Resistance is Futile

I am, yet again, trying to find appropriate, affordable means to visit my janma bhoomi, Baroda. I crawl around the internet, trying on various fares, routes, seating arrangements, and durations. Ever since Russia barged into Ukraine, gas prices and fares have sky-rocketed: almost 50% higher! Definitely highway robbery, methinks. 

Appropriately enough, I am on the latest season of Star Trek, something I have blogged about several times. This one is called Picard. I relate to the protagonist's need to escape his janma bhoomi, his scrounging around to find adequate means of travel, and his constant yearning to return to the land of his birth.  The overarching theme of this series seems to be the importance of  overcoming the human fear of technology and incorporating it in the human world so both, organic and "synthetic" life forms can co-exist peacefully and in a manner beneficial to both. Inevitably, this includes many references and plot strains that revolve around the Borg, the terrible monsters from earlier Star Trek seasons, to whom we owe the phrase, "Resistance is futile!" The Borg tend to assimilate organic species and subsume their natural bodies by implanting machinery in their bodies, so the organic self is almost completely lost and the being becomes part of a hive, with a shared consciousness.

I think of our Borg-like world with Fit Bits, smart phones, Zoom, and WhatsApp. Who can imagine or manage life without them? I just made a colleague download WhatsApp that the team may communicate more effectively, rather than relying on primitive methods, like email. Many of our team wish that we would just have a face-to-face meeting and be done with it. However, in COVID times, that is not always possible, safe, or recommended. 

Back to traveling, in a time when I do not feel safe about visiting the inside of grocery stores, the tickets I seek are ones that promise more space between me and my fellow travelers, than the much cheaper ones I used before the pandemic. These tickets used to cost twice as much; now they cost five times as much as the ones I used earlier! Moreover, I need more comfort and hand-holding this time since I will be alone on this daunting journey to and from Baroda. My severely reduced immunity is one of the most chilling factors that require me to seek out appropriately spaced out seats.

Unlike Picard, who is one of my favorite characters, I hate traveling and would be very happy ensconced in my chosen home with the cats. I hate take-offs and landings, and I feel unanchored and claustrophobic when I think or how much removed I am from the ground. Strange airports do not offer any solace to people like me; I feel as though I hover over a worm hole of sorts and that I will be catapulted into another world, another aircraft, another time, that my feet do not touch terra firma. 

However, sooner or later, one must rejoin the rest of the active civilizations, teeming with movement, demanding movement from perfectly content still bodies.  I drive every week day, spend over 8 hours a day at work, and talk to others of my species. Yet I yearn towards my home and cats, where the only traveling I do is through the TV screen. When I try to make rather limp excuses for staying home, I get the same undeniable truth as a refrain from everyone: "You are fine! You must come!

Let me return to my creeping and crawling in search of a better fare, a better seat, a better duration for the journey I must make.

Like the Borg say, Resistance is Futile.