Europe Diary 2026: 10-Oct - Brussels --> Paris

 Day 1: 9-Oct-2026

Arrived at Warsaw from Delhi, by midday. The small, cosy airport resembles the city's smallness, an Italian coffee-drinker on the next table remarked, planting his earphones back into their pod as an act of politeness to my courteous nod when our eyes met.

2 Heinekens (I) and 2 cappuccinos (Swathi) later, we found ourselves en route to Brussels. As the flight soared, I peeked into the window to find what's a rare sight for an Indian who travels domestically: large, sweeping tracts of greenness, well manicured and well apportioned. The latter both plague an aspirational Indian's thoughts - for a homeland that looks well from above & within. 

Brussels - A neat city that borders on looking abandoned, strange for a European city on a weekend night. People look at you, and express a ready sorriness of looking at you without your permission. All in their eyes. All in that fleeting second of passing by. As opposed to the 2 extremes we are experts of: either disregard the passerby with utter dismiss or stare them down attributing incrimination. 

A decent Indian meal at Rangla Punjab brought the day to a close, but not before observing why the Indian attendant was inexplicably rude & loud to us. Was there some immigrant guilt he was forcing us to share with him? How would he have known that we're not patriotic people? For, what more allegiance can triumph over our loyalty to capitalism?

Day 2: 10-Oct-2026

An obscenely early time to wake up, so that we can sleep in Paris tonight. So chained am I to the idea of 'vanity in traveling' that we have more than 1 suitcases each to lug around. Our Indian knuckles (bestfriends of sweat, heat, and dust) are beginning to say hello to cold. Swathi has a run-in with a French concierge man, as she requests him if he can help us print our train tickets. It is too early for a Frenchman to comply sweetly. And he is French enough to point out the same. I try charming him with my perfunctory smile. It works, and he smiles back. A win for my face's Jack Nicholsonesque reputation. 

We're here at the Brussels-Midi train station, well ahead of the train's departure time. The morning's slowly showing its true colours. Coupled with cold. English isn't received kindly. And the private-run train service is an apparition no one's heard of. 

We are pumping enough caffeine into our bodies to battle the cold, and the cruelty of cultural chasm. The views all around are a help though. Easy on the eyes. And, the cafés are universally lifesaving. They're accommodative, without a glint of neophobia. I'm on my 3rd cup of coffee as I type this, and the black-dressed Frenchman smiles as warmly as the coffee is. 

The bus-ride to Paris is 40 minutes from now. I am looking forward to ingesting myself with pleasing visuals of the European countryside. From amid the warm confines of a bus that doesn't honk. 

A thought cloud begins taking shape, about Paris. For all its broadcasted beauty, fragrance, and notoriety. 

Will come back to this space. 

   

This darned thing called Life

 I open X after 2 hours of an intense task at work, to get my periodic dopamine fix. I read this tweet/post that talks about how fast time whooshes by when you're compelled to do something you don't particularly enjoy, say, work. And, I catch myself wondering how the hell it's already August!

 

2 more hours pass after I return to work. The tweet continues swirling in my brain, poking at every corner it whizzes past. This is like the inverse of leaving everything you find in a better shape than you found it. The tweet does the damage to my brain that's been in overdrive for weeks.

 

I pause and catch myself thinking about times when work was a mere component in our lives before becoming our all-consuming identity. At least, for most of us. [I still know a few folk who resisted the corporate tradeoff, and it seems they knew exactly what they were choosing].

 

Anyway, there's a dull, droning psychological malaise all around us. People are generally unhappy with their lives. So, they choose to pepper social conversations with carefully-inserted details that elevate them above their peers. Except, such peppering is most times unsavory.

 

I was once that person. I thank the general ageing of my mind for coming to its senses before I got sentenced to being a phony for the rest of my life. It's stunning to witness the acts people put up to impress people they don't particularly like. I did that too. Boy, was it so tiring. I only realized how tiring it was after I stopped.

 

Is baring one's self to everyday life and its contours freeing? I don't think. It has its own nuisances to bring.

 

Cutting to my life, there's a long-due European vacation that starts 2 months from now. Barring the 3-day whirlwind of a Japan trip in 2025, I haven't taken a vacation in 2 years. Given how 'undeserving' I've felt of 'nice things' for most of my life (thanks to the passed-down, unwittingly keyed-in insecurities), this is a vacation I've damn-well earned and am looking forward to with a childlike anticipation.

