Some time back, I watched Denis Villeneuve’s interstellar sci-fi movie, Dune. Based on Frank Herbert’s classic novel from 1965, the book was almost considered unadaptable into a movie. Till now, that is. Previous attempts to make a movie of it had failed—given the difficulty of capturing the span of the allegorical novel that cuts across galaxies, peoples and themes. However, Villeneuve has managed to create a stunning portrait of the world that Herbert had once dreamed of. My hair stood on its ends while I sat there watching the movie unfold.
As I stepped out of the movie hall, my head still swirling in the clouds of fantastical, almost psychedelic, images that I had seen. A thought occurred to me. Though Dune is an epic that cuts across multiple themes—environmental exploitation, colonial occupation, religious and imperialist dogmas, to name a few—this amalgam of war, love and politics is also about journeys.
Journeys that one first takes to make a living, and then to profit. On an individual level, these are the journeys we take to make a living: we move to another city, another country to find a job to our liking. Some are lucky to remain close to their families. Some, not so. I first came to Sweden for, what I thought, would be a year-long experiment. Thirteen years later, I am still here—my daily rituals, my economy, my lifestyle all now so intricately meshed with my immediate past that I consider myself almost immovable now. On a grander scale (think nation-states) sometimes, such explorations metamorphose into feudal exploitation. In the movie, it’s the planet Arrakis that’s exploited for a resource called ‘Spice’ that extends life and is key to space navigation. In our world, a close parallel would be the wars fought to gain domination over oil reserves.
Then there’s another journey. The journey that we take without knowing fully well that it will transform us, that it will sever our ties with the past, and force us to evolve. We don’t have a choice when this happens. This is a transformation crafted by a charged space that’s created when one culture encounters another. When this happens, the identity shifts in response, and in ways that are complex. In the movie, this is what happens to Paul Atreides, the protagonist, when he comes to Arrakis, which is largely an inhospitable desert planet populated by enemies but key to Spice cultivation. Out of necessity, Paul has to grow and recast himself to his immediate surroundings. He comes of age by adapting to the hostile desert environment, building bridges with the local communities and learning from them.
Often, the two types of journeys are tightly knit. The first observable one causes the second—invisible, and yet, powerfully transformational. The first everyone sees, the second only the traveller experiences. Travel to another country to work, and you are invariably exposed to another culture. With each exposure, you become more aware of how to perceive actions and statements of others—and consequently, how to react and adapt. In my case, coming to Scandinavia made me aware of and rethink even the minutest of my movements and actions. For instance, on a transactional level, this could span from how I greet people (more warmly in a foreign country) to becoming more punctual to respecting other people’s time and therefore come across as more agreeable.
The transformation has also happened on a deeper level. I realised that I have become mellow and harmonious in the decade that I have spent away from the culture that I spent my formative years in. And no, age is not the only catalyst for this change. In Sweden, where the power distance (indicating how unequally power is distributed in the society) is low, as a manager I had to redesign my decision-making approach to become more accommodating to the differing opinions in order to build consensus. So much was my focus on reorienting myself that, at certain times, I may have even overplayed this characteristic that I was trying to cultivate. While my metamorphosis may only be a fraction of the change that Dune’s Paul Atreides had to undergo, I am still proud that I managed to carry it out and successfully adapted to a foreign culture.
Watching Dune brought back an awareness of the importance of journeys that each of us take. On the surface, they may seem inconsequential and more of a necessity than an option, but transform us they still do.
