Aah Chennai!

[Reflections on completing one year of returning to India and settling in Chennai]

Yoga Practice at 5:30 am near Gandhi Statue, Marina Beach

The morning breaks, and the sky holds still a moment as the blush spreads...”Bhorbaiyyo tore baat takat piya” (the dawn has come while I was staring at you, my beloved). Somewhere I ease and ponder.

Who would have imagined I would live in a mund-veshti-vibhuthi city like Chennai, amidst jasmine flowers and dug-up roads, of a forever metro rail construction and garbage dumps overflowing after the nine lovely days of Goddess in the city homes, of roads that flood so easy and a sky that cruelly shoots laser darts of heat through the months of April and May, of trees that are mostly non-existent, of grim matchbox houses, and of people-sombre, steady, and often demandingly traditional?

Who would have imagined I would live and continue to live here?

Image Courtesy: TheHindu

Chennai is like an arranged marriage for me. I remember remarking soon after my return to India (after a ten-year spell abroad) that to live in Mumbai is like a Venetian Waltz—you either can or can’t! And Kolkata, my birth city, is like my first love that is fondly remembered but outgrown. Delhi, yes, I love. For every time I have been there I felt as if I was in a sensual rhumba routine—where the partner gives you full and complete focus as if only you exist on the dance floor. But then like all the professional dances, I am firmly and surely led out of the dance floor. I visit Delhi these days as a spurned lover—sulking but still curious who his latest girlfriend is!

But Chennai—heavens made that match, horoscopes and destiny all combined in the truest spirit of Indian astrology. You see, the much misunderstood arranged marriage emerges from a collectivist society that puts the group above individual desires—will the marriage bring joy and happiness to the collective, will it result in benefit for the collective, will it enrich the journey of the collective? Yeah, yeah, yeah I hear you—the system is corrupted and misused and today we are in crisis—with global longings of personal love and the ancient demands of the collective. Nope, I am not here to suggest a solution—just untangling some histories.

The Indian-Style Jump-Start

Chennai is a match made for me by heavens and if I had been asked, I would have probably said NO. And I have fought and resisted and reviled and sulked and tossed most unhappily in this city and also have attempted many-a-midnight escape. And yet how this city holds me—a fierce, radical, eternally-homeless wannabe, Ma Kali-worshipping woman from Communist Bengal- in his gentle steady grip! (For a collection of hilarious snippets of facebook posts on my first 6 months in Chennai, do visit Albuquerque Sighs, Chennai calls)

For every time I have squirmed and pointed out lackings, he has brought in a surprise gift, left silently at my bedside, no ado—multiple opportunities to work and for work to be acknowledged, a chance to give and make new communities, a certain awakening of infinite courage that allows me to dare even further. To feel in spite of many things, a certain happiness and satisfaction of life, of a sense that perhaps I can now finally bring all of myself into complete fruition. The words of the tarot-reader seated on my friend’s Albuquerque table still echoes in my mind—you must go back to India. There is much in store for you there.

Yes, Albuquerque is a sister and a mother to me—the place where I received unending love, a place of healing and rejuvenation, of grace and wisdom and so often I miss her ( miss her mountains and her adobe houses and her Old Town and my sweet old University neighbourhood and my family there).

The Sari and her thumbs up sign says it all!

One needs to ask do we have to choose our homes based on our likes and dislikes, of our whims and fantasies—or do we need to find a home, paraphrasing a former professor of mine, where one can participate in the necessary maintenance, re-modification and beautification of the place, where the place and the citizen mutually adapt and grow together.

So hesitantly, like a wife who is coming to terms with her marriage, do I now seek in the dark-brown eyes, set under the ash-inscribed forehead, in a non-descript face—an assurance of a lifetime?

Or is it too early?