Chapter 1 — Bored
And thus begins the Seventeenth Wandering of the Unbegun.
Kovalam.
Now, children.
This one is different.
Not because Kovalam is particularly distant.
Not because some great tragedy preceded it.
Not because Nuo was chasing enlightenment,
agriculture,
a woman with unusually coloured hair,
or a dealer who required livestock maintenance.
No.
This one is different for a much simpler reason.
It happened
yesterday.
The council gasps.
Yes.
Yesterday.
No excavation.
No digging through twenty year old memory archives.
No:
Was that shop on the left?
No:
Perhaps Hex said this.
No:
The Archive has lost the exact sequence.
Children.
The Archive is still warm.
Freshly delivered.
Barely filed.
Present Nuo and Story Nuo are separated by approximately one good sleep.
Which creates an unusual problem.
The council leans forward.
What problem?
I remember everything.
Oh no.
Exactly.
Every unnecessary detail remains available.
Dangerous.
Now.
Kovalam.
A place nearby.
Not neighbourhood nearby.
But certainly not:
pack supplies and notify next of kin.
A few dozen kilometres.
Similar in that sense to Varkala.
Accessible.
Ordinary.
The sort of distance where travelling there does not automatically feel like a journey.
Which, as we have established repeatedly,
means absolutely nothing.
The council nods.
Distance never decided Wandering status.
Correct.
But there is another difference between Kovalam and Varkala.
Motive.
Varkala had one.
Curiosity.
I had spent too long being asked:
“How’s Varkala?”
And responding:
“I don’t know.”
Children.
At some point that answer became annoying.
Not to them.
To me.
How did I live in Kerala
and possess no personal answer for Varkala?
So I went.
Not for adventure.
Not because sadness pushed me.
Just to acquire an answer.
And I did.
Kovalam?
Different.
I already knew Kovalam.
Family trips.
Older visits.
Memories.
If someone had asked before this Wandering:
“How’s Kovalam?”
I could answer.
Extensively.
Beach.
Area.
Feeling.
Whatever details previous visits had given me.
Kovalam did not need introduction.
The council checks the quest log.
QUESTION TO ANSWER?
None.
EMOTIONAL CRISIS?
No.
FRIEND TO VISIT?
No.
WEED SUPPLY SHORTAGE?
Also no.
Then why go?
Children.
Bored.
Silence.
That was it.
Boredom.
The council stares.
A noble seventeenth quest.
Yes.
I was bored.
And at this stage in the chronology,
something had changed.
Earlier Nuo could be bored
and remain bored.
Sit in room.
Scroll.
Game.
Smoke perhaps.
Exist.
Modern Nuo?
Boredom occasionally becomes
movement.
The council nods.
Wandering is now conscious.
Exactly.
This matters.
The first many Wanderings happened before I knew what a Wandering was.
Roads happened to me.
Or impulses dragged me somewhere.
Or stupidity accidentally produced geography.
Now?
I knew the word.
I knew the pattern.
I knew that sometimes when the inside of the room became too still,
I could simply
leave.
Not to fix anything.
Not always because of the famous noise within.
Sometimes the noise is just:
I’m bored.
The council considers this.
Valid noise.
Very.
Children.
Curiosity is noise.
Restlessness is noise.
The desire to see what happens if you board a bus is noise.
Sadness does not hold monopoly over movement.
And so
Kovalam.
No dramatic packing sequence.
No elaborate route.
No plan.
Obviously.
One bus.
I boarded.
Sit.
Travel.
And eventually
arrival.
The council looks around.
Kovalam?
Not yet.
Ah.
Yes.
Bus stop.
Transfer.
Because Indian public transport enjoys reminding you that “direct” is often a philosophical category.
Children.
I got off.
Another bus.
Then
Kovalam.
Simple.
Approximately forty minutes in total.
Give or take.
Traffic had ambition that day.
The council pauses.
Ambition?
It wished to become stationary infrastructure.
Fair.
Cars.
Buses.
People.
Road.
The usual urban choreography where everyone possesses somewhere important to be
and therefore nobody moves.
But eventually
Kovalam.
No Fast Travel necessary.
Forty minutes is too short to invoke the sacred unconsciousness unless unusually gifted.
I remained awake.
Probably looked outside.
Perhaps phone.
Perhaps nothing.
The Archive is fresh enough to know the broad experience,
but not every blink requires preservation.
And then
off the bus.
Children.
This is where the trip truly began.
Because I had arrived with no itinerary.
Of course.
The council sighs.
We stopped expecting those several Wanderings ago.
Good.
No attraction list.
No:
First lighthouse.
Then beach.
Then cafe.
Then sunset.
No schedule.
No reservation.
No objective beyond the wonderfully vague:
Let’s see what happens.
And
one administrative requirement.
The council looks toward the bracelet.
Ah.
Relic.
Yes.
Children.
We are now deep enough into Wandering chronology that relics are established law.
A Wandering happened?
A relic follows.
Bone tag.
Something to add.
Something physical that says:
This road occurred.
The bracelet had become archive hardware.
A noisy one.
Very noisy.
I am no longer capable of entering places quietly.
But still.
Relic required.
So somewhere during this Wandering,
potential acquisition.
