on delhi
and withdrawals thereof.
I had not felt homesickness since the end of July, 2015, when I went to boarding school. I feel it right now, having left Delhi and returned home for good.
I consciously avoided Delhi and had never been there, till I directly moved there for work. I struck off colleges in or around Delhi, despite a lot of my school friends going there. I opted against interning in Delhi, despite my college friends doing it all the time and the city being best equipped for someone seeking to build a career in law. I simply was averse to it.
Now when I look back at it, it was mere fear and apprehension of the city. Mostly arising out of the nature of the city and limited interactions with people hailing therefrom.
I later realised that the fear was nothing but the fear of the unknown, the most common fear of them all. Once the city changed from unknown to known, it adopted the role of a caretaker, a confidant, a close friend, and the role of a place comfortable enough to call home.
This is my first Sunday upon my return from Delhi. I didn’t even realise it was a Sunday till my mother pointed it out. I write this essay, reminiscing about the place I left and how I’d have spent my Sunday there.
It is 11:21AM right now, usually the time when my friends and I would have woken up and would be discussing what to have for breakfast. Sundays were slow and used to ease the exhaustion given of the week.
Delhi and Sundays were an equation that usually only resulted in one answer, chole bhature. Being averse of them at first, I gradually discovered why they were unanimously loved.
You can’t possibly have them on a weekday, unless you were free enough to be rendered in a flow state, unable to undertake any tasks subsequently.
Having chole bhature on the weekends seemed like the city and its people exhibiting their free will, an act of rebellion if you may.
I often see people online questioning the loyalty and faithfulness of people from Delhi. Have you ever seen anyone from Delhi talking about their preferred Chole Bhature joint? (The only right place to have them at is Anand Ji in Lajpat Nagar, in case you were wondering.)
After the gruelling heat had settled down, you could finally think of venturing into the city, and the city simply had too much to offer. Delhi might not be a walkable city but continues to be a walkers paradise for the public spaces it has.
Variety wasn’t out of the question either. Lodhi Garden and Sunder Nursery if you want to be close to nature, Khan Market and Connaught Place if you want to have a bite and window shop. Monuments in abundance if you want to momentarily time travel, also accompanied by parks more often than not. Old Delhi too, if you want to go rogue.
My favourite place to walk around the city continued to be Barakhamba Road, a topic I have written previously about. This is just the place for a person like me, for there is nothing to do there for someone not working there. It remained to be a place I went to only for the purpose of walking, listening to music, thinking, and admiring the infrastructure unique to the city of low-rises and bungalows.
These places were always around me, always just an Uber Auto away. Maybe that is why I took it all for granted, and realised it only when I have come back home, away from any place I would enjoy walking around.
During my tenure, I realised Delhi had something to offer for everyone. It felt like the most inclusive city I had lived in. Rarely did I meet people who were native to Delhi. Almost everyone I met was either an immigrant like myself, or only a second generation Delhi resident.
I found it to be strikingly beautiful. I never felt out of place, or uncomfortable being an outsider. It always felt like home. Perhaps due to the privilege of having friends around or being in a field that every second person in the city is a part of.
Talking about the field, that is what occupied most of my sunday nights, if not all. Preparing for the next day. My tenure in Delhi has given me the ability to wake up early without needing an alarm clock, but the ability comes with the curse of always waking up anxious.
Atleast over the last one year, I would be waking up every morning to go to court. Irrespective of which particular court it would be on that given day, I must reach before 9:45AM or the world would fall apart. 9:45AM sounds like a decent time to reach a place right, shouldn’t be a challenge? Not unless you were working 14 hour days and leaving for home only after time was in double-digit-post-meridiem.
As grueling as it was, I loved litigation for the parts of me that it brought out. It revealed aspects about me that were otherwise unknown, but that is for another piece altogether.
While these grueling aspects are no longer a part of my life for the time being, I still end up awake at 7:30AM, stressed. Only to remind myself that I am in no rush, and the extra sleep I have ahead of me is well deserved.
This is one of the luxuries I shamelessly avail as part of coming back home. What else would distinguish Delhi from the traditional sense of home if not a few more hours of rest and relaxation?
Delhi formulated and forged people who do not know how to take a break. The zeal and hard work and rigour was often infectious, and I am truly grateful for that. While it may not seem to be a city as fast as Mumbai from a distance, it carries the same DNA.
How do they have so much energy despite the weather conditions and the cuisine is beyond me, but I hope I can continue the same energy and work ethic to the city I have now moved to, for what might be a thing of survival in Delhi can potentially be a factor of distinction anywhere else.
