Why I travel and go to the movies
In the bedroom we can finally exchange impressions alone. We dropped our bags next to the wardrobe. Sara is taking off her travel clothes.
“Sadhna’s father is so sweet! And her mother cooks so well!”
“Too bad she didn’t come out of the kitchen…” I say.
“I went there to say the food was very good, I think she understood, you can tell by my face, right?”
“This is South Indian food, we have to ask where they come from.”
“I already know everything! They come from Kerala.”
“Is the sister older or younger?”
“Older, I think.”
“She seems kind of nervous.”
“Oh! She wants to make a good impression. She’s not like Sadhna, she must never have left India.”
“Is this Sadhna’s room?”
“It’s from both of them, I also asked.”
In underwear, Sara leans over the open suitcase on the floor. On an impulse I hug her from behind, kiss her shoulders, her neck. She laughs first, then breaks free. “Not in here!” she whispers, eyes wide open, allowing no opposition. “The family is next door!”
She hops barefoot to the bathroom. Alone, I take a better look at the room. Besides the double bed I sat on, there’s a bedside table, a wardrobe and a window with drawn curtains that looks out onto the courtyard between the buildings. On the first night I spent in Delhi, three years ago, the driver who picked us at the airport stopped at the entrance of a dark alley, too narrow for the car to drive through. A man urinated against the wall, it stank of old, stale piss, and at the end of it was our hostel, sly and dismal. Sara had better luck, she was welcomed by friends, in a comfortable, ventilated, well-lit house.
She and I are the product of a contemporary form of transhumance. It’s impossible to determine whether we depended on it to happen, or if we happened despite of it, what is certain is that, after several circumstances had made us migrate away from home, a fortuitous set of them concurred to bring us back at the same time. We got involved not long after my first trip to India, and when Sara was returning to Portugal after another cycle of working and living abroad. She had returned hoping that, after gaining more experience, she could finally continue her research in Lisbon and settle there. But after several months of looking for jobs, applying and waiting, without results, what surfaced was a position at the University of Amsterdam. By that time, I had given up on the pretense of a career, and I welcomed the idea of a change, of experiencing life elsewhere, it wasn’t hard to leave behind what I had to accompany her.
Sara was less enthusiastic. What cost her most with each new move was to live in a place where she had no friends or relations, and although she always ended up making friends, the beginning was painful and tiring, full of uncertainty and loneliness. My presence gave her the comfort of not having to start over completely alone, but she’s not one to be exhausted in a single relationship, she needs a network.
After three weeks in Amsterdam Sara was already feeling discouraged, with no one to meet after work to talk about her difficulties and achievements, the machinations of the academic world, or to drink a beer. I had to work a lot of weekends, and the worst were those times when she was alone.
Among other activities she tried to meet more people and occupy her time, she signed up for salsa classes promoted by the university. Rahul turned out to be her partner, a terrible dancer, but one who made her laugh a lot. It was Rahul’s last year in Amsterdam, during his stay he had visited several countries in Europe and had friends from all nations. He had arrived with a desire to experience everything, not just the pleasures Amsterdam is better known for. He had also smoked weed and watched live sex shows, but he was more excited if we invited him for a walk, a picnic, a party, a movie, a concert, any activity, he didn’t need to know where or what, he was ready. Though not particularly athletic, he tried every sport. In the winter we spent with him, Rahul didn’t rest until he mastered ice skating. He spent entire Sundays in the rink, falling down among blond kids who pirouetted and glided with one leg behind their backs, until he finally managed to keep up with his Russian friend around the track. Sara encouraged me to do sports and I mentioned in passing that I had enjoyed playing squash the only time I’d tried it. That was all it took for Rahul to buy two second-hand rackets, we started playing weekly at the university’s facilities. Sadhna was part of the same department at the University, she and Rahul knew each other from the university in Mumbai and in the same year they won a scholarship to do their PhD in Amsterdam.
With time, Sara ended up getting fond of Amsterdam as well, when it was time to move away she found it difficult to leave her new friends behind, the house we had arranged, populated, decorated, and which after precisely one year we would have to abandon, sell what we could out of what we had amassed and dump the rest in the garbage. Many of our acquaintances were also staying temporarily, two of Sara’s colleagues had already left for Uganda, another for Thailand, Rahul and Sadhna were about to return to India. After that stage abroad, all of them were naturally returning to their countries, heightened in knowledge or status, to occupy better positions and settle down. As for us, that same hope was small. What would we do next?
