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?