The World in your Living Room

Most people feel that travel is something to be done in between days and hours of slogging at work and spending time at home. I, on the contrary , am someone who feels that Travelling around the world is like one continous journey punctuated every now and then by an extended period of work of staying at home! So I guess you can understand that being a working class mutant like this, i would be going through a lot of travel hunger that i cannot satisfy as easily as i would wish to. Sometimes, when i've been home for a couple of weeks and feel the pangs of travel start to creep up my spine, I just go into our living room to soak myself in the abundant supply of souvenirs that adorn the walls and shelves there. The room is filled with hundreds of items , I've picked up at local souvenir shops: ceramics, photographs, carvings, masks, hand-woven cloth, unique musical instruments. And these are not the stereotypical imports that you find in a store like Costplus worldmaket or Pier1 imports. These are the Real McCoy! masks from Central and South america, wild boar tooth carving from Africa, wall hangings from Australia, camel bone plates from Morocco and Scrimshaw from Hawaii etc.,

Under the pretense of working out with my dumbbells, every saturday morning - sometimes as early as 5:00 AM - i drop into this room and start savoring these priced collections. I re-arrange some of the artifacts, smell the fragrance of the exotic woods, possibly even try my lungs out on the didgeridoo. Before long, I get carried off on the magic wisps of memory that emnate from each and every object in the room. For me it's a haven where I can go to escape and to be reminded of how large the world is, even when held within the confines of my living room.

So, do remember to bring back a ton of these local goodies when you travel the next time. Your biggest nightmare could be the sharp-eyed checkin agent at the ariport , who somehow manages to ask you alone to weigh the carry-on bags all the time! But trust me, the pain and panic you may go through till you cross the security check would be totally worth it coz, when you get back, you are bringing another piece of the world into your Global room.