The exhilaration of going solo

Having returned home from a rejuvenating trip to Naples, I urge everyone to take the time to wander unaccompanied in a city, town or village where there is something to be discovered

I wouldn’t be lying if I said I had the time of my life in Naples. I spent three days child-free and husband-less, exploring and navigating a chaotic city through the lens of someone who had been offered a precious kind of temporary freedom. I don’t want to frame this in a way that makes it seem like I do not enjoy the present conditions of my life. I derive insane amounts of joy from watching our toddler blossom into his own person, witnessing his colossal drive to constantly push the boundaries of what he is supposed to be learning and empower himself through new-found knowledge (at two years and eight months he can already sightread numbers from one to four). I thrive within the glow of the companionship I have with my partner, and his nurturing touch. But gosh, to be alone for three days was pure bliss and I am not ashamed to admit it. I felt like I was reliving my single era where I had to be accountable to no one other than myself. The last time I took four days off from parenting was in March, when I travelled to Sharjah to teach. But that was different and more difficult, because I was still breastfeeding and the distance from my toddler meant I had to keep emptying my breasts. There was a hormonal component to the whole thing. This time around I felt secure about our toddler being resilient enough to survive my absence. I felt like I could kick back and slip into my own plans.

I was somewhat embarrassed by how loud, smelly, and chaotic I found the city. My debut visit was in 2018, when I was a tourist who had only ever known the lived environments of Mumbai and Delhi—two ginormous metropolitan cities that were continually bursting at the seams. Naples felt familiar because I had grown up in Mumbai and had spent so many years in Delhi. The chaos, the traffic, the pace of conversations among people, the brightness of city life, the loudness of it all felt comforting. I’m no longer a tourist in Italy. I have been living here for almost five years. Even though I am based in a border town in the Alps where the language is predominantly German, I have travelled through many parts of Italy and know the language too. After the relative quiet of where I live, the sense of order and focus on attentive caring of the environment—the municipality workers literally change the decorative plants display every few weeks, in keeping with the season and the civic systems actually work—I had many moments of culture shock in Naples. Of course, I had to laugh at how I was looking at the city through the lens of someone who comes from a ‘first world context’. The tap water didn’t taste as good as where we live, or in other parts of Italy. I had to literally close the outside doors of the balcony at night because the sound of traffic interfered with my ability to sleep. I had to keep guard of my belongings because I had first-hand experience of someone trying to rob me in Naples in 2018. And why was there so much trash everywhere?

But gosh, the city’s vibe was electrifying. The incessant traffic and the frenetic pace seemed to have altered people’s perception of time. Instead of being in a hurry, they had learned to slow themselves down. In fact, everything unfolded at a snail’s pace, in a sense. You ordered a cappuccino, but in between noting your order, the barista pauses to converse with his co-workers. It’s the same at the grocery shop. It is as if the city has found its own gestural language for subverting the logic of capitalism. I walked everywhere and I found myself always regaling at the shrines at every corner with a statue of Madonna, reminding me of Goa as well as every other Indian city. I visited museums, churches, galleries and the catacombs of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Napoli. I was constantly travelling back in time, given the historic nature of most sites. Many dots from trips to other parts of Italy began to intersect… like the mosaics in Ravenna… In Napoli, I visited the oldest baptistery in the western world and it was a treat to see these mosaics, as it was to see the reliquary containing the San Gennaro’s blood which potentially liquifies thrice a year. If and when the miracle does take place, the city considers it as a sign of collective good luck. But apparently, during the pandemic, the blood didn’t liquify. Soon enough, Maradona died—a loss that Naples is still grieving.

All of this is to urge you to do a solo trip! Especially if you do not have someone depending on you for care, and even if you do, make arrangements to have time off to wander, to be nomadic, to let yourself happen within the set-up of a city or a town or a village where there is something to be discovered. I returned feeling so rejuvenated, a better mother to our toddler, a better spouse to my partner. 

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.

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