MY TOMATO HEALING

Reeling from a break-up and badly in need of a distraction, Noopur Jambhekar travels from India to Bunol, Spain, to take part in La Tomatina, the famous fruit-throwing festival

- Noopur Jambhekar

As I sat down at the desk in my hostel to write this piece, I forced myself to stop thinking about what could've been and the reality I was living in that moment.

“It’s going to be the experience of a lifetime,” my friends said as they saw me off at the airport a couple of days previously. If only I had known just how hard it was going to hit me every time I experienced things and didn’t have him there to share it with. I'd travelled more than 7,000km from my native India to Valencia, Spain, to witness one of the world's most famous festivals, La Tomatina. Billed as the world's biggest food fight, it seemed like the perfect antidote to my sorrowful post-break-up state, and I woke up the morning of the event at 4.30am, eager to get stuck in.

Why did my boyfriend and I break up, you ask? The caste differences, which are still prevalent in India today, are to blame, contrary to what the world sees.

As I left the hostel, the staff member at the front desk said to me in a sleepy tone: "Tomatina is no longer a Spanish festival; it belongs to the world now."

Walking towards the bus stop that would take me the 40km from Valencia to Bunol, where the festival takes place, I saw two guys around my age heading in the same direction. “Are you going to the festival too?” I asked. They nodded, and we fell into step and easy conversation. They were both from Japan but had been travelling around Europe for several months.

“I came to Spain to forget that my backpack was stolen in Slovenia,” one of them told me, seeming incredibly calm, even though his bag contained his work laptop, iPad, chargers, licences and more. “I’m just grateful for this life and the experience I’m about to have here.” His words struck a chord as I, too, was here to forget and to try to live in the present.