Finding bends on a flattened earth

All the way from Edinburgh to Porto, I stuck to the anglicised pronunciation of Lisbon, though everyone seemed to know and tell me, it's Lisboa. It is only when I heard the sound of a tongue, sweeter than the Oves Moles, that I could call her Lishboa!

In Portugal I found a name. Beatriz. There was a Beatriz who was at the checkout counter of the world's busiest bookstore. A bookstore so busy that it has timed entry queues and own app to book that slot. In Lisboa, another Beatriz served us pizza and wine as the Gregorian calendar year was set to end soon. In the same city, one more Beatriz sang her Fado songs sweeter than the port we were served.

In Porto, we set an evening free. I put a finger on the map and asked it for cheap places to eat. Armed with my phone, our son navigated dark alleyways that pierced the behemoth plazas. We watched the carousel whirl and made the Christmas lights shine in a bokeh of laughter. We piled winter coats on top of strangers' and cleaned the pits of darkest olives. We fought over house chips in a place where a glass of wine is 3 Euros and a bottle is only 6. And when the night seemed to yawn from the insides of closed store windows, we ran through its coldness in borrowed warmth.

The Douro river flowed as we jumped out of a packed bus and chased the setting sun. We made it look silly in hundred different poses till its cheeks blushed and made the sky pink. The gulls kept flying in mystery letter formations. We fought over taking the bus back versus walking the many kilometers and rejoiced in mirth as walking we overtook the poor one stuck helplessly in traffic.

And so did the Tagus as we sat in the sun, sad in our own ways, on its bank, in front of the Praca do Comercio, and listened to the minutes to midnight songs from a long haired boy with electric. Another day, Tagus hissed its cold breath on our ears as we looked up at the Monument of Discoveries. I wondered for a moment if Columbus had not gotten lost and spared the Americas.

It is for sometime now that I keep asking myself, why do I travel? Is it only to eat, see, learn and overload all my senses? May be it is to have my own mini conquests of ticket stubs and beer-ringed coasters filched from pubs. But come one Lisboa afternoon, as my tired legs pushed me up the gradient to the Miradouro Senhora de Monte, I could see that the erstwhile morning fog has lifted just as the murmur in my head was starting to crystallize.

I had wanted to be an explorer, even before anyone asked me what I wanted to be. In a world where every face is both a key and giveaway, every place and thing has been dissected and laid bare, what options do I have? In 1935, Graham Greene undertook a "Journey Without Maps" through Liberia, albeit with a crew of scores of porters and crates of whiskey. In our family friendly trip, completely dependent on Google maps, seeking a view both inside and out, we all hauled our suitcases.

In our aimless walks up and down the Lisboa streets we found a building under which the Cassia family ran a public bath in Roman times. This city - the caliphate of Cordoba used to call it Al Ushbuna. We read words of a poet on an alley side mural and looked for her books of poesia in every passing bookstore. On our way up to the gram-worthy Pena Palace on the hills of Sintra I saw pink carnations in bloom. I was reminded of the mural of a fierce girl in azulejo ceramic tiles, holding a carnation, done by an artist who goes by the name O Gringo. I saw it the previous day, outside a Jazz records store in a chic arts and crafts district set up in old factory sheds. And then I recalled our Uber driver Sidique telling us about the cable bridge across the Tagus, named by a date, 25 April 1974, the day when the Carnation revolution overthrew the old guard of the mercantile New State of Portugal and ended its colonial wars.

The truth is, I belong to the story pilferers. Eating at the Porto hotel breakfast buffet, I would peer onto the adjacent street and read into the smoke rings of the lady in a parrot green jacket, picking up her nightcap at the end of a shift. In Lisboa, sinking fork into the Alheria we would taste something that we had never experienced before. Our server would gently tell us a bit of the history of the Jews and Muslims in the peninsula who would want to be like the Christians and made sausages with chicken instead of pork to hang outside their front doors. On the ramparts of Pena Palace, as I took refuge from the chilly rain, I would strain to overhear a guide who explains with authority how Spanish tiles have relief work, while the Portuguese are only painted.

Back in our return flight, I watched a Spanish movie, Pheasant Island. An immigrant drowns crossing over from Spain to France. His body is in water for so long that even fingerprints are lost. There is a journalist who has taken pictures when the body is hauled by the police. He says, he is ashamed to take these pictures, but at the same time he needs to take them. Otherwise, it is as if, these people did not exist.