People we meet on vacation

This title is a lie, and a lie on many fronts. This is not a commentary on Emily Henry’s 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards for Romance-winning novel, nor is it a review of its 2026 film adaptation. It is not a prose reconstituted from meticulously recorded descriptions of human contact in foreign lands that remains preserved on the pages of a travel journal, and it is not an insight into the ways of the people from nations beyond. Most sinfully, perhaps, this piece is not really about a vacation at all…

It was a warm Sunday morning, and I lay in bed, running through, in my head, a long list of names. Had I not been in the know about the cause, context, and creation of the present list, it would’ve struck me as a strange one indeed. The string that tied these names together wasn’t all that obvious. Among the names featured on the list were those of people I frequently ran into on campus every other day, people I had run into every other day in periods long passed, people I had spoken to but never met, and people of whose existence I had only recently come to learn. But I had to remind myself to contact all of them, in some way or form, at some point in time this week. Very recently, not long before that lazy Sunday morning, I had been delivered the happy news that I had been given the opportunity to go abroad for a summer internship. While the news left me thrilled and uncontrollably excited, it also set in motion this apparently never-ending saga of planning for the trip, and boy, were we caught off guard.

Growing up in Bangalore, every summer vacation was inevitably a two-month retreat at my grandparents’ place in Kodagu, and I have no complaints; that place truly holds my heart. We, as a family, were never too keen on traveling and preferred spending time together as we got back in touch with our customs, culture, and traditions. What came with this as a big, added, but hardly noticed bonus was that we never had to invest time in planning, really. We were going to a place where the terrain was known, people were familiar, help was accessible, and getting in trouble was hardly a cause for concern. Sure, we had had a couple of trips to Mangalore and Kerala, but these rarely lasted more than a week. So, when my parents and I were put on the spot to plan a 10-week stay at a place we practically knew nothing of beyond its name, we did what any human would when shoved into the unknown - we panicked.

Presenting to you the creation of that fateful Sunday morning list. The anxiety sorting out my travel arrangements drove my parents and me to turn our predator mode on - we hunted down people in our past and present who had lived, currently live, had traveled, or visited Melbourne. One link led to another, and my list of potential contacts grew. I put down the names of seniors who had undertaken the internship in the previous years, former schoolmates who had moved on to settle with their families in Australia, distant NRI relatives of close friends, acquaintances of my parents’ colleagues, and collegemates who live in Melbourne, and even a student there, the daughter of a man my dad happened to be introduced to at a wedding! And thus we had drawn up a huge panel of interviewees, and fittingly so for the ginormous bundle of questions we were eager to unload. From options for accommodation to means for commute, we shot questions, queries, and concerns at our unsuspecting panelists with wondrous tenacity - you could tell our worries were very real.

While our list seemed never-ending, and keeping up conversations with people isn’t really my strong suit, the exercise of reaching out for help to such a receptive audience was soothing. It felt comforting to learn that there were people, both those I had known for years and those with whom I was having my very first conversation, happy to have my back. Each one was happy to enlist themselves as an informal emergency contact for when I would be in the city. At every step of our preparations for the trip, from booking accommodations and flight tickets to scouring for mobile network operators, each of them made sure to keep track of our progress, offering suggestions and guidance along the way.

And now, even after having made it past the midway point of my trip here to Melbourne, someone or the other from the list checks in on me to ensure that I’m doing well. Like a member of the CDC keeps an eye out for the outbreak of a deadly disease, they make sure I remain uninfected by homesickness, offering a free pass to wholesome home-cooked meals as a remedy in the event of its unwelcome occurrence. From recommendations on mobile plans to reviews of tourist attractions, every question is welcome. What I find most thoughtful, though, is that they make it a point to frequently reassure my parents that their child isn’t alone - she has a support system to rely on.

I love this city and the people I’ve met here, but I chose to make this piece about the people who helped me get here because that’s what I am most grateful for. I love that even amidst the menace of planning this trip, I got to reconnect with old friends I’d long forgotten. I love that I got to strengthen ties with people I had otherwise known little about, and I love that I got in touch with some awfully great people I would have otherwise never known.

So what is this 5-minute read really about, had you asked? Well, it’s just a small thank you to these wonderful people on that Sunday morning list!