Some people retire. Rupal Dave apparently decided to see what was out there.
My friend Rupal has recently retired, which in her case seems to mean keeping a bag somewhere near ready and saying yes when she and her husband discover another ridiculously inexpensive last-minute trip.
And they are finding them.
All over the world.
Along the way, Rupal has begun writing about the places they go, the people they meet, the things they notice, and what happens when you leave enough room in a trip for the unexpected.
She calls herself a fledgling writer.
I have evidence to the contrary.
In November 2001, just weeks after September 11, Rupal wrote an essay called “A Hug for America.” Her son Ishaan was almost seven when he came home from school on September 11 believing that what had happened that day had been a terrible series of “plane accidents.”
Over the next few days, Rupal and her husband tried to explain something almost impossible to explain to a child.
Then Ishaan saw his father putting an American flag on their house and excitedly asked whether it was going up for his birthday.
Rupal told him they were putting it up because America had been badly hurt. She compared it to the way a child runs to his parents after getting hurt and is held close and reassured that he is loved and cared for.
Ishaan understood.
“Oh! So our flag is like a hug for America?!”
There it was.
A complicated moment in history reduced not to politics, rhetoric or fear, but to something a child—and the rest of us—could understand: when somebody hurts, you hold them closer.
Twenty-five years later, I read Rupal’s essay and see the same quality I see emerging in her travel stories: she notices the human part.
That matters.
So I’m putting this out into the universe before she can protest that she’s “just dabbling.”
There is a travel writer here.
Not necessarily the Ten Things You Must See Before Leaving Paris kind. We have plenty of those.
I want the Rupal who notices the conversation at the next table. The strange little hotel found because the airfare was too cheap to pass up. The meal they weren’t expecting. The person who gave directions. The missed train. The place that looked entirely different from the photograph. The ridiculous bargain that started the whole adventure.
The woman who has lived enough life to know that the story of a place is usually found somewhere beyond the itinerary.
So consider this her unofficial introduction.
Meet Rupal Dave: newly retired, longtime observer of the human condition, bargain-fare hunter, accidental adventurer—and, whether she’ll admit it yet or not, writer.
Her next chapter may have started with a last-minute ticket.
I intend to read where it takes her.
—Beth
