene’s Travels with my Aunt there is a character who could no longer travel so spent nights in different rooms all over his large house. There is then something to be said for that craving to be somewhere else. For not wanting to be stuck in one place, for wanting to dust off that suitcase.
Will I stop? Maybe I won’t visit Mr Trumpie’s land because he doesn’t want the likes of me there. O no! What have I said? Will it be gang aft angley for me now???
A salute to Robert Burns and his “wee tim’rous mouse”, whose lines I have freely misused: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley” — often go wrong.
