Cities and I

Sitting inside a restaurant in Humayunpur on a surprise good weather day in Delhi summer this year, and hogging a plate of deliciously spicy pork roast, I felt a sudden pang of intense yearning for roadside Calcutta Chinese. It had been so long since I’d had a fulfilling plate of greasy ‘chowmein’, the pieces of chicken deep-fried, the veggies slightly hardened, packed in grey cardboard boxes and tied with rubber bands. Watching a quiet sunset by the very blue sea in Marseille, I remember thinking of Marine Drive – of being surrounded by a noisy crowd, of the struggle for finding a place to squeeze myself in. Every time someone cooks good mutton, it reminds me of a very particular, unforgettable plate of mutton, served with steaming hot Indrayani rice, in a roadside shack in Pune.

Suketu Mehta had written in his iconic ‘Maximum City’, ‘I am an adulterous resident; when I am in one city, I am dreaming of the other. I am an exile; citizen of the country of longing.’ 

My relationship with cities can only be described as polyamorous. I like the idea of the idyllic village setting, perhaps nestled in the lap of mountains, or by the expansive ocean – but just for some time. I love reading about them, and I love watching films set in such locations. But when it comes to being, it is always the city that my heart chooses. This is slightly contradictory since I am an introvert who cherishes solitude, and popular culture often equates introversion to aloneness. I love people and noise and being bang in the middle of chaos – mapping out my invisible circle of boundary wherever I go. ‘You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people,’ Olivia Laing wrote in ‘The Lonely City’, one of my favourite books.

I tend to fall in love with most cities I visit. Every city I leave, I yearn to stay longer, or return someday, as if there’s unfinished business being left behind with each of them. There’s a certain excitement in discovering a place, the years of history it carries – all (especially in Indian cities with limited care for archiving and restorations) carelessly strewn around in its food, its people, its trees, in the corners of its streets. Every city has its own endless stories that one can only unravel as its inhabitant – and my greatest regret is that in a single lifetime, one can only be an inhabitant in a few, and a tourist in most cities.

When you live in a city long enough, you create a city of your own – a city of memories. Some places you love, some you don’t, and some you’ve left such strong memories with that you feel you’ll break if you return to them. My city of memories resides in Calcutta (‘This city knows all my firsts/ I try running away as it keeps following me’ – Kabir Suman’s song, ‘Prothom Shobkichhu’). I grew up, and spent pretty much my entire life there, till I shifted to Bombay for work last year. I try not to think too much about the fact that I shall perhaps never be an inhabitant, but forever a visitor in my own home, my dear Calcutta.

I enjoy living in Bombay. There’s a constant madness to this city, everything moving at the speed of light, something new to find every day amid the noise and the crowd. And when it feels like a lot, you can always run to the sea. The cinephile in me has romanticized this city for so long that I loved it long before I came – only when you live here do you realise that it gets unlovable at times. ‘You have to believe in the illusion, else you’ll go mad,’ says a working-class resident of Bombay in Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light. ‘Is sheher mein har shaqs pareshaan kyu hai,’ sings Suresh Wadkar as Farooque Sheikh plays Ghulam, a taxi driver in Muzaffar Ali’s Gaman. Nothing could describe living in Bombay better. But it is empowering, to say the least, for a single woman in her 20s (cushioned by very many privileges) to find her own space and her own way in an overwhelming city like this one.

Yet, as much as I enjoy living in Bombay, as a l(r)oyal citizen of the country of longing, I live in a constant state of yearning for Calcutta. My mother sends me pictures from home – a new flower that has bloomed on our balcony, a cloudy morning from our windows. But it is the agony of distance – you can never know it all. New cushion covers, a book someone has borrowed from your shelf (sigh), the lightbulb that needs fixing, your father’s new pair of pyjamas – so much that slips by, so much you never get to know till the next visit. The home we leave and the home we return to are never the same – a resident in one, a visitor in the other.

What I miss the most about Calcutta is perhaps a particular time of the day – the Bikelbela. It translates to early evening, but one cannot describe it as simply that.

Days get shorter as you move towards the east, so the sun sets in Calcutta way earlier than in Delhi or Bombay. But darkness falls quickly over these cities, while Calcutta, true to the greatest complaint against it in every other aspect, is slow and lazy and laid-back for shondhye, or late evening to fall. I have not felt the bikel in any other city as I have in Calcutta.

