WHO ARE THE TRAVELERS AND WHO THE INDIANS? (By: Miroslav Radaković, author of the book The Scent of Colors and The World is the Same )

 

The school principal was fixing her hair in a bun and looking at herself in the mirror. She rehearsed various poses of sternness, as she did every working day, wanting to appear authoritative, if necessary – and implacable. She was preparing for the usual walk through the long school corridors during class time. She would always stop in front of every door and listen to both the teachers and the students, checking whether classes are being held according to a strictly defined curriculum.

The voice of the teacher rang out in front of the math class. He was obviously explaining an assignment at full volume and even the screeching of chalk on the blackboard could be heard clearly. In the classroom where geography was taught, the experienced teacher spoke very eloquently about Asian countries and about India. The music room was the loudest of all. The piano was playing and she recognized her favorite Beethoven composition.

The principal smiled with satisfaction and moved on. She was particularly interested in the art class. However, there was no sound coming from the classroom. Well, perhaps the music class wasn’t taking place here, she told herself, taking a few steps in the direction of the foreign language classroom. Still, she warily paced back to listen once more, putting her ear to the door, not caring that she might ruin her hair-do. She heard nothing, not a single child’s voice, not even the voice of the young art teacher. Was there anyone inside at all? How is it possible that even the sound of the math teacher’s chalk could reach her, and yet here there was dead silence?! At least one child of the thirty in the class would have to speak up sooner or later.

Minutes passed, a time period that seemed overlong. She completely messed up her hair by putting her ear to one door, then to the other. Something was wrong here, she concluded with certainty and opened the classroom door swiftly.

            The scene before her completely confused her, almost taking her breath away. All the students were asleep, with their heads on the benches. It looked like every single one of them was fast asleep! In fact, it didn’t just seem like it, they truly were all asleep, and not even the sudden opening of the door by the implacable headmistress awoke them. The teacher was also sleeping, and it also looks like a deep slumber.

            The principal was beside herself! It’s not that sometimes there weren’t minor lapses in the school schedule, but all the children sleeping, including the teacher, in any given class - that has never happened before!

            She woke up the young woman.

“Miss, could you explain what’s happening here?”

“Well, today it is our task to illustrate a journey.”

            The principal glanced at the class once more but all the children were almost absolutely still, dead to the world.

      “Do you call this painting?”

            “I told the students that it’s best to imagine a journey first, to indulge in reveries and fantasies, and then to depict the trip in the next lesson. After that, they can give the drawing to their best friend.”

      “To do what?” the principal looked at the teacher in disbelief.

            “Traveling is imagination and a dream, a vision, the ability to imagine something alive, don’t you understand?”

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            My first trip was from the maternity hospital in Višegradska Street in Belgrade to a rented apartment in the Marinkova Bara part of town. I don’t remember that trip. I don’t even remember the journey from there to another street, Cvijićeva. When I grew up a little, I became equally aware of my other trips, which, of course, were not to some distant cities or places, but to the surrounding areas. I say this from the current perspective of an adult, but at that age they were almost mental pilgrimages: discovering a new area, another part of the city, and visiting relatives or godparents. Traveling by tram, trolleybus or bus through the city revealed a completely different world to me.

      “Мa, what’s this?”

“A church, son.”

“What’s a church?”

“Where people pray.”

“God lives there?”

“He lives everywhere! He is in every city, street and home.”

            That’s what my mother thought but I have never seen him in our apartment! I was sure of that, because our apartment had only one room, so he had nowhere to hide.

“Ma, Ma, what’s this?”

“That’s the National Assembly.”

“Who lives there?”

My mother just waved her hand and showed me the building on the other side of the street where she had worked a long time ago, when she moved to the capital.

It was in those early travels that I made my first friends. They were mostly the children of my parents’ friends. We exchanged experiences: what our teachers were like, who was stricter – our mom or dad, whether we liked stuffed peppers (which someone’s mother had just put on the table), what time we had to go to bed and whether they let us stay up longer on weekends. That give-and-take of a short life experience meant a lot to me in understanding my own life and personal habits. A friend complained to me that his father beat him, sometimes for no reason, and he even showed me bruises on his leg. The daughter of my mother’s colleague had a piano. She could only play a few songs, but I nevertheless heard them for the first time. With a new friend, who lived on the other side of the world - in a suburb on a hill that was named after a swan or a rooster, I wasn’t really sure - I played with an electric train, which he got from his father who worked on another planet, in a country that was called Germany. The train moved all on its own on the metal rails and lit up.

The first trip to the sea that I remember was by train, which was also lit up: not only in reality, but also in my eyes of a child. It left from Belgrade railway station in the evening. I was indescribably excited. In fact, we started eating our meal of chicken and tomatoes already at the Zemun station (only five minutes after departure).

            Further, I remember the ship that took us to an island. The sea and the beaches amazed me, but what particularly stuck in my memory was the blonde hair of a girl. I envied her because whenever she asked her parents for ice cream, she would get it! I didn’t even dare to ask, because my mother had drilled into my head that ice candy on the beach is expensive and that we didn’t have money for that kind of thing. Every day we saw each other on the same beach, she with her ice cream, and I with my salami sandwich and tomatoes. She had a flotation device (a rubber ring around her waist) because she couldn’t swim. I was overcome with shyness and for a long time I didn’t dare to speak to her. When I finally gathered the courage (which I guess I’ve been saving up since birth), I asked her:

“Do you want me to teach you how to swim?”

