A Breed of Counterfeits

Chapter 5: Rajesh

"Travelling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller."

- Ibn Battuta

I have always been unstable - like a fraction which never gets divided. There have been times when I have been associated with some people but never permanent for a very short time. Some people are whole numbers; they are integers. They are not easy to calculate. As for me, I was never a rational number, nor an integer, real, or any other of those common numbers. Some may classify me in irrational numbers, but I don't think they have a category for my kind. I'm like the odd ⅔ or 2/7, unending and recurring with oddities.

Right now, I'm at Dubai airport, enjoying the lavish meal in the Executive lounge. Sitting here, I contemplate and look back on the last few weeks I spent in Stockholm. I usually make it a point to record my travelogues as soon as the travel ends, while the memories are still fresh. I rarely delay in writing them down because memories are more volatile than spirits and lighter than air. They are like mirages you see while walking in the scorching desert.

I see the human brain as a refillable container. Every day some memories, thoughts are added to it by the day we live, and people we interact with and somewhere, the memories trickle away slowly from a small hole in that container. Some important ones cling to the container even after it's all gone, but eventually, everything will trickle away. Therefore it is imperative to empty the vessel yourself if you can. That's why I record my travelogues.

My job takes me to places, and I ensure to make the most out of it. Being a company's chief financial officer, I have to go to almost all the major places where our offices are situated. Sometimes it's Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Nigeria, last year it was London and this year it was Sweden. It wasn't my first time in Sweden. I had visited Stockholm with my family many years back - with those tour companies who show you the entire Europe in 10 days, hardly called a trip. More like "seeing" Europe. Back then, I hardly realized the difference between being a tourist and being a traveler. Back then, being a tourist itself gave me immense pleasure, but now when I have slowly bloomed into a traveler, I realize it's very different.

Stockholm is the capital of Sweden, and, like every capital in the world, I'm not fond of it. Capitals are large and noisy and full of busy people running here and there with no time to take things slow. Capitals are too crowded - trust me. I was born in one - Bangalore. If you could see Bangalore's traffic, you'd know how lucky you are not to be there when you have to go to the office. I stayed in Mumbai for long, and it's no different, and so is New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and every other major metro city in India. The same is the case with other major capitals where I have been. London, Istanbul, Cairo, Manila, Beijing, Berlin, Los Angeles, and others. I don't blame the people over there for crowding in the morning metro. They aren't crowding there aimlessly, given their way, they would be back in the comfort of their homes. It's because if they don't take that metro or bus or local, they won't get to work.

If you ever want to see the most helpless human being, look at any public transport every morning. A compartment full of hopes, dreams, aspirations, and struggles. And those dreams are tied to a rock of helplessness called 'job'. All of them go to work, and many of them have dreams to fulfill, bills to pay, and lives to live. They have futures to worry about, their parents to take care of, and their children to feed. If nothing, they have themselves to feed, so they have to work whatsoever. They work because they have to, and there's no escape. I work because I want to.

I love numbers, especially when they are long and complex, mixed with alphabets. It's what got me in the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai - one of the world's highly reputed colleges. Brought up in a wealthy family, I was the Gautam Buddha who never saw disease, illness, and misery until I was 15 when my healthy housekeeper died in his 30s. It changed me - not visibly but mentally. Of Course, I didn't take a saffron cloth and wrap it around myself to change the world, but I did take something back then - perhaps a responsibility to see the world in its entirety? Perhaps not to be naive anymore? Maybe.