Museum of Yearnings and Scribbles Vishaal Pathak   © Copyright 2024 by Vishaal Pathak

Photo of Dubrovnik, courtesy of the author.

It’s late October, 2016. On a cold, windy night, I’m sitting at an intersection at the centre square in Zagreb. There’re people partying, dancing away. It’s kind of a festival, I think. Everything looks as if right out of a popular sitcom set in the 90s – when times were simpler; bell-bottoms, biker jackets were still the in-thing. I’m not sure what the celebration is about; I don’t understand the language either, but the music sure is groovy.

“When people dance, you dance,” my girlfriend tells me. Then girlfriend.

I laugh it off. Not one to hold herself back when the music is playing, she grabs my hand and drags me towards the midst of the crowd. People egg me on. I embarrass everyone with a couple of lousy moves and rush back to my spot, watching her lose herself to the music from afar.

Backpacking across Europe as cash-strapped, sleep-deprived exchange-students, Croatia was the only non-Schengen country (back then) that we had planned to visit. She wanted to walk around the fort city of Dubrovnik and look for King’s Landing; I wanted to visit the Plitvice lakes. Beyond that, we had no plans, but had two days to spare – partly because we travelled impulsively, and chiefly, because the student work-load barely ever afforded us the luxury to plan in detail. Besides, carrying a European rail pass meant we could plan while on-the-go.

Boarding the train at Ljubljana, we got up next when the border control officers came around to stamp our passports. When we realized that railway tracks didn’t much make the cut beyond Zagreb, a fair bit of panic set in. We could probably no longer plan as we were used to in the rest of the Europe – we weren’t sure if the two of us could afford to rent a car and I wasn’t a fan of bus rides. But our weariness made us put off decision-making for later.

Early next morning, we bought tickets at a Tisak store and hopped on one of those vintage tramcars that took us to our bus for the lakes. For the next 90 minutes, we found ourselves gliding – floating – on concrete. I don’t know how else to describe the bus ride, but it was perhaps the closest I’ve ever come to levitating. If you hadn’t learned it in school, you’d swear that friction was an imaginary, abstract concept. Close your eyes and you’d think you were flying. When we reached Plitvice, we found it about as majestic as it can get. Pictures cannot do justice, mere words cannot do justice; at times, even your own senses cannot. I grappled hard to piece all the lakes together, even though I could, undeniably, see them all together from the viewpoint.

In the evening, we were back to explore the capital city. Zagreb was mystical, befuddling – just like its name. A little further down the road from the square, is a funicular that takes you to the upper town. Or you could take the stairs adjoining, like we did. To an unusual, yet the most remarkable museum I’ve ever been to. One that houses personal objects – letters, gifts, just about anything that serves as a token of remembrance from a broken relationship. It’s a fascinating concept, reminiscing stolen moments, regretting the misjudgements, and bemoaning being forgotten and left behind. And in this attempt to pacify the estranged lovers, it immortalizes the forgiver, the forgiven and the forgiveness. And whatever it is that they had between them. I was tempted to make a contribution myself, just that I didn’t have anything on me – nothing I was willing to part with just yet. Although, to that end, I wouldn’t have minded getting my heart broken here.

After dinner that night, we proceeded to the bus station again, though something came over me as we bid farewell to the city. I was tired, sluggish and slightly feverish.

“It happens sometimes, when I’m cold or exhausted. Nothing to worry about,” I assure her as she sits me down on a bench at the rustic-looking but renovated bus station. She studies the monitors for bus schedules – I try to help but keep getting distracted by vendors frantically pulling down the shutters and closing their food stalls for the night. Each time one of them paced out of the station, I heard their footsteps until they reached one of the exit doors and as it temporarily opened, a gush of wind swooshed in to permanently steal warmth from my body.