“No! Where did you learn how to swim?”

“On the Sava River.”

“You’re lying!”

“I am not!”

“You are too! You’re not from Zagreb, and the Sava River is Zagreb’s.”

“No it’s not, it’s in Belgrade!”

             Which was how my friend from the beach and I learned that the Sava River runs through cities and doesn’t belong to any city! Afterwards, she let me have a bite of her ice cream, and I offered her a tomato and my salami sandwich. She didn’t want it. On the other hand, she didn’t learn to swim that summer.

 

                                                                             *  *  *

 

Discovering the world is my life’s destiny because traveling is my profession. I have traveled by bus, ship, plane, and almost every means of transportation invented by man. The only means of transportation that man did not invent, and which we were given at birth, is our imagination! It generates curiosity, and curiosity precedes any real journey. What awaits me far away? What kinds of people live in those parts? What is their food like? And other questions as well – about the climate, habits, customs and language to buildings, monuments and museums. And then, perhaps the most important thing: whom will I meet on my next trip and what will I hear and learn? I always feel like Columbus who, seeking India, discovered America!

I would like every child to keep in mind, that is, to remember that every new part of the world, every new place keeps its surprises just for him or her, veiled from all available information, public media, books, magazines and the Internet. It guards them even from children’s imagination! So keep searching, looking, discovering, and thinking. A journey without surprises is not a true journey.

 

                                                                            * * *  

 

I will mention here that before they fell asleep and, of course, before the sudden entrance of the bunned principal, the art teacher told the children the story of Columbus, that is, as soon as she asked them to imagine their journey, to invent it, before all that.

            “Children, you all know the story of Columbus, which I will alter a little. Imagine the situation in which Columbus first encountered the natives in America, calling them Indians because he thought he had actually reached India. He tried to tell them that he had discovered them and that he came from a civilized world called Europe. The Indians interrupted him by saying: ‘But if you had waited just a few more years, maybe we would have discovered YOU by looking for India, so YOU would be the Indians today!’ ”

When you travel to unknown places, don’t forget that not only do you get to know the locals, but they get to appreciate you too! You are equally unknown to them and just as interesting. So, when you make a drawing of your trip, make a picture of yourself, as best you can. 

 

                                                                         * * *  

 

On a lounger by the pool in front of a state-of-the-art hotel on the shores of a tropical sea lay a lady no longer young, with her eyes closed and headphones on her ears. When she opened her eyes from time to time and looked up, an unforgettable view of the sea spread out in front of her, as if something from a postcard. What was odd was that the lady was listening to music, which was somewhat unusual for that environment, and furthermore, so loudly (regardless of the headphones) that the hotel guests who were on the deckchairs next to her could also partake of the famous notes - if such was their musical taste. Connoisseurs of music could recognize the compositions of the famous Beethoven. In addition, the lady would occasionally take out a pad from her beach bag and sketch something with a graphite pencil.

“Ma’am! Ma’am!” a man in a business suit was vying for her attention.

“Yes!” she finally lifted her head.

“Hello! I’m the manager of this hotel.”

            “You speak…” the lady was almost dumbfounded that someone in that distant country was speaking to her in her native language.

“Of course. You were the principal of the school I went to.”

            While the once rigorous principal looked at him in surprise (on trips, surprise is desirable, almost mandatory, as we’ve already said), the gentleman in the suit continued talking.

            “You know, it’s been many years. I thought I was imagining it that here, on another continent, I’d meet the principal of my former school! At first I was in a bit of disbelief, but when I saw your hair bun last night, I no longer had any doubts.”

            “Оh, thank you so much! So sorry, but I don’t seem to remember you! Is it possible you remember me only because of my hair?”

            “I never forgot how you burst into our art class as we all slept on the benches dreaming about the trips we were supposed to draw.”

      “The art teacher was your classroom teacher?”

      “Yes. I’ve never forgotten her.”

That evening, the manager of a hotel in a far away country invited the former principal of his elementary school to dinner. The principal wore a perfectly styled bun. They talked for a long time about past times. He told her about his numerous trips and about the countries he had visited, not forgetting to mention that the trip he remembered the best was that from Cvijićeva Street in Belgrade to Swan or Petlovo Hill, but also his first trip to the sea, when he met a blonde girl who ate ice cream and learned that the river called Sava did not possess only his hometown. She showed him the sketches she had made on the beach. They were mostly portraits of local people - smiling Indians. That evening, her former student also saw (probably for the first time) her smile.

            “I would never have dreamed that someone would recognize me on the shores of the Indian Ocean, where I found myself due fortunate and unexpected circumstances! But what life events have brought you here?”

            “The world has no boundaries, my principal, I learned that back in school, fantasizing about chancing on that same world one day. Luckily I didn’t get lost like Columbus! And do you know anything about the art teacher?”

            “After my retirement, she was appointed as the principal of our school. However, she was not interested in all that. All she wanted was to teach each new generation of children to fantasize. I can see that she has succeeded.”

            Who discovered whom here? Did the principal discover her former pupil, or did he uncover her?

            It must have become clear to you by now that it matters not at all who is the traveler and who the Indian.

            Daydream, fantasize, and then travel! And make a drawing of your trip!

            Bon voyage!