 

Since it's been a while since I last put pen to paper, it is not unwarranted to jog your (the rare reader of this blog) memory about my chronically-skeptical self. It's the same person with same insecurities, anxieties, and yes - the occasional good things too. Except, all measured & managed a bit better, with 'restraint' being the underlying theme of it all.

 

It's both sobering and disillusioning when you realize that the 'magical tomorrow' never comes. For me, it's forced me to worship the cliché: enjoy (or try to) the journey/process/blah. I try to meet the optimum markers, and leave the rest to the indifference of it all.

 

For what is this darned thing called Life? I've never understood it. But there are a few nice things in it I don't dislike. 

Being Friendless and Other Stuff

 Truly at midlife. I am not sure what to feel about where I am at this juncture. But, one feeling stands pronounced: "Friendless." Given how it all (growing up) started about 17-18 yrs ago, I had always thought I'd be socially wealthy. Sure, I've burnt a few bridges along the way, but who hasn't? Finding myself practically friendless right at my midlife juncture is something I'd never thought of, or worried about. And, here I am. 

It's interesting how my personality is trying to bob away to the other end of the pendulum. I've been quite a private person for the last 10 years. Not by force, but by organic choice. My abhorrence for 'small talk' has done its job far too well. [For the first time, I've looked at my watch twice by the time I finish this 2nd paragraph]

Now I'm making voluntary efforts to indulge in harmless, yet patience-demanding small talk. At airports, the gym, the cafe I frequent, etc. The fact that it's going to get increasingly difficult to cultivate new, meaningful friendships with each passing year, is unsettling me. 

I've come to believe in the philosophy that it needs hard-work to be able to enjoy finer pleasures in life. The persistence to endure a couple of stage-setting chapters, to power through a few mood-building episodes or the discipline of living cleanly to live well, look well, feel well, and age well. And yet, I falter. But, I don't want to. To waste years in faltering & wobbling - only to reminisce this time wistfully a few years later.

I've got this gnawing feeling somewhere deep inside my stomach that this decent run I've been having for the last few years -- is all going to come crashing for some inexplicable reason. The rationalist in me reasons that it all depends on how I act. The irrational pessimist in me refuses to nod & agree. 

I know the importance of living mindfully. But, events come by and compel me to react, at least in thought. I more often than not react. I try to right the ship for events to not adversely affect the next ones, but its price is mindfulness. Perhaps, I have to extricate action from 'thought' to get there, but hey, a man can fall and try, right?

The pit I had once thrown myself into was so deep that it took ambition, not progress, to crawl out of it and make even with others. But now, I've discovered traces of ambition for a net positive future. But me being me, I am not sure how much the ambition will hold up. Again, a man can try, can't he?

My psychological need to splurge on proverbial perishables to keep proving to myself that I am not  deprived anymore - has finally subsided. I now don't buy often. I don't buy needlessly. I buy good stuff, with moderation & unforced restraint. 

I remember tweeting this:Who knew efforts to rediscover the ability to wonder at smallest of things would come to be a part of my goals?

That about sums it up. 

The Eventual Belongingness

 How long it has been. To sit and think about anything but next project, its people and the pains they bring. And life has kept happening, oblivious to the grand plans I dream up and minor inconveniences I frown at. At times, I stop in my tracks to realize I am in my mid-30s. Meaning, half my time has flown by. 

The very next thought that unfailingly hits me is about the outlandish dreams I once had so naively dreamt for myself. Makes me feel funny & wistful at the same time. 

I've come to work with people who are obsessively ambitious. Almost to the point of wondering if they know they are not here forever. They chase their dreams so feverishly that it's very fascinating and tiresome at the same time. On good days, it reminds me that it's not too late to dust the naive, outlandish dreams out of the dream-vault (that everyone has). On bad days, it makes me long for the lightness of being unaccountable for anything. 

I reach airports well in time. A little too well in time, often. It leaves me with a lot of time at boarding gates. Amid yawning adults and bored kids, I yank away at my laptop. When I don't, I think about who I've come to be. It pleases me to have become a resilient and an accountable person. I like that about the 30-something-me. 

Talking of airports -- being displaced from home makes me despair. I have always been a deeply rooted homeboy, who didn't bother visits but hated stays. In fact, I always have taken pride in being a homeboy who felt pinched by distance & the despair it causes. Lately, all that changed a bit. It's because I travel dizzyingly. I travel so much that I don't have time for the sweet melancholy of a displaced homeboy. 

But many hundreds of miles away, I have a home. One that I've built with a woman I trust more than I trust myself. A home that awaits my fortnightly return. A home where I seek and find quiet. 

