Whilst Sir Walter Scott took a trip to Stratford Upon Avon, Li, a Business Studies student at Glasgow University was having a road trip with friends to see The Glenfinnan Viaduct. That same year, Kioko, a middle-aged widow was on a flight from Tokyo to Canada. Her mother several years earlier flew from Tokyo to Edinburgh.
Apart from the obvious, they all had something in common; they were on similar missions. They were indulging in what psychologists refer to as parasocial relationships or unilateral relationships. Sir Walter Scott set off to visit the home of his literary hero, Shakespeare. Li, with her friends had set off to visit the place where Hogwarts Express crossed. Kioko, was traveling to visit the home of Anne of Green Gables and her mother, the city where The Bay City Rollers grew up.
I am no exception. One late spring in 2017, my wife and I took a trip to Britain’s Lake District. Whilst there, we decided one day to visit Grasmere; the home where Wordsworth lived and the place that was subject to much of his poetry.
When we arrived, Grasmere was ghostly; absent of any signs of life despite it being a bright summer morning. We took a stroll round the small village and finally finishing at Wordsworth’s cottage. Suddenly, forty, maybe fifty Indians turned up. They were professors, literature teachers, poets, and literature groupies. Having studied English literature at university, I was intrigued to find out their reasons for leaving Delhi, Kerela, Gujerat and Hyderabad to make this long pilgrimage to visit their much-loved poet.
They were on a tight schedule, but I got chatting to one man from Delhi, a poet. I asked him a question I have often pondered on: Why do we make such trips to visit the source that inspired our loved poets, writers, and characters? I deliberately used the collective noun ‘we’ as I also am afflicted by this psychological phenomenon. However, in our brief discussion, we just danced around the subject, and I walked away feeling the answer was incomplete, unexplored fully.