Structures, Outlines and Tracings

Structures and Outlines

Touchdown, scheduled for one minute past midnight. Four before midnight we are lying low as we negotiate a touchdown, hovering. As aviation practices dictate, ten minutes prior to that airline crew had just persuaded passengers of the aircraft to return their seats to their original positions, keep the windows open, and to keep trays firmly in place. As passenger idiosyncrasies dictate, those of us not yet burnt out by the concept of air travel had just spent the last ten minutes peering out of the window. To catch a glimpse. I peered out not to catch a glimpse. I did so such that I could bend over to do something cheeky to annoy the lovely lady in the window seat next to me. What was a glimpse of “Changi International Airport”, our brightly lit highways and tree lined vistas, to most people onboard, was a glimpse of “country of residence”, “place of birth”, what they call home, for me. Brightly lit and demanding to be seen. Perfectly laid out, testament to our nation-city-state’s perfected formula of precise engineering and urban planning.

From the air street lamps seemed equidistant to each other, manicured trees appeared in such neat concentrations, then cut off at appropriate invisible markings to make way for more roads or buildings or other concrete things. Buildings so strictly conformed to the concepts of squares, rectangles, right angles, equidistance, and “building upwards”; train lines running so neatly parallel that the sudden appearance of an actual train seemed to be a blight on the surreal Lego-esque landscape, that they quickly chugged out of view, ashamed. I could not help but think of the little plastic cities I had built in every version of SimCity, the straight roads I laid, and zones I dictated.

Exactly 15 minutes later I was greeted by “Welcome Home” in four official languages as they scanned me “home” in the Residents’ line, spent exactly 15 minutes after that buying exactly one bottle of liquer, one bottle of wine, and 3 cans of beer at Duty Free, and by the time I was done my luggage was waiting for me at Belt 18.

We’re so used to the idea of shopping malls and MRT control stations as places of reference and meeting points, to knowing roads as “between Cine and California gym” or “behind Plaza Sing”, to finding places by making the simple leap of faith in associating actual places with their written addresses, such that not being able to arrive at 183 Nimanhaemin Road and to find the restaurant waiting to serve our lunch, caused even us somewhat seasoned travellers considerable distress. It’s simply that to tread the fine line between backpacker’s ghetto, and commercial tourist hell, demands plenty of time and research. In American cities you find your way walking through logically numbered streets, thinking in blocks; in South Korea you just use the subway line as a guide. In Singapore you think of malls and train stations. And in all these countries I’ve been hopping in and out of?

In India, having to juggle the “new” street names with the old ones, is in itself, an exercise in frustration and nostalgia: Ho Chi Minh Sarani? A business zone named for 3 bungling Bengali martyrs? Terrible. I won’t even venture to hazard a guess on what Cambodian urban planning is like. Thai urban planning exists, but vaguely. There are main roads, then little sois running off them. On Sukhumvit, for example, for which Soi Zero is found in Bangkok (but Sukhumvit Road itself eventually terminates hundreds of kilometres away near the Cambodian border), one finds even sois on one side of the road, and odd sois on the other. The old hand doesn’t even think in terms of numbers, but makes all the necessary associations: instead of soi 4 he thinks Nana, instead of Soi 3 he thinks Nana Nua, instead of Soi 55 he thinks Thonglor.

This trip, I made the mistake of offering the name of the road our guesthouse was on to our songtaew driver on the way from the airport on our first night in Chiang Mai; I really should have offered the name of the nearest wat (temple) — Wat Sri Chomphu — instead.

In exactly 15 minutes we walked the length of Nimanhaemin Road searching for Saen Kham Lanna Terrace restaurant. Exactly 15 minutes later we were in the car of some helpful Thais who sent us to Huay Kaew Road because the restaurant had given them complex instructions in Thai about making a turn upon seeing Hillside Condotel into a little soi near a 7-Eleven and then.. exactly 15 minutes later we were sitting in a cafe eating ham and cheese sandwiches, our dreams of a fantastic Lanna lunch, diminished by Thai urban planning and not helped by my terrible Thai and the restaurant’s equally terrible English.

Welcome Home, I’m greeted. I’m half surprised we don’t have to press a machine to get a queue number to be scanned home.

Tracings

(For all our great, difficult loves, and love of great difficulties, the effortlessness of being with certain special people more than makes up for it. The older I get, the more I learn ‘effortless’ is not the same as easy, but more of a mix of ‘difficult’ with courage and faith. Nights with you, versus nights I never had. Hours without you, versus hours with them. Vacations with you, versus vacations planned for, dreamt of, but never gone on.

You were shining a torch in my path in a cold, narrow cave. I was snorkelling behind you while you kicked your legs into my face (you hate fish with heads on, you say..). We were huddling in a lower berth on the Langkawi Express, squinting and bothered in a stuffy minibus, awoken at 4.30a.m. to climb out of a night boat to have coffee in 5a.m. Surat Thani. We were clambering up all the different Angkor temples, the same way we had just clambered across rocks, up dirt trails, through streams and swinging across tree trunks, just to get to a damned waterfall. I was lying on your lap at the back of a pickup truck making its way up a mountain, holding on to you as we sit three to a motorcycle in some places many of our friends can’t place on a map, dirtbiking down a muddy track with a screaming chicken inside a bag. I would squint at the back of a tuk tuk, and you would pass me sunglasses and eyedrops without hesitating.

Vacations are no longer numbered in days but in the number of nights I have with you: 20, at first, then 12, then 5, and now, 6; and the number of showers being the number of nights multiplied by three. Wandering around cities. Waking up late, missing sunrise each time and toasting to sunsets. Skipping tourist attractions. Smuggling cigarettes. Debating marketing strategy over grilled prawns and pear terrine.

At first I found you, unsure, messy haired, in a Sukhumvit apartment; 16 degrees airconditioning in 34 degrees Bangkok — I had tried to leave you the week before, for your uncertainty and my insecurity. Now I find you sprightly, though still messy haired, checking out our toasty warm bed; 16 degrees, au natural, in this city of stars — we fought thrice the week before, but the making up was the best bit. Different cities, same country (not ours); what a year it’s been.

Tonight my room feels not like my room, my bed feels strangely lonely; my room feels more like ‘single bed fan room with aircon option at no extra charge’, though you know it doesn’t cost 450 baht, and there’re always free Sausage McMuffins with Egg for breakfast if we wake up before eleven.)