Suburban Meditations - Part I
Documenting the relationship between spaces, walking and aloneness
January 2024, Mumbai
Today the smog lifted itself to reveal a city that looked like a giant load of laundry wrung out to dry for too long. From the 14th floor, it looked like it had that saltiness of an Ariel top load, but not dignified enough to also smell like fabric conditioner. Buildings on buildings, not for once, in a while, obscured by thick layers of vapourised rubbish. Today you could see how sharp these buildings were, cutting through clear blue skies, getting more brilliant as I kept seeing upwards. When it looks like this, full of promise and sunny, I don’t like stepping outside because anything I do will not live up to this large, gorgeous potential I have left to brew.
Besides, I simply am not able to get up. In no way better phrased, I pulled my glute muscle doing hyperextensions at the gym. My left buttcheek has dragged me down with it, sending pungent pains all over my back every time I have to sit in one place for a while. Two things have been able to help – my flatmate’s hot pack and beers. The former glueing me to bed – a literal bed warmer – I have grown fond of how comfortably balmy it makes me. Like a sauna trial pack. I will be very sad to return it once this pain goes away.
So here I am right now, constantly testing sitting positions that work, most of them in the lying down territory. The bed responds approvingly with creaks when I try some of these as if it is trying its best to be my only supportive friend today. I haven’t left my room all day, in a feat that is unlike me. If you know me, you know that instinctual reactions to any shifts in life involve long walks. My arse has decided otherwise, making me sit down – metaphorically – with my thoughts. I finish a whole book instead. Now I am here, with everything exhausted. I’ve been listening to a lot of Dr. K, who said that you have to force yourself to get bored – that’s one way of being with your thoughts.[1]
And I go back to thinking of all the times I’ve truly felt alone and alien in a good way, and I’ve wanted to stay in that aloneness.
June 2023, Oregon
If the largesse and extremity of urban America were not enough, my brother and I found ourselves on a bus to Corvallis, Oregon – a university town with a large part of the population either really young or really old. My brother’s friend lived there, a PhD student at Oregon State University. We flew to Portland, OR with eyes locked to the window – and you know when you’re fated to the middle and aisle, that’s a neck exercise and a half. I wanted to see for myself all that I’d read about, first in bird-eye view and then in street view. As a teenager who spent a little too much time on the internet, there was a grasping of worlds that weren’t mine. Time spent browsing Wikimapia, then Google Earth and eventually Street View. Time spent poring through Zillow for sprawling houses – not even mansions – with fences and hedges and learning that kitchens have islands.
I had this brilliant, coloured view of America, one that I still hold to a certain extent, that kept making me look out of windows. I had heard about Portland’s eccentric people, the good beer, the Nike story, and Powell’s bookstore. Then out the window, I saw Mount Hood for the first time. I sat there, agape, having seen what it felt like for a city to live in the protective shade of a massive work of nature, cutting off Portland from the New York/LA pop culture fabric.
The airport was as all American airports are, convenient. You learn a lot about what a city thinks of itself when you look at its souvenirs, and apparently, Portlanders love being weird. Imagine cultivating a sense of identity on a city scale based on an attribute. Their style, friendliness, policies, architecture -- everything is dictated by this sense of accepting weirdness. As an outsider, then, you start noticing that you’re not alien for being the tourist, everyone here is just as alien.
However, my two-day understanding of the city was coloured by the stay at Corvallis that preceded it. We got off Portland Airport to take a shuttle to the tiny university town, some 80 miles south. My brother and I were the only non-white, non-old people aboard, and all fifteen people seemed to have gotten down at Salem, which I have now discovered advertises itself as the “most Oregon part of Oregon” -- whatever that means. That bus had all but three people including the driver after the stop at Salem.
In order to expect something, you have to have a sort of inkling about that something – whether instinctual (going by vibes) or pre-informed (being a nerd). I had none about Corvallis, apart from the tingling excitement of going on an Oregon trail as I was promised. The final bus stop was a Fairfield parking lot,[2] at once sending my brain into extreme comparison mode. This was summer at the Pacific Northwest’s peak; sharp, virgin sunrays etching onto brown skin. Mountain sun without the apparent altitude. Now imagine that at noon. You’re in a parking lot that doubles as a bus stand and there is not a human in sight. You have luggage, and no public transport to take it on to. My brother’s friend had told us that he lived not far from the town centre, but when the town is this tiny, everything is “not far” as we later realised. We decided to walk it to his, allowing me to look at Corvallis properly. I had never seen an actual American town before, visually matching all the descriptions I had read growing up in those Scholastic fair-type books. The shops lined up weren’t general stores like we had in Mapusa – they were specific stores. A vinyl record store, an adventure sports equipment store, a costume store, a souvenir and organic wares store and a thrift store. The highest commercial building felt two stories tall. The economy of space didn’t seem to matter in Corvallis, everything spread out and everyone too spaced out.
You don’t realise how much you have read as a child until you have to actively consider the frames through which you draw imagery. In 5th and 6th grade, I read a lot of Ann M. Martin, writer of the more popular Baby Sitters’ Club series, and the series I preferred, Main Street. Both set in small-town East Coast America, my observations of the Pacific Northwest towns were highly coloured by her descriptions. My brother’s friend took us cycling, where we cycled on nearly empty roads, by quiet lakesides and sparsely populated parks. The sun setting at 8 did nothing to offer more activities, the way summer usually promises. We entered empty university building clusters, barren hangout spots and libraries. I have now learned my order of eerie places, simply because a place where you’re expected to see bustle is unsettling when empty. It goes like this –
i. Public parks;
ii. Schools;
iii. University buildings;
iv. Graveyards.
At some point we passed a baseball stadium, where a local match was being met with cheers, the only hub of activity we had seen so far. Were this home, we would have gone and participated in the cheers, perhaps seeing familiar faces in the process of seeking common ground. There was no scope for common ground here, apart from being in the same town at the same time. I can hardly imagine what foreign students must be going through in non-urban spaces, leading me to understand the choice of sticking together. Corvallis restaurants shut by 9, to the dismay of a very Indian late-dinner mindset. We cycled by the empty rail tracks that ran behind the friend’s apartment, the stars getting brighter by the night and the air getting crisper. The unfamiliarity of everything felt abundant, yet immersive. How could have this felt a universe away from the easy night quiet of Mapusa? Does unfamiliarity lend this much of a conscious awareness?
[One in a series to follow]
[Cycling on a Corvallis main street]
[1] What a guy, this one. He’s a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and a former video game addict turned YouTuber who streams video games and talks about mental health in a way that is accessible to teens and young adults. He goes by healthygamergg on YouTube, and is called Dr. K. I love the internet.
[2] One big culture shock for me was finding out that Marriott has these budget hotel chains in America and they’re everywhere.
Love the ease with which your writing flows.