Abroad, at home (or the Chapter where you don’t feed the cat)

It was very untypical of us to visit a capital city such as Amsterdam, and yet not bother scratching off the must-dos and should-dos from our typically unending list. No, no tulip gardens, no windmills, no celebration of Rembrandt or salutation for Anne Frank - we had decided to visit our old friend Prashant. 

In our 3 month long exchange program in Europe, while we were busy criss-crossing the continent, capturing images in the gigabytes, and literally wearing our soles off by traipsing across tinsel-towns, Prashant had, like a monk, found his mountain top. It was located in a small room on the third floor of a quiet building overlooking a canal not very far from the Rijksmuseum. Having invited him on countless occasions to join us in our sojourns, and after being politely declined in his unreplicable singsong voice, we had decided that if the mountain would not come to Muhammad…So there we were, Nishant and me, on a crisp October evening, meeting our friend after weeks with bagloads of stories from our travels, so full of passion, people and Paris. We had met close to the station and had then decided to walk to his house, all along leafy pavements overlooking the famous canals, flowing like arteries and pumping life into the city. 

‘There are more canals here than in Venice,’ he talked of his city, and then pointing to the bikes parked at every nook and corner added , ’...and more bikes than people in the city!’

‘You seem to have learnt a lot about your city?’ asked Nishant, visibly impressed.

‘To be honest,’ Prashant smiled, ‘I specially read facts before coming here to make you’ll feel as if I have learnt a lot about my city.’

‘But have you seen a lot of this place? What about the paintings of Van Gogh?’ the art enthusiast in me asked.

‘I have walked about a fair bit, but yet to go to the museums. In fact, the other day I had decided to visit the Rijks and then Madame Tussaud, but stopped at a canal and spent my day admiring the city views and the sunlight streaming in through the orange leaves of Autumn.’

We would never understand it - to stay rooted in the city and even then, not feeling rushed to see its landmarks. But that was Prashant, the mystic. But very soon, the conversation moved from ‘what’ and ‘where’ to ‘who’ and ‘whom’ - Prashant talked about the international community housed in the same building, their stories, their lives, and their collective celebrations. I realised that Prashant knew more about his friends than we knew of our housemates back in Paris for obvious reasons. Even when still, the world is actually moving. 

It was late evening when we reached his place. He had already cooked a simple, homely meal for us, and we, already exhausted by chips and burgers throughout our road trips, devoured the rice and dal, ensconcing ourselves in his small room overlooking the canals. We happily kept on talking about our varied experiences and everything under the sun - how cold the weather was, how the Gini index could be seen walking through the streets of the cities, and how different were the professors in their pedagogy here compared to Lucknow. And we kept rambling. When we would hit a dead end, one of us would ask Prashant of yet another Amster-fact, and pop would come a prompt response: 

‘The city has the highest number of museums per sq. metre in the world.’

‘Amsterdam has the highest number of carillons in the world!’ (Even today, I wonder who in the world even counted and validated this fact) 

‘The Schipol airport is the only airport in the world with its own museum.’

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Though Nishant and I knew we were not actually doing justice to a great city like Amsterdam, none of us complained. Perhaps because after weeks of travelling around Europe, for a change there was no stress - of catching the right train, of understanding what the world said in its romance languages, of explaining to the French chef in that Marseilles bakery that poisson or fish is not vegetarian (that too in French), of hunting for accommodation with the best value for a parsimonious student’s money and of ensuring that we had not missed out of the best of every destination. Yes, travelling on those weekends was fun, but it did come with its share of stress. But that evening in Amsterdam was different - there was none of the usual tensions. It almost felt as if we were home.

You could almost feel that sense of relief in the warm, cosy room. I lay on the rugged floor, happily sipping my orange coke, almost as if I had been happily drugged in the city of dope. Nishant had wrapped himself in his grey thick shawl and was fast approaching a state of slumber. Prashant for a moment even asked him if he could press his tired legs! After one more can of lemon coke, Nishant had fallen asleep while Prashant still talked about his stay there and how much he loved coming back to its warm confines after every day at the University. He talked about the forthcoming Sinterklaas (Dutch equivalent of Santa Claus)celebrations in December that was keeping the city excited, and lastly of the fat cat that roamed about in that floor of the building. Given it was a very cute brown cat, everyone seemed happy to feed it until it started bloating into a very obese cat. It was then decided to maintain a roster on the fridge that specified only a single person to feed the fat cat every day. (It felt so funny that evening that I told Prashant if I ever wrote of that episode ever, I would call it the Chapter where you don’t feed the cat.)

We chatted till late that night, almost as if we were back in campus, with little concerns and all focus on the then and there. I felt happy - as I said, almost like home. As Nishant would happily concur if he were awake - it is always about the people, less about anything else.

I once knew a drawing teacher at my arts and music school where I once went for tabla lessons. He would force his students to perfect a circle, time and again, before encouraging them to bother with a large scale painting. 

‘It is easy,’ he would say, ‘to splash the page with colours, to swipe with a broad brush and claim anything in the name of modern art. It is rather, far more difficult to go back to the basics and draw a perfect circle, no matter how small. That perfection needs patience and practice. And if you don’t have the patience to make a simple circle, how will you ever have the patience to paint the Sistine chapel!’

When I look back today, I feel Prashant was there drawing and perfecting his circle while the rest of us were busy making a fancy painting on a huge canvas, splashing it with the brightest colours. If fallacious time wouldn’t have moved linearly, perhaps, I could still find him there, walking by the canals, looking at the sunlight through the orange leaves of Autumn and being content in that moment, feeling no need to travel anywhere else. In that imaginary circle that only he could perfect, he had found his peace, his universe and a small world full of festivity and friends (and one fat cat). And in that circle, he was able to create a home, not just for himself, but also for other wearied vagrants who needed to rest their aching souls. If it were a race, then he was never behind, but rather way ahead of us by over a lap. Unlike us, he had already realised by then, that a man travels the world in search of what he needs, and comes back home to find it...

 

2nd October, 2021

Celebrating 11 years to Amsterdam