In Chennai, on a visit to a relative’s home, I walked to the nearby beach. The street leading to beach was empty. The street adjoining, and running parallel to, the beach was empty. The beach itself seemed all but empty. It was a sunny day with moderate wind, the temperature around 25 degrees Celcius. A perfect day for the beach – where were all the people?
Last week, when I returned to Frankfurt airport after a five week trip to India, it seemed as though I had never left this place. Terminal 2, where I had boarded from, looked just as it had that day in early December: the same billboard ads hanging from the ceiling, the same cars on display, the same blonde behind the information desk. Where had all those weeks in India gone? If life simply moved on from this point, how should I make sense of this period that seems – at this moment – almost non-existent but for a bundle of memories? They are only in my mind now, so was it all an illusion? What if I’d spent these weeks inhabiting worlds described in books? Would that have left a lesser impression within? Would those memories – those arrangement of electrons in the brain – be in some way inferior to my memories now?
On the ICE 17 I have an aisle seat in front of a table. Diagonally across, facing me, is a young man speaking on a phone – an iPhone – with a British accent. A copy of the International Herald Tribune lies on the table, crisp and unopened. The seat next to mine is vacant; the sign above it indicates a reservation, like mine, from Brussels to Frankfurt.
