Contents – Travel: Cities, Places, People (Issue 45)
Contents – Travel: Cities, Places, People (Issue 45)
Jun 15
Guest-Editorial – Travel: Cities, Places, People
By Nishi Pulugurtha
Travel is about negotiating with the known and the unknown, the familiar and the unfamiliar. It brings in ideas of negotiation, urban planning, history, architecture, space, food, memory, exile, emigration, and colonialism. As a free, voluntary, spontaneous movement, travel could be contrasted to ideas of displacement. This brings into contention as to who can and who cannot travel, an important idea in today’s world, where violence has caused forced displacement of people.
From the Womb of Wien
By Srirupa Dhar
Close to the cathedral is perhaps the most remarkable of places – the Mozarthaus. Even after seven years, I feel the surreal feel of walking into the domestic life of one of the greatest human minds. This Mozarthaus located at 5, Domgasse was the maestro’s rented home (on the first floor) and has seen some of the most celebratory phases of his life from 1784 to 1787.
A Bibliophile’s Sauntering in and around London
By Nabanita Sengupta
I could visualise the grand ball dances being organised there with the entire beaux and belles of the town. I visualized the maidens and their suitors - Jane and Bingley, Emma and Knightly. Elizabeth and Darcy were not dancing, I visualized them sitting across each other, trying to outdo one another in haughtiness. What a treat to the eyes it was! Even when I returned home, I remained star-struck.
Here and There: My experiences with food
By Usha Banerjee
What is ‘Dev Bhoomi-Uttarakhand’ to tourists from all across the planet is home to me now. While tourists flock to these pleasant valleys for some calm, peace, and serenity, I run to board flights that land in crowded bustling noisy streets of Calcutta, the place I call home. Long working days with busy chores pass away easily, when I begin to calculate the number of days remaining for vacations that take me home – my City of Joy – Calcutta for me, Kolkata for others.
Celebration of Everywoman
By Ilakshee Bhuyan Nath
Chugging my way across the Brahmaputra on a country boat to Dhemaji, I look into its waters, which also carry the sediments and the waters of its many tributaries, I wonder if there ever was an art-piece to celebrate the lives of these women weavers, what would their hearts be filled with? Perhaps if their meditations on the loom travelled, they would receive the same love across time and space. An art to celebrate the life of everywoman.
In Search of the Lost Travellers: Tradition of Travel in the Bengali Milieu
By Sayan Aich Bhowmik
This passion for travelling in the community's gene may, in my opinion, be traced back to two things – a literary repertoire of narratives in which either the central characters are weaving tales of their travels or are actually travellers themselves, and the second being a Wordsworthian idea of nature being a nurse or a healer, embalming the tired soul, weary of the clash and din of city life.
A Journey to Santa Barbara: A Land of Dreams
By Ketaki Datta
As the cab revved up and I was waving at the person standing in front of Centennial Plaza, I thought I left a slice of my heart there, with Andersen and the Danes, who came to scoop a little of America, to settle. As the tall colonnades of trees bobbed up in front of my eyes, I asked myself, “Hey, Where was the Prince of Denmark’s Museum? Hamlet’s?”
Journey’s Mercies Please!: The Female Traveller in Perspective
By Debasri Basu
In the context of a country like India where millions still languish below the poverty-line, criminal acts resulting in financial profit viz. stealing, robbing, and bamboozling tourists could be cited to establish this link. However, when it comes to sexual crimes, one needs to delve deeper into the prevalent societal conditions to understand the causes for such delinquent behaviour.
Travelling with Vulnerability and the Baggage of Fear
By Sohini Chatterjee
The questions were inexorable. Did I need to be afraid? After all nothing happened. Do I need to be a stronger person? And then I realized the shame that was accompanying these questions was not mine and I would not acquiesce to its unjustified demand of silence. I will acknowledge all my fears, foreboding, unease because they travel with me wherever I go and have been validated by violence in the past.
