(This is a picture from my brother's wedding : the house looking pretty and all at 6 AM! Yea well, I'm a sucker for Diwali lights!)
इश्क़ की धूमि
रोज़ जलाये
उठता धुँआ तोह कैसे छुपाये
हो
अँखियाँ करे जी हजूरी
मांगे हैं तेरी मंज़ूरी
कजरा सियाही दिन रंग जाए
तेरी कस्तूरी रेन जगाये
मन मस्त मगन
मन मस्त मगन
बस तेरा नाम दोहराये
चाहे भी तोह भूल न पाये
-- Amitabh Bhattacharya
- Mast Magan, Two States
It's weird how I haven't figured out a standard response to this question yet. I usually take a minute to answer and the sentence usually starts with an "umm, well actually..." and that leaves my audience wondering if I'm capable of putting together a string of words to answer the most common of all questions after "What's your name?". It's a lot easier now in Singapore, because I say India and stop at that.
My two most common choices for where my hometown is, are: Bangalore and Delhi. I don't even know why Bangalore is included in my choice, because I have never lived there. Actually I have, for a year when I was 6 years old. That counts, but doesn't really count. I have family in Bangalore, maybe that's why. Plus it's the one city we used to keep revisiting in our summer vacations to head to our grandparents' coffee estates in Coorg. So, it's natural to have some kind of connect with the city. I love Bangalore. Always have, always will. There's something magical about that city. I feel it's also a lot younger that most other Indian cities, other than Mumbai maybe. Again, completely what I feel, could be wrong! I love how it feels, the city. It's cosmopolitan, there's so much to do in Bangalore! The city of course is not in the best of shape now. But Bangalore will always remain in my heart. And might possibly also be the city i eventually settle in.
My other choice is Delhi. Not Gurgaon. Delhi. Not Noida. Delhi! I've lived in Delhi for 5 years. And i love it. absolutely do. The city, unfortunately, has come to be associated with all the wrong things in India from being the most corrupt to being the most unsafe, hazardous rather, for women. But that city has so much to offer. In the true sense of the word, Delhi is beautiful. When I go back now, and drive through Rajpath towards India Gate, I can't help smile and wonder just how absolutely stunning this city of mine is. The people I reach out to for anything in my life now, are folks I met in Delhi, in school and college. And I'll be ever thankful to the city for that. The food, the food, oh my God, the food. No city can beat Delhi for the food it has i think, maybe Lucknow, but no other city! The city is at it's best in winters and it starts getting pretty during Diwali and Eid in October/November and the festive mood continues through December and then we start decking up for Republic Day on January 26th. It's the best time in Delhi. I always tell people who plan to travel to Delhi, to travel in the winter months. I am also nostalgic about Delhi because I went to college and that is true for everyone everywhere in the world I guess. The city they go to college in, will always hold a special place in their hearts. I think it was Delhi that introduced me to the love of my life after ShahRukh Khan : Chai! You literally couldn't survive those horrid semester exams, very conveniently scheduled in December - January ( I mean really!) without chai. The number of 2 Rupee tokens I have used up in my college canteen, oh! I remember when they increased the price from 2 Rupees to 3 Rupees, i gave the canteen manager, a download of how the economy works and how in the world can she justify this 1 rupee increase when the price of coffee has stayed the same. Haha. Well, that's another thing Delhi gave me : my crazy obsession with economics. :)
Actually I should've also included a third chocie : Hyderabad. and I've spoken about that city and what mean to me here.
But obviously I've written more about Delhi than Bangalore, and I should really start saying Delhi when people ask me this question next time. But if one of my Delhi friends is around, they immediately object and proclaim that I am a pseudo Delhi-ite. How, oh that hurts me. But that is in a way true. I love Delhi, but I guess, I don't love it like someone who has lived in the city all their lives and knows the city inside out. It's sometimes sad that I can't relate to any city/town/village in India like that. I don't know how it feels to live in one house throughout your childhood. What your neighborhood friends group is like. Or how shopkeepers in your local kirana shop know your name and have seen you grow up before their eyes.
