Within / Without

I almost forgot how hot Madras gets. My cousin and I often would go to the Vandalur Zoo as one very hapless bachelor Periappa (Cousin’s uncle) got duties as babysitter. He would herd us to the zoo and we would excitedly jump whenever a Monkey scratched its armpits. I suppose such things excite at a certain age. So it happened that in that blinding heat of Madras, in the middle of an afternoon, I went to the Zoo. The Zoo remains pretty much the same perhaps. I wasn’t expecting much of a crowd – but you had that usual kadalai putting crowd. College going kids grabbing each other’s cellphones and annoying the hell out of everyone else around them. The animals sleepy and drowzy. Like being drugged with afternoon lunch during conferences and meetings. Dehydrated and slightly woozy in the head, you poke your head into the various enclosures.

The above photographed Emu was rather umm.. gregarious. With its head bobbing up and down, and general high levels of excitement, you find some of your snatched Madras Memory tickling your neck. I am older now, and get tired far more easily. I had one of those Aavin Chocobars that I haven’t had in years. London has its own chocobars I suppose. But during this trip, I realized that my homesickness was more acute and real than I had realized. It’s home in a very generic sense. You yearn for the familiar and the colourful. London is lovely, delightful, quirky and full of secrets – but it’s not India. It really isn’t a matter of comparison, but merely that one is less of a home than the other. Sitting in London, I am experiencing a sort of homesickness that watching a few Desi movies will not cure or ease.

Flying from Delhi, westwards, the flight path covers large areas that are not inhabited. The large expanse of the Thar, in which a river like string of villages and farmlands stare into the sky. In that breathtakingly sparse landscape, the green of the thin strip glints. The cloudlessness of the sky, and the restlessness within. In the sparse mindscape within, with its large uninhabited areas, a similar thin strip of varying shades of green exists. Cities in the deserts. And cities in the mind. Crowded as they are, they are surrounded by an emptiness around them that is beautiful in its starkness and dangerous with its intensity. In the Zoo, a conversation about the dearth of such expanses in India, prompted me to take the photograph when I had the chance.

Even this… shall pass.

Posted on September 12th, 2006 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: Cities, India, London, Photographs, Self, Travel