Spreading Wings

Zarina Khan

There was a time, not so long ago, when air travel was a matter of prestige – a preserve of the privileged. Then came a time when owning a passport had the same effect in raising your snob value. Soon, that too became commonplace. Then came a time when going abroad meant that you had arrived – that you were actually cat’s whiskers!
We have been observing this upward mobility within the Club itself – from a time when ‘picnic’ meant going to Lonavala at the most.

Exercising in the shade of the China Hut  

Oddly enough, there were many who would say then that let alone Lonavala, even going to a resort with a swimming pool, rain dance, etc. was beyond their wildest imagination. But with time, we have outgrown that also.
Today, nobody wants to go to Lonavala. In fact, it is hard to find anybody in the Club who has not traveled abroad. How things have changed so fast was evident from a light-hearted exchange between Zarina Khan and Nahid Khan this morning. The former is a seasoned traveller as she has been regularly

Nahid Khan

visiting her son and his family at Doha, Qatar. She’ll be going there again, later this month.
Nahid is just her polar opposite. But over the past few years, she’s been spreading her wings, never missing the chance to explore a new place, meet new people, try out new things. She has now signed up for a trip to Singapore-Malaysia in June and in the process, get a thappa (visa stamp) on her passport. “I want to know how it feels to be treading on foreign soil,” she says.
That was enough for Zarina to abandon her ‘yoga class’ and give Nahid a tutorial on her upcoming “foreign experience”. Coincidentally, she has visited Singapore earlier and could come up with information on Mustafa, Centosa Island, the Merlion, Little India, etc. much to Nahid’s amazement. “You have no idea how clean the place is,” Zarina went on.
With Yusuf Rassiwala, Bhaswati Bose and others chipping in occasionally, what stood out was the innocence of the interaction – the sense of awe and wonder that accompanies a foreign trip. It is this undying curiosity that makes us more travelers than tourists.