But then I think about my childhood and if i would give up travelling every three years, making friends all over, knowing many towns and cities, albeit just a little for any other way of life. And I say to myself, no way! I'd rather move around than stay in one place. Travelling with my parents and living all over the country has been such a satisfying experience that I wouldn't trade it for anything else. So what if I don't have friends I have grown up with, I have friends from Kashmir to Madhya Pradesh to Imphal to UP. And some of them I'm still in touch with. In fact, one of my most crazy-fun friends group is the bunch that I went to school with for a year (2003-2004) in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh. When we meet today, we connect instantly and it's magical.
I have often have conversations with other Indians, who've lived in one city all their lives, about India. India and what she means, the idea of India, India as we would like to see her, India as she is today, India as she was. I don't mean to question their patriotism or nationalist sentiment, but I often find them either unaware or unappreciative of the fact that the country has stayed together for all these years in spite of doomsayers predicting her collapse, even before we came together as one nation and one people. Some of them even contemplating that India will do much better if she were 28 different countries than one huge mass of land, where people from one end of that mass don't really identify with the people who live at the other end. I remember coming back home and crying after that conversation because it affected me so much and i couldn't understand why people were saying these things and not as "how would it be if this were to happen" but more like "we wish this was reality". And I am so bad at articulating my feelings when I am hurt or angry that I couldn't say all that I wanted to during the conversation and retreated to my shell! Haha. Funny now, but very disturbing then.
When my father would get posted to a different town after spending 2 years in the previous one, the only common thing between the me and girl sitting next to me in school, was that fact that we were Indian. Our languages were different, our festivals were different (or the emotional value attached to each festival was different), our food was different, the way we dressed was different. And it's amazing how neither of this shocked my brother or me then. It's now when I look back, that these examples stand out. But back then, they were Indian, like us and that was enough. Nothing else mattered, not their religion, not their caste, nothing. My parents never really had conversations with us about different cultures, about being aware of the differences or respecting them, or the importance of loving a good person irrespective of where she/he was from or what language they spoke or if they has a skull-cap or a turban on their heads or a tilak on their forehead.
I would never trade those experiences just to wholly identify with one city and to belong to one place. I'm Indian and proud! The only sad part about living your life like that when you're growing up, is that you get majorly addicted picking up your bags and moving to the next destination and another adventure, completely unsure of how life will be there and completely ok with that uncertainty. As Indians, we are risk averse and any move we make or any decision we take will have ten thousand hours of careful deliberation behind it, and attached to it will be ten thousand opinions from all our family and friends. Even today, most young Indians, who have lived in one city all their lives, take ages to pick up their bags and move to another city. I remember coming back home from college one day and telling my parents that I had a job and that I had selected to move to Hyderabad instead of staying back in Delhi and working in Gurgaon. And they were like "Yes, ok, good for you!". But like I said, I am now so addicted to moving cities, that I can't live in one city for more than 4 years, 3 years and I start feeling the itch and i'll randomly start searching for opportunities within the company in the random-est of places.
Of course these are all just my experiences and there have been many exceptions to the examples I have stated. I've met people who are well traveled and have lived in multiple cities all over India and are yet extremely narrow-minded. And I have also met folks who've lived in one city all their lives and yet have such an all-encompassing view of the world.
I have very obviously drifted from the main topic of this post to talking about nationalism and lifestyles and mindsets. Not surprising, given my limited capacity to stay focused to one topic, especially when I'm writing! But even though I've established that I love Delhi so much more than Bangalore and it means a lot more to me, I am sure, the next time someone asks me this question, I will still fumble and try to explain how I am from Delhi and Bangalore, and also from Kashmir, Assam, Hyderabad, M.P and U.P, but also at the same, from none of these places.
ओढ़ के ढाणी प्रीत की चादरर
आया तेरे शहर में रांझा तेरा
दुनिया ज़माना
झूठा फ़साना
जीने मरने का वादा
साँचा मेरा
सीष महल ना
मुझको सुहाए
तुझ संग सूखी रोटी भाये
मन मस्त मगन
मन मस्त मगन
बस तेरा नाम दोहराये
चाहे भी तोह भूल न पाये
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