No pressure.
No scavenger hunt necessarily.
Just
keep an eye open.
A shop perhaps.
A stall.
Something.
Children.
And here I need to clarify something about the Archive.
Because you may notice certain Wanderings contain dramatic relic acquisition.
Rishikesh?
A whole event.
Kochi?
Pilgrimage for the missing tag.
Trivandrum Zoo?
Bro literally removed a bone tag from her own necklace after independently deducing what I needed.
Those stories remain because the acquisition itself mattered.
But others?
Children.
Sometimes Nuo walks into shop.
Sees tag.
Buys tag.
End.
The council waits for additional mythology.
There isn’t any.
That is why I sometimes forget to mention it.
Not because I forgot how I obtained the relic.
No.
You have seen my memory.
Unfortunately.
I can remember some middle aged man’s contribution to Marina Beach with traumatic visual precision.
The council shudders.
We did not need that callback.
I did.
But children,
if the relic acquisition carries no story,
my brain often does not categorize it as an event worth narrating.
Chennai?
Shop.
Tag acquired.
No epic.
Kazhakootam?
Green Hair happened to have one.
Simple.
Kovalam?
Shop.
Again.
The council checks.
That’s it?
That’s it.
Saw one.
Bought it.
Relic acquired.
Children.
Not every artifact requires prophecy.
Sometimes commerce works normally.
A refreshing concept after Chennai.
The council agrees.
So if a future Wandering ends and you think:
Wait.
What about the tag?
There is a reasonable chance the answer is:
Shop.
Nuo forgot to tell you because nothing exploded.
Archive protocol updated.
Excellent.
Now that bureaucracy is complete
back.
Kovalam.
I stood there.
At the threshold.
And this image
children
is where I want the Wandering to begin.
Forward
beach.
Behind
civilization.
The council looks both ways.
Behind me:
roads.
Vehicles.
Buildings.
Shops.
People doing ordinary things.
The infrastructure of life.
Food.
Transport.
Transactions.
Noise.
Forward?
Sea.
Not yet necessarily visible in full from every angle,
but there.
The direction had changed.
Beach.
The reason people knew Kovalam.
The older memories.
The familiar place.
And me
standing between both.
No sadness driving me.
No person waiting.
No desperate quest.
No question I needed answered.
Nothing.
Just boredom
that had successfully transformed itself into a bus ride.
The council smiles.
Story Nuo understood this was a Wandering already.
Yes.
That is the difference.
No years later archaeological declaration.
No:
Oh shit, that counted.
No retrospective numbering surprise.
I knew.
I had left because I wanted to wander.
Even if the motive was hilariously small.
And maybe that gave the moment a different texture.
I was not waiting for the city to prove itself.
I was not demanding significance.
Children.
That is important.
I did not arrive thinking:
Kovalam, teach me.
Good.
Cities hate homework.
I did not arrive thinking:
Give me a story worthy of the Archive.
No.
That would poison it.
I simply thought
walk.
See what happens.
If nothing happened?
Fine.
Then the Wandering would be:
Nuo went to Kovalam.
Walked.
Came home.
Maybe that itself would be enough.
The council nods.
Because conscious wandering does not mean forcing adventure.
Exactly.
It means allowing movement.
The story earns itself
or it doesn’t.
And yesterday
I stepped forward.
Toward the beach.
Children.
Present Nuo already knows what happened.
Story Nuo
for once nearly identical
didn’t.
He knew only the next few metres.
Walk.
Perhaps sand soon.
Perhaps shops.
Perhaps dogs.
Perhaps absolutely nothing.
The council opens the fresh file.
WANDERING SEVENTEEN:
KOVALAM.
AGE OF MEMORY:
One day.
MOTIVE:
Boredom.
DISTANCE:
Nearby.
FAMILIARITY:
Already visited.
QUESTION SEEKING ANSWER:
None.
ITINERARY:
Absolutely not.
RELIC SYSTEM:
Active.
TAG ACQUISITION:
Shop. Don’t overthink it.
CURRENT POSITION:
Threshold.
FORWARD:
Beach.
BEHIND:
Civilization.
NUO:
Let’s see what happens.
Children.
And so begins perhaps the purest form of conscious Wandering yet.
Not running away.
Not searching.
Not healing.
Not revisiting.
Not chasing a person.
Not chasing pot.
Not even chasing curiosity about the place.
Simply
I could move.
So I did.
The council looks toward the sea.
That is enough.
Thus concludes Chapter One.
The Seventeenth Wandering.
The Extremely Recent Archive.
Yesterday.
The Familiar Kovalam.
The Varkala Comparison.
The Complete Absence Of A Noble Motive.
Boredom.
The First Bus.
The Second Bus.
The Forty Minute Traffic Ambition.
The Established Wandering Protocol.
The Relic Requirement.
The Explanation Of Why Some Tag Acquisitions Never Receive Their Own Saga.
The Very Exciting Commercial Transaction:
See Tag.
Buy Tag.
And
The Threshold.
Children.
Behind me
civilization.
Ahead
the beach.
And between them stood Nuo,
with nothing to escape,
nothing to seek,
and nowhere in particular to be.
Perfect.
I walked forward.