Eyes half-closing, I watched her run about, trying to get us last-minute tickets on an overnight bus to Dubrovnik. There’s language barrier already, queues are lengthening and merging, counters are closing – it’s a scene right out of my childhood. From the countless unplanned, hurried, overwhelming bus journeys I took as a child with my parents. With a start, mother would wake me up in the middle of the night and before I could get a sense of what was happening, drape me in warm clothes and shoes as my father would force-fit more stuff in an overloaded suitcase. I’d bawl my eyes out in protest all the way to the bus station, terrified of what was to come. But mother would soothe me while intermittently keeping an eye on all our luggage as my father would haggle for tickets.

This night my mother isn’t around – she hasn’t been since her death years ago. I feel helpless, immobile and unsurprisingly small, as bus stations and their waiting lounges around the world often do to me. My girlfriend finds out everything there’s to know about the journey, smiles and waves at me as she tries to check up on me while queueing up at the last open counter. Adjusting her scarf, she reminds me to pull the beanie over my ears. I pass half a smile and feel my eyelids fuse into the sockets. When I next open them, she’s disappeared into thin air. My heartbeat races, my palms are sweaty, my eyes teary and warm. The sound of frantic steps from behind me culminate soon into a tap on my shoulder.

“Let’s go,” she says, stuffing some food and water into her bag, “the bus leaves in two.”

I follow her like the obedient child I’ve been reduced to. We slide into the last seat on the bus and I pretty much give up on the night as I lay my head in her lap.

“I don’t want anything to do with anything, anymore,” I grumble myself to sleep while she gently strokes my forehead. I remember nothing else from the waking hours, except that she cheekily slid the bus ticket into my jacket – in hindsight, perhaps unknowingly as a prospective token for the museum – and that our passports were checked twice as the bus passed through international border. Strange nightmares, the kind I had as a child, continued to torment me through the night.

Hours later, a sun-kissed morning makes its way through the windows, unannounced. The fever is gone. The sight around makes me wonder if I’m still dreaming. Boulder-ridden pathways overwork the engine. And the grand, astoundingly beautiful roadway – a marvel of civil engineering overlooking the Adriatic – spirals right through, into my heart. I’d have loved to wake her up but I fear she’d stayed up all night, looking after me.

When we had feasted our eyes and hearts out in Dubrovnik, and taken enough pictures with a GOT-styled throne, we continued onwards to Split – a sleepy port town, harbouring the urbane and fortifying the ancient. Oblivious to the world and its existence, the streets of Split looked – for the lack of a better word – self-satisfied; self-absorbed, but in a beautiful way. Not a care in the world. Like someone who knew how adorable they were, and even though weren’t showing off, had just the right amount of a charming arrogance – like a child doted on. One street in particular – a side street adjacent to an open lot that lined coffee bars where old men and women were feasting their Sunday morning, smoking, reading newspapers and probably discussing state of affairs – was a time-hole that swooped me back to my hometown, several thousand kilometres apart. Several years apart. Back in the 90s, when the street was its own ruler, and hadn’t shrunk itself to accommodate more people, or cars, or buildings, or encroachments. The landscape – that rests safely in my memories – doesn’t look like that anymore in my hometown. Yet here I was, and as cliched as it may sound, walking down an actual memory lane. I found myself; back in time – while still on earth – for real. And with a sense of calm and leisure in the air I’ve not known since. What could possibly be more fascinating than a real play out of a memory, a tour of a lost world? I’ve missed the street. I’ve missed the innocence of 90s. But more than anything, I’ve missed myself. I’m here, right here. But not so much me, not so much here. As back then, as back there.

Croatia felt like an era well preserved. Bound by the sea, walled by the Alps. You can’t help but notice its selectivity. They sure must’ve grappled with modernization, but nostalgia eventually won at this tug of war. I don’t know if this is an outsider’s view or if I am subconsciously giving in to some sort of bias, but most everything there was so unadulterated, it felt like a glitch in the space-time continuum. They’ve managed to preserve the 90s as I knew it – composed, secure and unhurried.

Unlike memories, however, some things don’t last. I wonder why that is. Over the years, my girlfriend and I drifted apart. But when we left Split, I securely left myself back there – in a version of the world that makes more sense to me, a world that I am fond of, a world without clutter. Looking back from here, growing up is basically travelling through time – and I wonder if the distance is really worth it?