Not long after moving to Delhi did I start seeing changes in myself too, I felt more equipped to see the situation head on and tackle it, rather than being stressed about it. It made me more confident and even fearless. You cannot live in a city where everyone is confident and fearless without being the same yourself, you would simply lose your mind. These characteristics were gifted to me by the city, ingrained in me like a Trojan horse carrying survival instincts.
Boarding school prepared me enough to leave home. Delhi did the same on a larger scale. I like to believe that it has equipped me enough to live anywhere in the world.
The homesickness I mentioned at the beginning of this post was something I had been feeling since the moment I returned back home, on the 9th of April. However, I failed to put a finger on it. How weird would it be afterall, feeling homesickness when the place you have come back to is home itself?
Returning home also feels like an end of a chapter that was closest to a sitcom. The thrills and sways of living on your own, working on a stranger city with so much to do is nothing less than worth documenting.
What cleared the air for me was a certain paragraph. I had started my re-read of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. In one of the paragraphs, a character mentions musical piece called Le Mal Du Pays by Lizst. The mere mention of it started playing said music in my brain. (I have a weird relationship with home after years of staying away, for reasons unknown to me I do not listen to music at home, mental music is all I have.) The character thereafter described the piece in the manner reproduced hereinbelow:
“Le Mal Du Pays. It’s French. Usually it’s translated as ‘homesickness’ or ‘melancholy’. If you put a finer point on it, it’s more like ‘a groundless sadness called forth in a person’s heart by a pastoral landscape’. It’s a hard expression to translate accurately.”
Mentally listening to the piece did more than just clarify that I was feeling homesick for the home I had developed away from home. The city was no pastoral landscape, but it was an endless pasture that allowed the horses of my brain run freely and reach the horizon, till the horizon expanded, again and again.
Life in Delhi reminded me of the expression used by Thomas Hobbes in his social contract theory, life being nasty, brutish, and short. For you cannot talk about the capital without talking about its shortcomings. The city is polluted. Develops a new problem every single day. Parts of it are extremely unsafe. I acknowledge that the good experiences I had and the love I developed for it, might not have been the case if it were not for male privilege and having the privilege of living with people you can trust blindly.
Not that any of it is justifiable, but is it even possible to perfectly manage a city this big, with atleast 3 crore people living therein and growing on a daily basis? Although no one even tries managing or making the city better, but that is a separate issue.
I learned early on that I cannot expect the city to make my life better, but I must adapt to it and make the best of what I have on offer. I started being more aware of my surroundings, become more focused on the road and the environment than on the music, and would simply carry a mask. It is terrible that one is constrained to live this way, but it is still easier than hating the city for what it lacks or should not have.
Over the years I have observed that the term dilliwale does not describe the set of people born and brought up in Delhi. But it is a term for the people who called the city their home, irrespective for how long. People who have developed characteristics necessary to live in a city like Delhi. (People from Noida excluded in any case)
After years of living away from home, I had only trained myself for calamity. This sense of calm at home is something I never prepared myself for. It is unsettling, contrary to what it is supposed to be.
Coming back home with no return ticket or with no mental countdown of going back away from home is a peculiar feeling. I never knew I would feel this unexplainable way, but I do. It feels like all of a sudden I have zoomed in onto real life. The things I discussed with my parents are here right now, in front of me.
One thing, among countless others that I will be grateful for is I returned home a much better version of myself, with bonds that shall remain with me for the rest of my life and continue to strengthen me. As long as you return better than you left, the purpose of any place other than home is solved.
The amounts of first that Delhi gave me and the habits and ideas it gave me shall stay with me, no matter where I go. The places I used to frequent there will always continue to give me the comfort, like the entire city itself, contrary to how intimidating it felt upon my first encounter with it.
The things I planned are no longer a far-fetched future, but the present. The only plausible way to live the present is to be as excited for it as you were when you still called it a future.
This is possibly the last time in a long time that life has offered me a fresh start. A blank state to write whatever I want on it. It would only be foolish not to make the best of it wherever I am. I must end this ode to Delhi as a closing chapter for my journey there and mentally play whatever that song is that says You take the man out of the city, not the city out the man.
Still grinning at - People from Noida excluded in any case. Haha. And that song is called *End of beginning* , quite figurative if you ask me.
Man I wanna visit Delhi so bad, I don’t want to be Indian I want to be India. I want to be scathed by the golden bird it is.