A day in the life of a tourist?

My stay in Mumbai is brief. I came on Friday and I leave tomorrow. I stay in the city as a tourist clicking touristy pictures of the renovated David Sassoon library, the row of kolhapuri chappals at colaba causeway and St. Xavier’s College with its empty corridoors and the foyer shorn of its mandatory fixtures. The changed college looks uninviting, complete in its new world charm. I couldn’t recognise Metro. The transition from Metro to Metro Adlabs is definitely worth a docufilm. I didn’t even click a picture. Work on the Metro subway is still in a half finished state. They have already dug the tunnels but there is no entrance to the subway, I am told. The bust of Gokhale (or was it Agarkar) on Mahapailka Marg looks at a half-filled pit.

I ate at Churchill. After that we went to Theobroma’s for dessert. I remember the first time we went there I came back and told my sister about this place. My sister burst into laughter. Such laughter, I say. When I asked her why she was laughing she said that theobroma in pharmacognosy meant suppositories. For the ‘uninitiated’ , a suppository is something that is given to a person in order to facilitate smooth passage of stools.

But I am sure there is a mistake here. I haven’t got the name right or I couldn’t pronounce it right or even if I did I am sure there is a colonial or greek connotation to the name.  Speculation about the name apart, the place has fabulous desserts. While coming back, I browsed through the books or what remains of them after the BMC shooed the book sellers away. Pity, I say.

I had a lovely chat with a newspaper vendor about life, news, newspapers especially eveningers and the afternoon papers.  I would love to philosophise endlessly even as I sell newspapers. There is something about sitting in one place and selling things that I find fascinating. The only high in his life is selling all the newspapers and leaving for home.

I leave tomorrow. I am not sure if I want to come back to this city again. I couldn’t find the space I always had in this city. I am not in love with Chennai. Not yet. But language, sunrise, beach, food notwithstanding that city is growing on me. Perhaps you can never hold opinions about where you want to rest finally.

Strangeness

I think I live in a strange city, where the beach is on the wrong side and it rains at the wrong time. Suddenly I realise that wrong is with reference to my notion of right, which is ambiguous in any case. I walk on the road and I hear a strange language. I strain my ears, desperately hoping I will understand a few words. All world languages are connected, I remember reading  in a book, a long while back. Clearly not.

This language is nothing like anything I have ever heard. I can’t identify the script and the beauty of it is lost on me. They say, it is a classical language and also one of the oldest. I reply back with a ‘really’? It is safe, that word. It doesn’t denote anything, neither surprise, nor ignorance, nor understanding.  I wish I wouldn’t have to live behind words. Living with them is so much better.

Understanding this part of the world will take time. I can’t understand why men and women sit separately in buses and yet travel together in the rarely used MRTS. I can’t understand why the MRTS was introduced. I can’t understand the logic behind building enormous and kitschy stations for non-existent travellers.

The bill boards don’t matter. They entertain but they don’t disturb. They are a justification for all the buildings that the administration should have constructed but did not. The beach is beautiful at night. It is clear especially when it is full moon night. I can’t see the sea but I know it is there and if I continue walking towards the sound of the waves I will collide with the waves and will soon be overpowered.

I see tamil brahmin women dressed in the traditional sari, the kind I see at Rangachari everyday, with a brilliant nose stud and classical looks in the Mylapore market. Mylapore  is filled with temples and mosquitos. They say, Mylapore has a thriving coffee culture. I am yet to discover that but one of these days I will go in search of that. Culture is a term, I am a little hesitant to use. Coming from Mumbai, I don’t believe in culture.

Your origins are not a justification of what you end up as.  Culture can be attained, acquired, changed, moulded, bought.  I am unable to reconcile my notions of culture with what I see around me.  Maybe I am just plain uncultured.

yes,disarray it is, all of it

..and i come back to the same old refrain. how i wish life was easier and decisions were made and things were clearer and i had a crystal ball where i could see what i would be upto in 10 years and knowledge could be had merely by reading the kind of stuff i want to read and truth was absolute and it rained when we wanted it to rain and didn’t when we didn’t want it and Germany wasn’t so far away and drink was easier to get and people weren’t snobs and people wouldn’t commit suicide and i wouldn’t regret every decision i made exactly 4 seconds after i made it and the grass wouldn’t always be greener on the other side and i would think that the grass is greener on my side and i would acknowledge that it is and people were kinder and there were more smiles on my face and i was less selfish and i could be a bird for exactly 3 minutes and fly over my house and causes wouldn’t always be attributed to events and motives could exist without freud to analyze them and i could leave everything and just write away and food would pop up, for the cause of good writing (ahem!)…

Free Fall.

I have spent exactly 1 month and 15 days at ACJ and I just can’t stop wondering if it was a big mistake. I stand at the edge of the terrace and want to fall, fall, fall till there is no sensation of falling and no sensation of memory.

Memory is the biggest culprit. It makes you regurgitate and mull over in the scariest way possible. You go back to the previous year and think over what you could have done different. Thought is equally to be blamed because it is not a chemical, it is a presence, very much there and leaves its mark on the mind.

I have always tried to run away from memory. I don’t want to remember because remembering brings pain. I don’t think memory can be qualified in the way water is. Strangely though, it is like water. It seeps into you, not at once maybe if it thinks you are hard but over a course of time, it seeps through those pores, ruthlessly. Memory doesn’t care though you think it belongs to you. I don’t agree with Descartes when he says ‘I think, therefore I am’. I would rather ‘had I not thought, I would be’ .Yet, this notion is problematic simply because thought is such an integral part of man and denying it its rightful status would mean denying humans the status of thinking, feeling beings.

I am pretty tired of this room, the air conditioning is too high. We complain about the wrong things don’t we? Chennai is hot and it is but rational for a person to be happy in a cold room. But I feel locked in, hedged in almost by people, thoughts, papers, professors, books even. My thoughts come to me in a rush, almost at once and suddenly they stop. They dry up like a well-used fountain of water.

So I want to fall, fall, fall.