The bikel is sort of a no man’s land, a time of the day when you’re not sure what to do. It is when you return from school, or wonder how you can spend your evening after college, or wake up from a deep post-lunch nap and stare into oblivion. Ever since I was a child, I would feel a wave of sadness creeping up on me during this time of the day, and this feeling has persisted to date. Perhaps bikels and sunsets are also a kind of loss. I realised much later that this wave of sadness was actually a wave of existentialism that would hit me. Yes, in Bengal, you tend to be philosophical even when you’re a child.

In Bombay, I cannot seem to feel the change of seasons (except, of course, the monsoon). It is difficult to distinguish spring from summer, autumn from winter. Only a sudden March breeze on my skin might catch me unaware, reminding me of the March of my childhood – the season of exams – sitting in office, I shall wonder if life was indeed easier when I had small, defined goals in life, like doing well in an exam, or if it is simply the bias of rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. The unpredictability of summertime thunderstorms, or Kalboishakhi as we call them. The very blue skies before Durga Pujo, a full meadow in my neighbourhood blooming with kaash phool, and the strong smell of chhatim (called the Devil’s Tree in English, how unfortunate) in the air. The advent of autumn – Hemonto – post Durga Pujo, the very faint chill in the air before winter officially arrives, the sudden outbreaks of insects – shyamapoka – hovering around the streetlights – I’ve left them all back home. Sometimes, when it is raining in Bombay, and my mother tells me it is raining in Calcutta too, I feel closer to home. Lovers have used the rain to feel closer to each other since long – Kalidasa’s Yaksha sent a letter to his love via the clouds in Meghadootam. A song by Chandrabindoo, a Bangla band, has this line, ‘Ami to chaiboi, e shohore tumi neme esho’ (of course, I would want you to pour down in my city).

‘You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx,’ Italo Calvino wrote in ‘Invisible Cities’. My living in Bombay coincides with my mid-20s – the quintessential years that ask questions. The noisy Bombay remains witness to my emotional rollercoasters, not attempting to mend things, but simply existing as an observer. Perhaps that is why I grow increasingly fond of the city, even while hunting for good fish markets and sweet shops and Bengali restaurants, and my ears perking up every time I overhear a stranger speaking my mother tongue. I enjoy spending time with myself, and Bombay allows me to do so. A play at Prithvi has never not lifted my mood, no matter how bad the day has been. A good film at Regal has always been an incredible experience. A stroll through the bookstores in Fort will always get me a rare gem. Bombay has saved me many times – taking some and giving some. ‘Kuch ishq kiya, kuch kaam kiya,’ as they say. But with your heart perpetually split between two cities, you never know which one to call home.

In late 2023, while on a student exchange program in France, I went backpacking all across Europe. In those four months, it was a blur of cities. Needless to say, I loved them all. As a student on a shoestring budget, I would take the cheapest trains, stay in hostel dorms, walk thousands of steps each day to save on transport, and eat a lot of junk. I was in heaven, with the number of excellent museums surrounding me. But above everything, it opened my eyes to many, many cities, introduced me to many ways of living, and made me fall in love with most of them.

A recent study says, that of the fifty most walkable cities in the world, forty-five of them are in Europe. Indian cities are among the least walkable. Mumbai’s footpaths have been slowly disappearing for years now, the city is a nightmare for anyone who loves to walk – except few areas around South Bombay. Despite affecting residents’ health and well-being, walkability is not part of any politician’s campaign, not a priority amid far more pressing issues in a developing country. Walking changes everything in a city. No city can be explored better than it can be by walking. Shankha Ghosh, the Bangla poet, wrote, ‘Within this Kolkata resides another Kolkata – walk and see.’ Of course, since time immemorial, the flâneur has always been a man. The idea of the flâneuse, the female walker, came much later. A woman cannot simply give in to her whims of flaneuring around a city, she must ask herself a hundred questions first – is it too late? Is it too early? Is it too empty? Is it too crowded? So did I – wanderer with guardrails.

In France, I stayed in a small city called Grenoble. After weeks of backpacking across countries, I would return to this city, and so for those few months, Grenoble felt like home. Every day, I would take a 15-minute walk to the university, buying exactly one pain au chocolat from the exact same bakery on the way (by the end of my time there, I could place the order in French and without the need for elaborate hand gestures), and trying not to bump into a cycle while gaping at the majestic French Alps which overlooked Grenoble. How anyone got anything done while living in a city so beautiful was beyond me. In the evenings, on my walks home, I would buy groceries, call up my mother to learn how to cook, and often make a pitstop at an Indian store which stocked up on Parle-G packets, pickles, and ready-to-eat aloo parathas. On empty days, I would take endless walks across the city – trying out hot chocolate or wine, depending on my mood (and not the time of the day, as learnt from the French) at cafes, spending hours inside record stores, or sitting quietly by the Isère river. There is a certain joy in learning to look after oneself in a different country, it changes you as a person. You are compelled to care about yourself because you must – this learning has helped me get through many tough days later, when I began living alone in Bombay. Grenoble planted in me the first joys (and anxieties) of solo living, and for that I shall be forever grateful to it.

