Yes, yes, Chennai is hot. And humid. And dusty. And Chennai’s autowallahs are the kings of overcharging. Yes, Chennai, despite the prevalence of pubs and discos, is still probably the most conservative metro in India. But, despite all this(or is it because of all this?) Chennai is the first love of my life. Nothing can come close to the rush of affection I feel for this city. And it’s not even as if I have spent all my life in Chennai. I’ve had minor and major flings with other cities. But in every other place, I’ve managed to grumble and find flaws. It’s not as if Chennai is perfect, it’s just that I love my city, imperfections, flaws, et al.
Some random thoughts about images that keep flashing my mind, when I think about the only city that i call my hometown….
*Chennaiites’ love for “The Hindu” and filter coffee is inexplicable. Say what you will, but in my humble opinion, not even Pink Floyd + alcohol could possibly beat this combination.
* Bessy beach – simply the best hangout in the city, whether you’re with your significant other, friends or family. Beaches have this amazing tendency of manipulate your emotions ranging from wacky, soulful, romantic to philosophical (And sorry Hyderabadis, Necklace Road comes NO WHERE close)
*Renganathan Street – the ultimate shopping destination for rich and poor alike.
*MAC Stadium – the place which prompted a commentator to deem the cricket crazy crowd as “one of the most sporting ever” after a standing ovation given to the opposing team, albeit India’s loss.
*Yes, of course, my love for idly, dosa and sambar.
Miss you, Chennai. (And as I like to call it rarely – Madras).
- Sangeeta Pillai Lander
Displaced? Me?
I’ve always dreamed of exotic travel – even when I was a little girl growing up in a crowded one-bedroom suburban Mumbai apartment within a family of five. I dreamed, yes, but never thought it was possible. And wonder of wonders, I now live in another country and I explore different countries every few months. The act of stepping into a plane and passing through another immigration queue feels like passing through an alternative reality – you emerge at the other end feeling like a more exciting, exotic version of yourself.
But who is this person? I’d say “Indian” in a flash. Yet my passport says “British”. The strange thing is – I’m not sure what I feel. Indian or British? Neither or both?
When I moved to the UK four years ago, everything felt strange. The air tasted different, crisper with a hint of the red double-decker buses and cut-glass accents of my imagination. The smells were amazing – I remember stepping off the plane at Heathrow and thinking, “Wow, they must use a lot of perfume here.” Everything smelt so good, so polished. The accents were different, and some downright confusing particularly the Glaswegian and Northern ones.
The amazing thing about my particular displacement is – I don’t feel displaced at all. I feel like I’ve got my feet planted on Indian and European soil at the same time. Now while that sounds extremely unbalanced, the truth is it’s actually quite comfortable.
I live in the UK, work in the UK, party in the UK, grow every day in the UK into a more well rounded person (I like to think). London is an incredibly inspiring melting pot – it absorbs all sorts of nationalities, people and ideas. It lets you be who you are, and in fact enhances who you are. I love waking up on a Saturday morning spoilt for choice – I could discover a new artist or explore art works from old masters. I could eat a Turkish, Swedish or Sri Lankan lunch. I could take a walk along the river and see the sights and hear the sounds from a city that’s rich in centuries-old history. I could hear some un-recognised yet brilliant musicians. The options are endless and exciting.
But I also make sure I spend a few weeks every year in India. The strange thing is – the moment I step onto Indian soil, I become Indian. My accent becomes Indian, my body and brain become Indian. It feels like I never left. There’s none of that expected – oh gosh, everything looks and feels different. To me, it feels exactly how it did when I left 4 years ago. I feel myself seep into India and India seeping back into me.
And yes, I become more British when I return. I talk incessantly about the weather. I whine about this, that and the other. I live for the weekends – and make sure I extract every moment’s worth of fun from every one of them. In fact, I plan each weekend ahead sometimes a few months in advance. (I used to complain about this supposed lack of spontaneity when I first moved here and now I do exactly the same thing!)
I seem to have developed this almost chameleon-like ability to become one with my background. I am Indian. I am British. I am neither. I am both.
There is something I should mention – I live in a very Indian neighborhood. In fact, out of all the neighborhoods I could’ve chosen in London – I chose to live in an Indian one. Nothing warms my heart like the sight of a new south Indian eatery opening up on my street. I walk around on Diwali day beaming at the all the lamps and diyas on the street, all the Bollywood belching out of the stereos, the firecrackers exploding in the sky.
