You marriage? No. You boyfriend? No. OLA!

Note to self: You need to update this blog, you lazy piece of shit. This is a chronicle of your life, your legacy to your grandchildren, a reminder of your wild erratic escapades as a daft youngling. 

And god forbid, if you ever developed amnesia in your old age, then this may be a good time to tell yourself that it is highly likely that your better half would neither look nor behave like Ryan fucking Gosling from the notebook

Therefore, it might be a good idea to have this blog in order to remind yourself of how you were and what you did in the summer of 69 or whatever. 

Now stop talking to yourself and start writing.

As a wanderlusty, vacation junkie type of person, I have always believed in the power of travel. 

When I say travel, I don't just mean, the "quit your stable job, stir your dead soul, smoke some weed, look at some poor people in a third world country and re-evaluate all of your life choices stoned, while you make fire in the middle of an African Rainforest " kind of travel; because that's only one kind of travel.

But just travel in general. You know, the kind that involves a little change of air, change of people, scenery or lifestyle, doesn't have to be significantly heavy duty. 

Apart from highly increasing your chances of sleeping with exotic men and women of different nationalities and making you proficient enough to be able to enunciate profanities in a wide variety of languages (which is all very awesome and fascinating), travelling does other amazing things to you and you need to do it at least once, alone. 

I think that at some conscious or subconscious level, we are all either looking for something or trying to run away from something. Travelling doesn't necessarily help you find it or escape it. But, I feel it gives you a lot of time to think, to compartmentalise everything that is going on in your head in little brain boxes, and just breathe. A little bit like that feeling you get when you have just cleaned your dirty room, organised your disheveled wardrobe, vacuumed the carpets, dusted everything off; after having tried to avoid doing so for over a month. And suddenly you can see all your stuff placed clearly in front of your eyes and you are thinking, "Voila! its so much easier to find things now".

Or sometimes you just find a used dirty condom from a deeply regretted one night stand, and go, What the hell. But, we won't go there.

Speaking of travel, I recently had a chance to visit Mexico. Thanks to my many hundred cousins who believe cross cultural weddings are incomplete unless they happen in both the countries; and some of whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the very first time. But that's just normal for India.

I have always been one of those cynical assholes who look down upon doing any touristy things like visiting the madame tussauds, watching a light show on Eiffel tower etc., because I generally despise the presence of tour guides, people selling ugly little monument replicas, and long queues. But thanks to the parents, I was dragged along on this Mayan ruin adventure to a place called "chichen itza". I am glad I went, because I came back an enlightened woman.

                                                                        This place

So, this was a large city built by the Mayan civilization. This pyramid was a temple in the city. It has four sides and contains 365 steps depicting the solar year and 53 panels (for each week in the solar year).  Incredibly, twice a year on the spring and autumn equinoxes, a shadow falls on the pyramid in the shape of a serpent. As the sun sets, this shadowy snake descends the steps to eventually join a stone serpent head at the base of the great staircase up the pyramid’s side.

But, this is the goosebumpy bit (The kind of stuff that turns Ana on and makes me not want to eat my dinner for a week) - 

The Mayan Indians were cannibals. When they used to conquer a civilisation or take a prisoner, they'd rip a man's heart out of his chest. However, because he wasn't completely dead then, his brain would still be working. So, he could comprehend everything that was being done to him. The royal family would eat this very heart. They would then chop his head off, kick it down the pyramid and play soccer with his skull. (Okay fine, FOOTBALL). The walls of their football fields are also adorned with drawings of human sacrifices of the players who lost matches. 

When I saw this, I momentarily found myself thinking- It would be so much fun if modern football worked like that? But then I felt like a terrible human being and moved on. 

So, I guess what I am trying to say is, book those Ryanair tickets, pack that bag, go get lost in a crowd somewhere and thank me later.

x

Divya