My 30s as They Unfold

 It's funny how I once thought of Writing as my saving grace. It is now almost a defunct pastime in my life. They say, life happens. It has happened, for me too. As life's been happening, somewhere along the line, I have gotten busy in reacting to it, that I have hardly stopped for a moment to observe. 

What's happened in the last 3 years: more steps on the corporate ladder climbed, newer liabilities (in the garb of possessions) acquired, and torn between cities. While all that has been happening, quality of sleep has declined, appetite disturbed, and peace disrupted. I think I now get it when they say ageing slows one down. Sure, I'm still in my 30s, but that's a whole 10-years period after the phases of unbridled hope for a bright life. 

I am not complaining. I have a good life, materially. I don't have to check my banking app before making a purchase, small or big. That's a small victory, given where I started 10 years ago. But, there was this idea of a 30+ me in my head when I dreamt about my future in my 20s. A man who's made peace with his follies, and someone with a measured approach to things that affect him. Someone who's sure about his strengths, and painfully sure about his weaknesses. Adults tell young ones a lot of things, but what they don't tell you is they don't have it all figured out either. I guess, man's disregard for time's overarching superiority stems from his refusal to accept his smallness being amidst nature. 

Cutting to the chase, the man I thought I'd be in my 30s had always been an elusive idea. For, back then I always wanted to be a different man from who I was. A longing for an overall better-ness with no shape or direction to it. A few cues I had were: to read more, to think deep, and to emphasize on empathy, one day at a time, incrementally. 

I've got to thinking about these 3 cues lately. Have I read as much as I'd have liked to? Hell no. Like I told you upstairs, I was busy reacting to life. Have I come around to cultivate deep thinking? Nope, I have failed to build the agency to think deeply. Empathy? I guess that isn't a hard fail. I guess I've done okay in this department. 

Yet, there's a certain confidence I've come to possess. Perhaps, it's an awareness about self in the worldly sense. That I'm going to be around. Because, I think I've learnt to find a balance each time after every curve-ball that tried to throw me off. Or, this might as well be a delusion of confidence, owing to the last few good years I've had. But hey, there's no way to know, right?

As this cycle spirals forward, I just try to do my thing, and be kind.

Thoughts Mid-air

 The city looks tiny & flickering below.

As the aircraft soars its way through misty clouds,

the city below reduces to a faint ball of light.

I tilt my head gingerly to stare into the endless darkness,

and I find the old moon staring back at me warmly.

The moon - of which tales have been told & on which mankind has trudged,

reminds me of the 'giant leap' taken decades ago.

A leap of faith that attributed familiarity to this milky white ball of a moon

A reassuring though amid the indifferent sky - to know that man has only captured it, but not capsized by its vastness.  

A Transient Breeze of Warmth

 I took the left to take an immediate right that'd put me on the service road, as we colloquially call here. Something like an ignored, unassuming younger sibling of a prodigious, elder one. 

That guy was there, standing in his usual position - behind the iron block, which is a dosa pan for commercial purposes. He splashed a handful of water on the iron slab to wipe it off with a broom before he could scoop a few mounds of dough and make dosas for the impatient customers.

That sight has been etched in my memory since its capture. A sight that made me feel home & belonged. For inexplicable reasons - rendering me failed in articulating. I turned the wheel back to stay on the service road, and on my left, I spotted another figure whose presence reinforced the familiarity of the frame. A warm familiarity that put me ease at once, in my head. 

What do sights like these mean to me? Do they induce warmth because they constitute the 'home' I have built up in my head? If yes, does that make me a person frightened by unfamiliarity? 

I thin this longing for familiarity has inadvertently driven a lot of decisions over the years. While I have partner who's ever willing to handhold me into new adventures, my proclivity for the familiar occasionally teeters into obduracy. And, I recognize the sense of annoyance it can trigger in normal people, who want to explore new things in life.

As I write this, an early childhood memory flashes transiently. Of how I used to not let my mother go back home from school after feeding me lunch - and the maximum bargain I could take was an (obviously fake) assurance from my mother that she'd wait for me at the same spot for the next 3 hours until I'd be done with my classes. 

Back to the 2 figures who put me to ease by merely featuring in my mental image of 'home,' how oblivious they were to what they made me feel & how they added warmth to my mental imagery. Both of them - fighting their wars one day at a time, to be somethings and to not be someones, yet brought a rare warmth to my ever-freezing melancholic spirit. 

I may not see them after that day. Or even if I do, I may lack the mental faculties to recognize them. But I'll remember that they once made feel home, despite being unaware & distant.