So maybe that’s the secret of my non-displacement. As a friend remarked, “You live in India and then get on the tube and go to work in London”. That about sums it up, I think.
Does it really matter how you define yourself? In the midst of this endless galaxy within galaxies, among all the infinite stars and planets – surely all that really matters is that you feel at home among what really is a finite number of countries and nationalities. Maybe they should start issuing passports soon for a new nationality – Earth-ian. You’d be surprised at the number of applicants queuing up for that one.
(Pic via Carl Lee on Flickr)
I don’t know if I’ve been attached to any particular city. I was never part of Bombay’s pulse – I always felt as though I led an existence parallel to it. I might wish to be buried on Vassar’s grounds in Poughkeepsie, if I wished to be buried – and Bath – Bath is
my idea of heaven. New jersey’s greenery surprises me, and its roads bore me. New York is all very well, but too noisy and lonely all at once for me. So if I never felt attached to any place, how could I feel displaced? But I do.
You see, the balance of power in my life has shifted. I have teetered off the pedestal I had been placed on, and now I stand askew, one leg pointed up, waiting to be placed in the direction I am to be ordered in. Hence I stand, face pointed down, like an immortalized clumsy ballet dancer. Note the porcelain face, the graceful neck, contrasted with that ugly, unnatural pose. I am dangerously close to falling, looking into an abyss that I have no idea how to emerge from.
But this odd limbo has given me plenty of time to think, and feel, and learn to not feel. And cry and cry and realize that I still do. And in trying to mentally erase myself from existence ive made my physical presence all the more substantial through the staying power of chocolates. Ive felt alien for so long that I’ve forgotten what it is to be at home.
But I do know what home means, to me. Home is a place where I don’t have to be afraid of what I say and to whom. Where there are no repercussions and no blame. Where I am strong enough, brave enough, right enough, mature enough. Where what I feel and what I think and who I am, mistakes, stupidity, silliness and all, has a valid place. It’s a place deep inside me that no one knows, that no one can even fathom. It’s a place that’s waiting for me to stumble across it on a quiet glossy morning, and it’s a place that’ll never make me want to go back to this other one that I’m in.
If home is where the heart is, it’s high time I find mine.
“When you have lived at a place long enough, every place seems small – a house, a city , a country.”
I read the above line in a Chuck Palahniuk novel ,The Diary, and instantly related to it. With the combination of me living in various hostels and my dad having a transferable job, I have lived in a lot of places. And eventually got tired of them. Though I loved every place initially , eventually they threatened to hold me captive – to their roads, petty customs and familiar people. They became suffocating. I wanted to get out because there was so much I had not seen and wanted to see. I was and still am afraid to belong to anywhere or anyone.
Then I went to college in a sleepy little town in Tamil Nadu called Vellore. There was not much there except our college. No Baristas or McDonalds. Just a place called Naidu Mess where you could get idlis for 2 bucks and coffee for 3, a small tea shop which opened at 4 am where we went in the morning(often without money) for something to eat and smoke. In this small town i smoked my first cigarette and had my first drink. Here i found ayn rand , metal and the occasional joint. Got expelled from my hostel and also got the best pay package at the placements. A little bit of everything. Met a wonderful friend whose philosophy in life is – “I” place my wants before my needs.”
It was here that I met that girl. That girl who came into my life silently. I gave her, her first cigarette( with a $ drawn on its butt as in Atlas Shrugged) and she gave me a love I had least expected of her. She was enigmatic; she was mature yet childish, daring yet conservative , deeply attached to some things and people yet equally scared of attachment, strong yet very fragile. I never could understand her, she understood me completely. Against the backdrop of Vellore, along with her, I went through the extreme of emotions -love , passion, jealousy and heartburn. Vellore was the thread which held us together for a long time, more than what was good for her, less than what was enough for me.
Its been around two years since my umbilical cord with Vellore was cut. Yet I reminisce fondly about all the things that Vellore was, but more than anything, for someone who has been pathologically homeless – it was a place he called home.
- Photo & Words by Maneesh Phatak
I was born in Bombay. My first few nappy changes brought along a heady rush of smells, sights and sounds as my parents took connecting trains and planes, shifting across the length and breadth of India bag, baggage, two bawling kids and 42 wooden boxes in tow. Pathankot, Chandigarh, Kanpur, Silchar (in Assam), Poona, New Delhi, Bareilly, Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune and so on. 29 houses in 31 years to be precise. And a bunch of muddled and not so muddled memories.