In our house in Amsterdam we discussed what we were going to do when Sara’s contract ended. She wanted to return to Portugal, but she had just reached another step in the academic ladder and was finding it hard to be satisfied with just any job. Without planning it, she was moving in a course that was becoming more and more defined, and in order not to retreat, she was likely to have to emigrate again. Unlike her, I’d been away from what I’d studied for a few years now, it was no longer strange for me to start on another line of work or move to a different country. I reassured her, I was going with her wherever we had to go, and we would start all over again, together. And before that we could travel. We talked so much about traveling, not a vacation, but taking a long, extended trip. Could there be a better time? We were leaving Amsterdam without work or obligations, and with some money saved.
Sara thought I was right, what made her hesitate was the sense of duty, going away without even a plan for later, not knowing what she would return to at the end of the trip, where to, and what would she say to her family, to her parents? It took her time to convince herself, and I don’t want her to think it was a mistake, I want to make sure she left her doubts at home, and Rahul and Sadhna are my allies. They were the first friends we made in Amsterdam, and for Sara they’re also the first references here, familiar faces sweetening her way into a strange and sometimes violent world. The only downside is that we need to surrender to Rahul’s wild ideas, we couldn’t tell him we don’t feel like going to the movies.
“Hey!” Rahul embraces us at the entrance to the shopping center. He has a blue t-shirt he used to wear in Amsterdam, jeans, the same thin-rimmed glasses with lenses that darken with the sun. “How is India treating you so far?”
“Very good! I’m so full!” says Sara. “Sadhna’s family gave us wonderful things to eat.”
“Very good, very good. I bought our train tickets. I’m excited, I’ve never been to Goa.”
“Me neither” says Sadhna.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” asks Sara.
“No, I can’t, I have to work. What class are you going to travel in?”
“Sleeper” I reply.
Sadhna is outraged. “Why Rahul?! You should go in AC, it’s more comfortable.”
“I was the one who told him to book Sleeper” I say. “We don’t need air conditioning at night, and other than that it’s pretty much the same.”
“You won’t find many foreigners in Sleeper” says Sadhna. “And in AC they give you sheets.”
“Should we exchange the tickets?” asks Sara apprehensively.
“No, it’s fine” I say. “Don’t worry Sadhna, we’ll be fine.”
Rahul takes a step up the stairs. “We have to hurry, the movie is about to start.”
“Is it here?” asks Sara, the disillusioned tone perceivable only to me. I told her I’ve been to the cinema in Jaipur. In the pink Art Deco building, the carpeted hall with crystal chandeliers hanging opened onto a colossal theater with over a thousand people in the audience, a lively, vibrant atmosphere. The first time one of the stars appeared on the screen, everyone stood up clapping and whistling, as in a football game!
Sadhna wants to know what we are going to see. Rahul points to the poster, a man in dark glasses, a blazer and white pants, holds the hand of a beauty with the belly and a long leg exposed, fleeing with way too much style to be convincing. Above the title a caption announces, between the other, illegible, characters: ‘A wholesome family entertainment’.
“It’s a martial arts movie. Very good, with a lot of action!”
“But this movie is in Telugu!” cries Sadhna. “Do you know Telugu, Rahul?”
“No, but that way we’re all on equal footing, no one understands!” Rahul’s festive cackling returns.
A security guard searches our bags at the entrance, he separates the ones who are welcome from those who are not. Not everyone is allowed to enter the shopping center, and that may be why the movie theater is half empty and tame. Sara laments the demise of street cinemas in Lisbon, demolished or occupied by offices, hotels, evangelical churches… Now they’re all in shopping centers, without character, and this could be just another one. Ther’s no clapping or cheering, and without the enthusiasm, the little energy we still had goes away.
Sara curls up in her chair and falls asleep right away. I try to pay attention to Rahul, who translates what he can understand from the plot. It’s not hard to follow, the characters are so typecast that at first it’s funny. Then they start to annoy me. The exhaustion of the journey settles down after lunch and the shower, in the dark it’s almost impossible to resist closing my eyes…
The sound of the movie keeps going in the background, a song or an explosion wake me up, or it’s a jolt from my crooked neck that arouses me. I try to be alert, the film seems to be ending, and then there’s another impossible surprise, a plot twist, followed by a twist of the twist, and another one, two, three songs. The story that could have been told in an hour and a half has been going on for more than three…
Perpetual Motion is a serial novel. Go to Table of Contents to read previous posts.
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