Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Faceless

The evening of October 3. Some said it was Navami evening, some others said it was already Dashami evening. For me, it was the evening of my departure from Calcutta, after having spent two sweet-bitter weeks in the city.

As soon as I secured the seat belt, an air-hostess walked up to me and said, "Do you mind taking the seat next to the emergency exit? As per rules, someone must sit next to the emergency exit, at least during take-off and landing?" I agreed, even though, as a rule, I always ask for an aisle seat because I do not like the idea of being sandwiched between strangers, invariably men.

As the plane took off, Calcutta came into view: a matrix of luminous yellow dots. Suddenly, I was gripped by a sense of belonging. Didn't I now belong to those yellow dots, having written a book about the city? Shouldn't I be pandal-hopping under their glow right now, precisely what hundreds and thousands of its citizens were doing at the moment?

But one must leave in order to be left longing -- I should have spent some more time by the river; I forgot to visit Oxford Bookstore; I should have had some more rossogolla and shingara; I should have bought some Bengali CDs; okay next time -- and it is the longing that brings about a sense of belonging. The longing, of course, comes from loving.

I was a faceless outsider when Calcutta became my hometown-in-law in April 2006. I was only a journalist then, working for a Madras paper; I did not know I was going to write books someday, leave alone a book about the city. I was familiar with writings on Calcutta, but not with Calcutta. My wife began to show me around and after initial reluctance sowed by writings that maligned the city, I began to like it. And once I began to move around on my own, I began to love it.

Calcutta, I realised, was a city like no other in India. It was a delightful salad of the old and the new. One moment you were biting into the old and another moment into the new: the experience was worth writing about. Thus was born the idea for Longing, Belonging, in October 2010 when, a couple of friends and I spent an evening in Trincas. Today, exactly four years later, the book is out in the stores and, considering my picture is on the back cover, I am no longer exactly a faceless stranger.

***

Two hours later, the pilot announced the descent to Chennai. From the sky, all cities look the same. Chennai, too, was a grid of luminous yellow dots as the plane prepared to land. I felt gripped by a sense of belonging again: Ah, this is my city, I have already written a book about it, Tamarind City, and the book had a picture of me in the inside pages. But I walked out of the airport coach a faceless man, proceeding to the conveyor belt to collect my luggage.

As I took a pre-paid taxi to my home in T. Nagar, I made a wish: when history judges the two cities by the books written about them, my books should count too. Doesn't matter if I don't count.

3 comments:

Paresh Palicha said...

Now, don't you rest on your laurels, Kochi is waiting for you!

Ardra said...

Am sure your friends in each of these cities claim that you belong to their city...

Sharmishtha said...

You will surely leave your footprints behind in both the cities