A New Bucket List Namaskar, Y’all by Shyama Parui “101 Things to Do Before You Die”, “The Bucket List: 1000 Adventures Big & Small”, “1000 Places to See”… etc. These titles screamed at me when I typed “coffee table books” in the search field of a popular online retailer. My quest to immerse myself in stunning photographs was foiled and instead I was faced with thoughts on mortality and the finite nature of time. Perhaps that was not so bad. It compelled me to make plans to actually visit the places captured on those glossy pages. Tucked in our back pocket is the bucket list that is often forgotten leading to the familiar feeling of lament when there is so much to do, yet so little time. We crave more hours in a day, more weeks in a year and our urgency to grab those precious seconds has escalated. Prolonged introspection has nudged me to revise my bucket list previously driven by wanderlust, the assumption of longevity and an illusion of safety. It is almost cliché to say that COVID 19 has made us acutely aware of life’s unpredictable turns and combined with my reluctant acceptance of middle age, I have consciously altered my vantage point. It is not lost on me that I have much to be grateful for. The privilege to have the opportunity to even draft a collection of future desires at the tail end of a deadly pandemic is a boon. My appreciation for the people instrumental in helping me check things off on my current list has grown ten-fold. The little girl in Mumbai who wanted to fly, remembers being overjoyed by her first experience as a passenger on a plane. It sounded way more exciting than waving at planes that flew over. Along the way, her goals to learn how to swim and drive her own car were achieved. And then her teen years sowed the seeds of globetrotting. During the late 80’s and early 90’s, travel shows on Doordarshan were rare and scenic locations in Bollywood movies often inspired people’s destination choices if they were yearning for haseen vadiyan (lovely outdoors) and khula aasman (open skies). One of the shows that did encourage my generation to gain a more immersive cultural experience on trips, was “Surabhi”. Renuka Shahane and Siddharth Kak’s series about unique cultural traditions from different corners of India was fascinating. Even though the Tourism Department’s campaign of Incredible India was arguably successful and tempting, my family of small business owners continued on page 66
Saathee.com
54
July 2021
