“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.” – Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
I walk up the now tarred, once-gravelly path around which our cluster of villas is built. Ten row villas on each side, facing each other. Ours is a black pawn facing its identical white, wearing three layers of paint over 23 years of existence. This path has been brown, grey, sandy, and gravelly, and now – after the kids have grown up and left and have had kids of their own – it exudes the seriousness of a main road. This is too much for a 100-meter strip, but I am told the work was carried out by an election hopeful. He made MLA. Good for him. I walk this path 60 times in an hour and ten minutes, finishing one of the only podcast recordings of Mary Oliver.
“Well, as I say, I don’t like buildings. The only record I broke in school was truancy. I went to the woods a lot, with books — Whitman in the knapsack — but I also liked motion. So, I just began with these little notebooks and scribbled things as they came to me, and then worked them into poems, later.” – Mary Oliver in conversation with Krista Tippett, On Being with Krista Tippett
Mary had her Ohio woods, I have my industrious town of Mapusa. Though it calls itself a city thanks to its Municipal Corporation, I fiercely maintain its townery. There are about fifty thousand people scattered across hillocks, its biggest geographical feature and our biggest inconvenience. For a town with poor bus connectivity and an over-reliance on personal vehicles, we really do not have much parking. Now, I have been passed down the avuncular trait of walking, but the force of youth allows me to take it to extremes. Walking in Mapusa is certainly not for the weak-kneed. You set out at 6 on a November day, the butt-crack of dawn. I think my neighbor’s rooster suffers from anxiety, it crows every few hours instead of heralding the morning like the roosters of yore. If you close your eyes for a minute, you will hear the incongruous symphony of robins, bulbuls, mynahs and the odd crow. You walk narrow lanes, lined with compound walls of chire – laterite stone – standing the test of time. Some of these houses still have Mangalore tiled roofs, prone to cracking at every rooftop Langur chill sesh. As the sun gets stronger, the glass panel between roof tiles will let in some of the light, a spotlight within which to see a million splendid dust particles. You walk towards an expanse of uncultivated farmland, seeing bits of fog sitting on yellow grass and thorny brambles. Try to ignore the large orange machine in the middle, and the ravine it has mowed right down the middle. The MLA is making a road to bypass our little junction. And then you walk towards the little junction, with tiny roofed shops that I’m afraid to report I have never stepped into. The small bar is aptly called corner bar, there’s a flour mill, a tailor, and an electronic repair shop with a rather artistic display of old remotes forming a grid of buttons. In the last few years, this lane has seen two new apartment buildings, each with a supermarket of its own. I don’t understand the economics of so many supermarkets in such a sparse area, but I appreciate the ambition.
The corner empties into a “main road”, and you begin to see activity. Milk being delivered to the shops, bread being bought, the newspaper guy on his route. You pass newly constructed mega complexes, and signboards selling dreams for inflated prices. The beginning of the incline is now underway. The road runs parallel to the government’s horticulture department, a few acres of thick trees and a greenhouse in the middle. The air is crisper, but your legs are getting heavier. There’s a stray hen on the side of the road, slightly ahead of you. A man on a scooter stops, grabs it with both hands and shuttles off. That’s not going to be a pet for sure. The incline leads to one of the more important parts of town, Feira Alta (alta/alto meaning high in Latin), with its stately buildings – the district court, municipal council building and schools – running along the neck of the hill. The sun is in full bloom now, adding to the sweat. Shops are opening, business begins with school hours. The handful of stationery shops, where kids will swarm for a last-minute map of India, a graph paper or a photocopy. The general store-slash-bakery that sells bread, eggs, other general things, samosa, beef chops, and puffs (colloquially called pattice this side of town).
[an electronic repair shop with a rather artistic display of old remotes]
I flew back after six months, the longest gap in-between visits. Writing this has not come naturally, and my vivid imagery feels forced almost. Till I left for good, the idea that this place was never for me, reverbed through most of my actions. Ambition was my one-way ticket out, and I wasn’t wrong. College held me close and my friendships nurtured me in ways my parents couldn’t.
“Every time I return to Mapusa, I never see it change. Every return feels like stepping into a disconnected world where time runs at a leisurely pace. My choice to view home as the ultimate, romanticized resort town that many never got to spend a lifetime in disguises my inner anger. It pains me that my friends living in the town have chosen not to take the chance to leave the place and flock to a city to make a name for themselves. I see them as without ambition for not thinking of a life out of the town or an education beyond the local college, eager only to carry on their family businesses. While I say this, I am blinded by young ambition, and understand that maybe my friends made a choice that is right. Perhaps staying in their comfort zone and building a comfortable life in a joint family with their days full of festive cheer is something I will crave for years down the line.” – Excerpt from a piece I wrote at age 18 for my college magazine.
Change crept in the form of a new building every few months. A new airport. Six-lane road construction projects. The once green leaves are now a dusty brown. A better claim to my home being some rich kid’s second home. Tracts of forested land simply being dozed for an artificial beach project marketed to Delhi folks, have gone unquestioned. I was a lofty 18-year-old, writing like that.
I’m 25.
Earlier, I could just waltz in every few months and syncopate with the rhythms of the town. I am now an observer, quietly watching an evolution from the sidelines. I crave a rootedness, a familiarity that feels long gone.
Suburban Meditations Part II - Delhi Dallying
“This is growth, this is growth, this is growth” I hum under my breath, matching the staccato of the garbage collection train I noticed for the first time today from my window. I didn’t know they had trains with only platforms to collect track-side garbage. I call up my new friend to share my new-found knowledge, hoping he shares my enthusiasm. He doesn…