Well, aren’t you just tired of these movies like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Dil Chahta Hai, Anjaana Anjaani, giving us nothing but unreal expectations from life? Not just movies, but other content types available to us like web series, including The Trip and TVF Tripling also, do not fail to reduce the fanciest idea of traveling the world into a game of cards! I mean not all of us are an Arjun in our lives, sitting in London, earning tons of Pounds in just a few hours and owning a pretty mansion. Neither are we a group of boys who can run to Goa to get over a breakup without giving it a serious thought! Especially for a bunch of middle class (read broke) and practical (read lazy) students like us, traveling is all fun and all but for these reasons, it can always not be possible.
“Kithon Aaya Corona”- when the cases of this particular pandemic in India has reached to 249, I am seriously going to reconsider my decision a thousand times, before I hang my bag and be all “Illahi Mere Jee Aaye Aaye”. Even the World Health Organisation has advised people to not travel until it’s too necessary and the Indian government has suspended visas in the light of COVID-19 but they still be thinking of scuba diving in Spain *facepalm*. Even if for once, I decide to fulfill all my travel wishes, do you think my mother is going to let me step foot out of the house without those truckloads of masks and sanitizers?
These pockets got everything, old receipts, gums, lint, and emotional baggage but ain’t no sign of money, y’all! To present it in a nutshell, my bank balance is dead as a dodo. I legit survive on chai and Parle-G, not just by the end of the month but all year long. Airfare, food, accommodation, buying souvenirs and whatnot, traveling has an excellent number of ways to empty your pockets. So now you know why we prefer standing by the India Gate over the Arc De Triomphe.
If there is one thing I dream about, day in and day out, is that of hitting the mark of 66.66% attendance. Only we students know how medicals and ECAs have prevented us from getting kicked out of the college then risking my attendance for fulfilling the unreal expectations given to me by these filmmakers, just cannot happen. Anyway also, I am sure pretty sure almost half of us take at least an hour to reach college, which means, all this time we were already doing a road trip! Student – 1, Bollywood – 0, hah.
Don’t even get me started on seeking permission from our parents, phew. Where I am going? How am I going? With whom am I going? When will I come back? Why do you have to go? What am I going to do on the trip? I mean, unless we don’t provide them with a full-fledged, laminated, photocopied and framed itineraries of our entire trip, are our parents even going to think us sending us to the distant lands? God help you if you are planning a girls trip. Knives, pepper spray, scissors, pistols, axes, and even a nuclear bomb if possible, you got to carry everything before you even think of stepping out of the house. Thinking of a solo trip? The question cannot even arise!
There, I said it, the way traveling is presented to us in movies, TV shows, and web series is just unrealistic. Ain’t nobody travels like the way they show us. We buy tickets way before the trip by which I mean 36 months, we book hotels on Trivago because the ad waala uncle has gotten into our brains about how cheap hotels at the website are, we fight wars to convince our parents and of course if you’re planning a trip to Goa, god help you.
