Rollercoaster ride of a literary traveller

Ranbir Parmar

WHENEVER my love for travel takes me around the world, I try to visit the locations I’m already familiar with through their description in novels.

During a trip to London, I took my first ride on the underground train up to Baker Street. I came out of the station and looked towards Marylebone Road to find a 9-metre-high statue of a familiar figure wearing an Inverness cape and a deerstalker hat, holding a Calabash pipe in his mouth.

‘Oh, our good old Sherlock Holmes,’ I exclaimed. His lips were slightly parted and I could almost hear the words, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson!’ The Arthur Conan Doyle stories I had read during my adolescent years came alive before my eyes. A few paces up the street, I noticed the blue plaque with the legend, 221 B-Baker Street, the famous fictional home of the legendary detective. The imaginary sleuth was so real for his readers from around the world that they used to write letters to this address, asking for help.

When I visited Vienna during my east European trip, I was obsessed with Graham Greene’s novel The Third Man and the classic movie based on it. Walking through the cobblestoned streets of the Old Town and meandering through the underground sewers, I could relive the cat-and-mouse chase involving Harry Lime, the shadowy smuggler of the story. I also visited the Prater amusement park and enjoyed a glimpse of the Giant Ferris wheel, the setting of the epic climactic scene.

But the literary traveller in me faced disappointment when I toured Germany last year and went to see Checkpoint Charlie — the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point during the Cold War. The tense opening sequence of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the climax of Smiley’s People have made this spot special for the fans of John le Carré’s spy novels. But my visit proved to be an anticlimax. Nowhere could I see the iconic sentry watch-tower, the pillbox, guardhouse or the pedestrian footbridge over the narrow river described in the novels. Instead, I found a reconstructed army guardhouse with a pile of sandbags and a few fake American soldiers posing for photographs with tourists.

A curious thing happened during my Washington DC trip when I went to see the Lincoln Memorial. After ascending the 80-odd steps, I confronted the colossal seated figure of Abraham Lincoln. His frock coat was unbuttoned and a large US flag was draped over the back of the chair. Suddenly, I remembered a Dan Brown novel in which the hero hid a document in a niche behind this statue. Just on a whim, I walked towards the rear of the statue to find out if there was such a niche. To my surprise, there was — and when I inserted my hand in it, I found a folded paper. Agog with curiosity, I opened it and burst into a chuckle. Somebody had written, ‘Howdy, Dan Brown fan! A great writer, isn’t he?’

It was a greeting from one literary traveller to another.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.