Wanderlust for the Soul

By Neha Kirpal

“Wanderlust for the Soul” is a compilation of 10 short stories. Each story has a protagonist who is faced with a dilemma - like Karen wants to maximize her remaining days before she dies of cancer; Muffin, the dog doesn’t want to get left behind when his family goes on vacation; the Chang kids are finding it hard to adjust to the fast urban life of Shanghai; Alexandra, a successful ramp model cannot commit to long-term relationships and doesn’t know why. And like many of us do, the protagonist takes a break and goes on a holiday.

The new place, the setting, the change in context, the new sights and experiences - they all help give our protagonist “new eyes”, or you can say “a new lens” with which to look at the world and their own situation. Well, they connect new dots and end up resolving their dilemma.

So why should you read this book? Simply because these stories are an easy and fun read, yet carry subtle messages on life’s inherent simplicity and the joys of discovering oneself. They are also a celebration of travel, the way it opens us up exposing to the sheer beauty, diversity and plurality in this world. Each story carries vivid descriptions of places and anecdotes that bring the character of a place alive, whether it’s Hawaii, or Switzerland, or Goa, or Africa.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did in experiencing these places and writing this book!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neha Kirpal
• Release date: Dec 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466191310

Neha Kirpal

Neha Kirpal has worked in the Indian media for the past five years – as a television reporter for New Delhi Television (NDTV), a newspaper correspondent for The Times of India, and a web content writer for Indiatimes.com. Currently, she is a copy editor at McKinsey Knowledge Centre, Gurgaon. The common thread in each of these has been her primary passion – writing. Neha began to scribble at a young age and wrote her first poem when she was just seven. She has done a lot of freelance writing, and her work has appeared in a number of journals, magazines, and publications. Having studied broadcast journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), she also has a bachelor’s degree in economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. Neha went to boarding school at Welham Girls’ in Dehradun, and has lived in many different cities in the country. Her hobbies include reading, writing, traveling, exercising, listening to music, and watching films.

Book preview

Wanderlust for the Soul

By Neha Kirpal

Published by Storybrew

Copyright 2011 Neha Kirpal

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1: Paris Je T’aime

Chapter2: A Venetian Dream

Chapter 3: Muffin’s Hawaiian Adventure

Chapter 4: Write your NYC story

Chapter 5: Out of Africa

Chapter 6: Viva Goa!

Chapter 7: That Swiss September

Chapter 8: Serendipity in Florida

Chapter 9: German Introspection

Chapter 10: Balinese Therapy

About the Author

About Storybrew

Bibliography

As a child, yearning to leave home and go far away, the image in my mind was of flight — my little self hurrying off alone. I wanted to find a new self in a distant place, and new things to care about. The importance of elsewhere was something I took on faith. Elsewhere was the place I wanted to be.

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human; the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown … – Paul Theroux (The Tao of Travel)

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Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank my parents, Poonam and Sanjay, for enabling me to travel to so many different countries of the world – without which this book would never have been possible. I want to also thank my entire family for encouraging me to write every step of the way. I would like to thank my elder sister, Nidhi, for being at the receiving end of all my first drafts and patiently giving me feedback for all my work. I want to especially thank Storybrew for first proposing the idea of a book and Storybrew’s editor, Rahul, for painstakingly going through each of the stories and pointing several ways in which to improve it further. I want to also thank all my friends, colleagues, relatives, and well-wishers for their support and for providing me varied experiences and lessons of life to learn from that have in some way helped shape these stories.

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Preface

At the outset, I would like to say that I am a passionate traveler. Growing up, I have had the opportunity to live in several cities in India, and have also managed to travel to many different destinations of the world. But travel to me means so much more than just visiting a place and sightseeing, eating out, and shopping. It signifies a kind of spiritual journey – one that is powerful and momentous and perhaps changes the way I look at myself and the world around me.

All the places covered in this book are the result of my personal travels, and are borne out of all the notes that I have taken while visiting them. At first, I would write travelogues about them, but I soon realized that the experiences were so much deeper, more meaningful that it made me want to build a little story around each place – where the central character undergoes some kind of transformation, an adventure, or even battles an inner conflict.

Sometimes we all get caught up in our daily lives so much that a monotonous pattern develops, enveloping us in the security of its comfort. Dilemmas bog us down, whether at work, at home, or in our relationships. In a sense, the book uses travel as a medium to resolve these predicaments – all the characters find themselves trapped in such situations, ultimately finding release in a single common outlet: travel. A new place gives them a change in setting, allowing them to enter a ‘detachment zone’ and look at their life from a fresh perspective. Because no matter wherever in the world you may go, people are the same everywhere …

Through vivid descriptions that have the power of transporting the reader to each of these places vicariously, each story captures the place in its many colors. The stories also remind us about the simplicity of life that we sometimes overlook in our fast, daily existence.

Needless to say, each of the characters in these stories has a bit of me in them – and their thoughts and motivations are a reflection of what I have undergone in different points in my life – perhaps some aspect of my personality, desires, or maybe just something that has left a lasting impression on me in some way.

Contrary to the notion that travel often connotes escape from the reality of the world, these stories describe experiences suggesting that a journey actually gives space and time to the traveler in which to reflect and sort out the commotion in their minds – a sentiment that runs constantly through each story. The stories are all simple, yet I hope they manage to touch the reader’s heart, and are able to provide him or her with some trigger for introspection.

