Cities are where I have spent the most of my life, intentionally or unintentionally. While I have fond memories of going back to my village, with time I have realized that cities are where I am most comfortable in. Despite all my complaints about that mass of humanity, the confluence of smells, colors and sounds that invariably overwhelm me, I know now that they also give me comfort in familiarity. Having lived in a few cities - Delhi, Bangalore and now San Diego, I have often wondered, which one is home for me - where I grew up, when I found myself or where I built my own home... ? I have often concluded (wrongly perhaps) that the designation of home only went to the one where my family resided but I now realize that it is more complicated than that.
Cities in many ways are like people - I either like them enough to try and become friends with or just try and stay away. Some cities have grown on me over the years and I have grown out of some others. Delhi is the city which was home for almost a quarter of a century. I have grown with the city and still, when I left, it was a perfunctory goodbye. There was never a sense of departure. It always felt like I will come back to it, but then that's not how things played out and eventually its been a long time that I ve been to that city. And so, in many ways, I grew out of Delhi almost like growing out of a style statement. Never really, acknowledging it but still drifting away from it one day at a time.
In the vacuum left behind by Delhi and its people, another city and its people found their niche. As a city, it changed a lot during my relatively short stay there and it has grown on me. I found myself in this city through friends, work and family and it is what i call my home today. I long to go back to it but for my people.
Delhi on the other hand has a life of its own and I realized it when the opportunity of going back to it came up. For some reason, although I have no roots in that city now, I still long to go back; not to meet anyone, but to meet the city itself. Like the thought of meeting an old lover, meeting Delhi again after many years, thrilled me, excited me and terrified me. Imagining the roads, the lanes, the shops and the shopkeepers. Will things still be the same ? If i go back, will I find the road that I used to take to walk back home when i needed to think ? Who will I find in our old house ? Will the old neighbours still be there ? Will the markets still be there ? Will the city remember me now that I have no one there ? I doubt. But then, perhaps the owner of the old saree shop at SN market would remember me for the hours I spent chatting at every visit... ? Perhaps, I will still remember some of the old lanes around the house ? Perhaps, the maze in M. will still be the same and perhaps I will still get lost in the crowds ?
Even though I have lived in Delhi for the most of my life, I have never known it well enough. Like a young man in love, the city had always revealed itself differently to me. In fact, even today, all i want to do is to go and see it with a new pair of eyes. To see it like the tourists, because there is so much that i still don't know. The narrow lanes of Old Delhi, the smells of paranthas and jalebis wafting from the old gallis, the clothes drying everywhere, the gallis selling books by the dozen - there are many places that I haven't been to and there are many that I don't remember any more. But, now, when I have the chance of visiting it one more time, I want to explore it all over again. I want to revisit the old and I want to explore the new. I want to see the city through the eyes of my camera because somehow that is when the world seems real to me... strange as this may sound, it is true ! The camera let's me see a world that I would have otherwise not seen; it makes me pay attention to colors, contrasts, lights, angles and textures which would have all otherwise escaped my attention. I want to go back and trace some of those old contacts which used to mean so much but to whom I didn't really bid farewell because it never felt necessary. I want to haggle with those store owners just like before and i want to run behind the buses for old times sake... ;)
Yes, there was so much I never used to like - the dust, the smoke, the paan stains, the smell of dried urine at the corners, the mass of humanity, the rudeness, the wickedness, the leery eyes on the roads.... but despite all that, Delhi beckons me. I want to end this awkward estrangement with the city. I want to meet it one more time, if only to say a final goodbye !
It is a city that has grown with me and in it lie buried somewhere my tears and my thoughts and my dreams of idealism. In its air, there is somewhere, the sound of wheezing lungs gasping for air and the laughter of a girl in pain. In its brick walls, there is somewhere, the girl who believed that anything could be done and that people changed. In its sounds, there is somewhere the sound of radical thought as I fought rules and tradition. In its climes, there is my childhood and my youth.
It sure was a beautiful friendship but with time we've both grown apart, moving our different ways. But I still need to say my final goodbyes ! I still need to preserve snapshots of the friendship that was for the years to come, because, we are both still growing and soon enough, there might be very little that we may even recognize of each other.
Looking forward to meeting you again... "Dilli meri jaan" ! :)
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