Of numerous housekeepers. One really nice gardener. One nutty nanny in Silchar who insisted on feeding us milk and rice with sugar on top. Moving from large bungalows with picturesque gardens to shared accommodation in Air Force transit camps. From cramped whitewashed flats to large apartments overlooking the Arabian Sea. Memories of gardens winning first prize every year to Assamese Bashas made out of bamboo and nothing else. Ones that gave up their roofs to the gale-force winds in the North Eastern monsoons. And if not the roof blowing off, springing leaks that only large plastic sheets stretched under them could aim the leakage towards strategically placed buckets and pans.
There was a time I remember, when the monthly ration the peak-capped boffins in New Delhi sent, was a planeload of tinned biscuits and that is all the whole Air Force station had to eat that week.
Our extensive Poona garden with numerous fruit trees to swing and climb, from Mango and Guava, to Banana and Sugarcane. And the shock to discover that our happy playground was home to a huge brown snake. The long cycle rides in the cantonment roads chasing each other, playing catch and cook. The chance encounter with a girl after school, while waiting for our dads to pick us up, who was the only one ever to have made me go weak in the knees, all at the rather young age of ten. And later, becoming friends with her, knowing fully well it was never meant to be. Picking ‘Ber’ and dipping them in little packets of salt, carried just for such encounters on our secret short cuts in the Aravali hills. Roller skating from Subroto Park to Dhaula Kuan and back, racing trucks on the national highway. Hurried Table Tennis in the lunch break. Playing cricket every day, even during exam time and paying the penalty for it. The rod, I remember, was not spared.
When two boxes full of books collected, no treasured, over the years, had no place in a small house in Bangalore and were sent for storage in HAL. And after a year when we moved to our official house, to discover all that was left of them were little bits of paper chewed up by rats in a hungry frenzy. Or sheer frustration.
Or later in college, experiencing a culture shock of civilian kids and their completely different lifestyles and upbringing. The biggest being the perceived lax morals, having grown up in the city versus being closeted in insulated cantonments far away. An example of that being when I got my driving license, the regular way, paying the 45 rupee fee, while my classmates boasted how they didn’t even have to make a trip to the RTO office. They got theirs in hand by paying a princely sum of Rs. 300 to a tout.
The irritating times trying to convince traffic cops that the reason my scooter, car and bike had alien license plates was because my father had a transferable job and CHU 4844 was a 25-year-old Chandigarh legacy my father refused to give up, even when the papers were lost. Or hiding the fact that CKA 2432 was deregistered in Bangalore and then never re-registered, ever again. And UTF 9 was an IPS officer’s car and getting salutes from cops was an embarrassment to be savored in secretive glee behind its dark tinted windows.
When I joined advertising in 1996, the mad world actually helped stabilize my life. In fact, Mumbai has now been my home for the longest period of time. After moving three more times, I moved to a place right across the road from the hospital I was born in (Dr. Pai’s, Matunga) almost like a fitting end to the journey so far. And a poetic way to begin at the beginning. To put things in perspective, I have one friend from school, a handful from college, no neighbours or neighbourhood friends and a whole lot of agency friends. Or rather, friends who happen to be in advertising. I am glad with what I have.
- By Joyeeta Patpatia
Sometimes your city can displace you. From who you are, how you feel, what you are and what you want to be. I felt displaced in Bombay.
Every now and then I dreamt of escape. From the grime, sweat, hard work, tired feet and the noise. Oh the noise.
I spent the first 7 years of my life in a remote little place in Oman called Salalah. We lived in (multiple) pretty little houses by the sea, went for picnics, flew giant kites, buried dead grasshoppers (toothpick cross included) and slept peacefully in the world of The Brothers Grimm.
We visited my grandmother in Bombay every year, and my mother tells me I tiptoed on the streets so that the brown mud wouldn’t touch me. But how I loved those visits! The black and grey checks on the stone floor, the white wooden ladder that led to the loft in the house, the mithaiwala who came home every morning, were all so absolutely, intoxicatingly exotic!
We moved to Bombay after a short stint in Hyderabad, when I was 14.
The exoticness remained, I was still enthralled by everything Bombay, the smell of rain, smelly train stations, the massive red double decker buses…I felt alive and lucky to be experiencing “the exotic” everyday!