Cinema and literature always get tied very closely to one’s love for cities. I still remember the sheer joy I had felt as a kid when my parents stood me in front of Jodhpur’s Circuit House – it was where Satyajit Ray’s Feluda, the uncontested hero of my childhood, had solved his thrilling mystery case in Sonar Kella! Nothing else in Jodhpur had mattered to me as much as the quiet, almost gloomy Circuit House – to me, it was the royallest palace in the city. I loved Bombay because of Basu Chatterjee, Dhobi Ghat (‘My muse, my whore, my beloved’), The Education of Yuri, a bit of Wake Up Sid too. I knew Bombay better because of Maximum City, because of Saeed Akhtar Mirza, because of Anand Patwardhan. The first thing I did in Banaras was to go searching for Ustad Bismillah Khan’s house. I want to go to Istanbul because of Orhan Pamuk, to Lahore because of Faiz. I rediscover my Calcutta every time I read a book or a poem based on the city, and try finding ways to go to the places they describe. Art has its own way of making you fall in love with what it loves. But does that mean I do not trust my own eyes enough to love things in earnest? I overthink too much.

Michelangelo Antonioni had written a magical book called That Bowling Alley On The Tiber – an amalgamation of memories and ideas for future films (some of which he later adapted as well). In Rome, standing on a bridge with the Tiber River flowing under it, I could only think of Antonioni. Later that day, I was at the Trevi fountain – a little because I wanted to throw coins and fall in love with an Italian, but mostly because of the unforgettable Anita Ekberg in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. That same night, while having dinner at a restaurant on the pavement of the Piazza di Pietra, quite close to the Pantheon, I accidentally looked up from my pasta to find a poster on the wall next to me – Antonioni had shot L’eclisse there, with Monica Vitti and Alain Delon. That day was my silent, personal tribute to the filmmakers.

Alt and Neu in Vienna – the record store where Celine and Jesse had listened to Kath Bloom’s ‘Come Here’ amid stolen glances in Before Sunrise. Prater – the amusement park where they had taken a walk. Shakespeare and Company in Paris. They had fallen in love with each other, I fell in love with the cities. Restaurant Polidor, where Gil had met Hemingway in Midnight in Paris. Deux Moulins, the cafe in Montmartre where Amelie worked. The Cinematheque! For Langlois, for The Dreamers, for everything it stood for. For cinema, for life. A friend even suggested I attempt a (nine-minute) run through the Louvre, just for Godard’s sake – but that’s perhaps for some other time.

On my last day in Paris, I had gone to watch a film at a single-screen theatre in the Latin Quarter, called Le Champo. They were playing Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. But before the film began, they played a short two-minute teaser of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy for an upcoming retrospective. It was so sudden and so entirely unexpected, that tears streamed down my cheeks. All the worlds I loved had suddenly collided into one. I gave in to joy.

‘If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world.’

Excerpt from ‘Don’t Hesitate’, Mary Oliver 

A city is made of people. People are made of memories, love, mistakes, lies, regrets, joys, hopes, dreams, laughter, tears. In today’s times of living half our lives in the digital world, it is difficult to reach the depths of our emotions. We never understand what we truly feel, because someone has already taught us what to feel in advance. Our emotions are certified copies of others. Art is thus a reminder to feeling primal emotions, and desiring to create out of it. Perhaps that is why it helps to see a city through the eyes of people – who have written, photographed, made films, created music, painted, lived. A reminder to see things with honesty so we do not forget. Buildings grow taller – further away from the ground, the noise, the smell, the people. Late capitalism is not conducive to honest feelings. I borrow once again from the opening lines of The Lonely City – ‘Imagine standing by a window at night, on the sixth or seventeenth or forty-third floor of a building. The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. You can see them, but you can‘t reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure.’ The landscapes of urban life are rapidly changing. Human connections grow scarce, and because they do so, we search too desperately, and often make mistakes. ‘There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect.’ We must know our cities in our own ways, to be able to love them in our own ways.