Reading this book, in a sense, is a bit like personalizing travel – making it so much more than some research over the internet or a Lonely Planet guide. It also brings out the rich and evocative experience that travel really is – by pondering about what it imparts to an individual, what one gets out of it eventually, and how it leaves one as a different person.

A travel experience often feels like a fantasy once it’s over – almost like a dream too good to be true. By marrying this feeling of homesickness at the end of an expedition with a story entwined in it, I have further magnified the experience of travel for a reader. Therefore, the setting is the focal point of each story – almost like a protagonist in itself – and does not serve simply as a backdrop.

I hope that everyone who reads this book not only enjoys it for what it is – a collection of short stories based on travel – but can also use its extensive descriptions of what to see and do as a virtual tour guide if they happen to visit to any of these wonderful places.

Neha Kirpal

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Paris, Je T'aime

Karen had recently turned 30. For the last few years, she had lived a relatively uneventful life, consisting mostly of work and then coming back home. There were just a few get-togethers with friends thrown in once in a while, whenever she had the time. Having lived by herself in Sydney since she was 21, she had found that there were always too many responsibilities that stood in her way, hardly giving her any time to have some pure, unadulterated fun.

There were many things she had wanted to have done by the time she would turn 30, like hike up a mountain, sing karaoke, or go bungee jumping. But looking back now, she realized she had never really taken out the time for any of these things – and so they had simply never happened to her. It had been a long time since she had taken any risk, done something out of the ordinary, or experimented with something different. It was always the fear or perhaps the trouble of making an effort that had constantly pulled her back, stopping her from stepping out into the world and challenge herself. After a while this had become second nature, making her appear an uninteresting person drifting from one day to the next without any passion whatsoever. This deeply worried her friend Wendy, who had tried talking to her about it several times. Wendy was three years older than

Karen; she was married and a doctor by profession.

Karen’s daily routine was, well, unerringly routine. After returning from work and her daily workout, she would eat a light dinner and go to bed early, the health fanatic that she was. While most of her friends would spend their weekends painting the town scarlet with non-stop partying and swinging between boyfriends, Karen’s were mostly uneventful, spent watching mindless reruns of her favorite soap operas, or sobbing and sighing in front of some romantic comedy on television. Wendy had once suggested that Karen take up knitting. After all, it’s the only thing left that you’re not doing and my grandma is! she had joked.

Wendy had tried giving her some earnest advice, Darling, don’t throw away your life so easily. You are caught up in too much mundane stuff, there is just too much order and discipline …, she had said. You are still on the right side of your thirties! Enjoy your freewheeling days as a singleton before it’s too late.

Wendy’s pep talk never seemed to make a difference to Karen. She had always heard Wendy out, but had ultimately gone back to life as usual. In fact, she felt she had kind of settled into a strange comfort zone. Wendy had become resigned. There was nothing she could do to rescue her friend from her colorless life. I give up, she said one day, finally. Go ahead and become a robot!

One day, Karen came and met Wendy; she wanted to get a medical check-up done since she had read that all women above 30 should undergo regular examinations. Karen got all her tests done and went to discuss them with Wendy. As she entered Wendy’s room, she was surprised to see the grave expression on her face.

Karen, I … I don’t know how to tell you this … Oh God! This is not looking too good…, she blurted incoherently and almost uncharacteristically.

What is it? asked Karen, worried.

It’s your reports … I had trouble believing it at first, went through them thrice over … I’m so sorry to have to tell you this Karen … I’m afraid you have cancer.

What? Karen could not believe what she had just heard. How is it possible? No tell me, how the bloody hell is that possible? Her mind started going numb, the earth seemed to be moving under her feet. I’m only 30 … you don’t get cancer at 30!! was all she managed to say.

Cancer is a cruel disease, for it age doesn’t matter. Sometimes, it happens to young people like you and me too. Karen listen, I can’t afford to hide anything from you … this cancer has been growing inside you undetected for the last three years and has unfortunately reached an advanced level. I got your reports diagnosed by Brian, our cancer specialist. There is not much anyone can do now. You have only about 8 to 12 months more to live.

Karen was too shocked to react to anything Wendy was saying. Her world, her entire life had come crashing down in an instant. She felt Wendy’s hand on her shoulder. Oh my God! I don’t know what to think, what to say … there are still so many things I haven’t done or experienced in my life! And it’s all over …

Karen, you have got to make the most of it. And there isn’t much time left. The first three months are safe … you can physically exert yourself all you want. You can even live normally as you are now. But after that, you will need to rest. We will have to get you on some serious medication regime after these three months, said Wendy.

Karen went back home aghast – silent, broken, and feeling very lonely. She found herself in a state of depression. Just the other day she was feeling low about hitting the big 3-0, but that now seemed to pale in comparison! Her life was already flashing by her. There were still so many things left to do in life, so many dreams and desires unfulfilled.

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains"

The lines from ‘Ulysses’ she had read way back in school rang in her head, cruelly apt to her current situation. She realized it was time for her to save every hour ‘from that eternal silence’ and ‘to follow knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’ Karen had always been afraid of the afterlife. Ever since she was a young girl, she would wonder what happened to a person once they had died. Where did they go? Did they come back into this world again? Or did they just start living in some other parallel universe? These were some of the questions that had often perplexed her, even waking her up from sleep with their nagging, unresolved agenda. Over time, she had managed to shake them off and simply gotten busy with the humdrum of life. Now suddenly, they were here to haunt her all over again.

Being over-organized about everything, Karen had a habit of making long lists everyday – from what she