Work took me right into the thick of things. Advertising and films kept me on the streets for about 4 years. I explored every lane on the pretext of a recce, I took cab rides alone at 3 am just for the adventure(I almost got kidnapped once, so my efforts for adventure paid off!)
My friends and I lay down on marine drive after a hard night of partying, talking and laughing at the edge of the black night sea.
But often I felt trapped by the familiar. The routine slowly started sapping the exoticness out of my world. The crowds began to suffocate me, the metro construction made my street ugly.
I moved to Bangalore last November, after a very happy, fun wedding and an excellent adventure in Greece and Turkey.
I thought finally I’m in another city, on my own without family or familiar comforts. I loved the trees, the flowers, the glorious weather. I felt like I’m on holiday!
Its so quiet here. I can often hear my thoughts, and somehow I’m so uncomfortable with that. I finish work and reach home in 10 minutes. Theres no crazed rush for the train, theres no 1 hour auto rides with a view of the sea through dried fish. There’s no Baristas in the evening and Taj loos at night. There is nothing but time. Which leads to thoughts and analysis.
It makes me sad. I want to be busy so that I can immerse myself in finding the new ‘exotic’. But its not rushing at me like it did before. Its not like this city doesn’t have magic, but it’s a different kind. Slow magic maybe.
Untill I find it, love it, drain it, here I am, displaced again.
Click “View in Full Screen’ to see the first issue. Design credit goes to Manoj Damodaran. Stories have been contributed by Dsplaced members. Would love to hear your thoughts!!
By Victoria Cho
It buzzes on the lips of financial types barging ahead, beyond, to their next sale; it shines in features and exposes, investigative pieces and commentaries, from the fathers of journalism; it vibrates through my windows from bass-heavy speakers in broken-looking cars; it leaks into my pants as steam through subway vents; it is caught on the lens in blacks, whites, blues, oranges, and more; it is sung, cursed, applauded, gossiped, lamented, loved, lost, left.
Once upon a time, I loved New York. We had a rich affair of uncanny adventures and astounding sex. My eyes were bombarded by its lines and curves; I walked around and absorbed the fabrics, the storefronts, the curses, the subway doors, the animals, and the clamor of the city. New York and I dined together, sometimes at restaurants, sometimes in my room and it’d show me the beauty of the Mexican products I bought nearby, reveal posted photos from the day’s events, snuggle me up with an issue of the city’s and the world’s most influential newspaper, let me hear giggles or maybe gunshots from the local kids, and then watch me sleep as I decided the what when where for the next time and then couldn’t decide, and then fall asleep knowing I couldn’t decide or that I didn’t know, but felt more ready than ever to never be ready.
And we’d go to bars, and New York would win me over. Classic or grungy, young or old, whatever I desired, New York gave me. It spoiled me, it listened to me, and In indulged.
Once upon a time, I left New York. And I saw something I never thought I’d see; it wasn’t the center, it wasn’t home, and it was as distant from me as anywhere else. Disdain germinated within me, and I questioned my new feelings of loathing, and I don’t think loathing comes from an object or place but from inside me, and I think it covers something else, something deeper, and how do I remove the cover?
Inside was the embarrassment of my severe depression in New York. I hid my false love for it, my jealousy of others who embraced the city, succeeded within it, would settle in it, would call it home for eternity. They would make large happy families that would also call New York home, and so on, and so on, and here I was elsewhere, not missing New York and not knowing what I missed.
Once upon a time I was looking for a home. I had tried Virginia, Boston, New York, and Thailand. Once upon a time, I knew it existed. Once upon a time, I realized it wasn’t where I was but who I am.
We are going on a bit of a hiatus. No- we aren’t giving up the site and the project, but are simply re-thinking it. After a year of publishing your stories on this site, we have come to believe that a magazine is perhaps a better home for your heartlfet stories. Not only do we want to feature the best of Dsplaced but also help identify the common (and uncommon) themes and threads that flow through your stories.
We’ve taken a stab at creating the first edition of Dsplaced magazine from the stories you submitted. We selected teh stories and quotes at random and because they do a good job of highlighting the diversity of the voices on this site.
Continue to send us your stories and submissions via this site – only from now, they will be considered for publication in an e-magazine which will be distributed freely on the web and maybe in print.
Download the first volume here and stay tuned for more!
DSPLACED VOLUME 01
Every year I have fallen a little bit more in love with NYC. I have in the meantime become a true Brooklynite and could not imagine living anywhere else. I agree with John Updike: “The true new yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
NYC, thank you for being so good to me.