Overcoming Fear

“It feels like a terrible mistake,” I told myself as I squeezed in the aisle seat of the packed flight to Pune. I noticed my co-travellers whose masks were slipping from their noses. This made me angry, and I realised that I had been an angry, reluctant traveller the moment I stepped out of my parents’ home in Gurgaon to travel to Pune, where I was heading for a business meeting. I was angry at the cab driver for carelessly spreading the towels on the seats – it looked messy, and I didn’t trust the car was sanitized properly. I was angry at the guard who manned the airport entrance who didn’t ask for vaccination certificate or RT-PCR test from any of us who lined up to enter the airport. I was angry at the crowd that I saw at the airport, ignoring the fact that I added to it. Given the careless checking outside, I wondered that any of us could be a lethal Omicron carrier waiting to infect the rest. 

Now, inside the plane, waiting for it to take off, I was irritated with the file of people streaming in and how packed the whole flight is. Keen on taking a business meeting in person, I had decided to head to Pune. I should have never ventured out, I chastised myself repeatedly. I closed my eyes and forced myself to take long breaths. It was then that I realised the emotion I was experiencing and that came interlaced with anger – fear. 

I have not felt so trapped, so alone, so isolated in all the travels I have taken in the last twenty years as I have done in the last two. Not even when I stood on the edge of a cliff in Norway five years back, tied to a rope, waiting to jump. There then, the fear was paralysing. Still, I stepped ahead and off the cliff. That bungee jump was transformative. For those ten seconds, I watched the fear inside me so closely that it failed to scare me as much as I had thought it would. That short ten-second jump encapsulated the transformative power of a journey. 

We need journeys and their transformative power more than ever now. Fear has been a constant throughout the pandemic year. Yes, we fear to step out. Not only that, but we are also fearful for our families’ health, of our languishing careers, of our lives slowly slipping by in uncountable Zoom calls. This sustained exposure to the fear has made us not only angry but also mistrustful of others. We judge others, for their actions directly put our health at risk.

As the plane took off, I reminded myself of the month-long road trip that I had taken across India when I had graduated 16 years back. I wanted to cover the four corners of the country and travel to the heartland before starting the corporate grind. The little money I had necessitated that I take the cheapest public transport. I would stand in a third-class rail compartment, my shoulders rubbing another’s. There was no fear then. Perhaps it was my youth, or pure foolishness, that I had forgotten to be fearful. I remember distinctly the transformation that trip caused, for I had overcome my hesitations to travel alone, or talk to strangers. I made friends that I remain in contact with till date. That month-long journey made me a traveller and melted my shyness a little. 

Would I take such a trip again in the post pandemic years, I wonder? Perhaps not. I have become a different person, not the intrepid traveller that I used to be. As this realisation dawned, I opened my eyes. The fear-laced anger had altered into sadness. Yes, I had kept my sanity intact in the Covid years, but overcome with fear to venture out, I have lost the independence, the confidence to travel. Forget about striking up a conversation with an unmasked stranger. This latent fear of the ‘other’ has become a constant now. 

It’s easier to sit inside closed doors than to get up and go. But that’s not an option anymore, at least for me. Doing so would mean becoming a closed version of myself, an older Nitin, who had transformed with the travels to far-off places and by surviving – even thriving – in alien settings. It’s time for me to get back out there. Travel, at least for me, still holds the power to transform, to amaze, to inspire and make bonds. It’s an antidote to the fear that I was experiencing. 

Realising this, I turned around to speak to the person sitting next to me. He wouldn’t see my smile hidden beneath the mask, but I will strike up a warm conversation still. Perhaps he needs me as much as I need him. 

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