Bright lights, big city

All great cities have one thing in common – a character of their own

Over the last few months, a series of events have taken me back to a place that I last visited in my childhood. As a young girl, I spent many holidays in the city that Le Corbusier built, at my aunt’s house, roughhousing with my cousins, taking scooter rides down the perfectly-perpendicular streets, shopping in the quiet neighbourhood markets, making the obligatory visits to the Rock Garden and Sukhna Lake.

It was a fun time, but we had to make our fun ourselves. Chandigarh contented itself with being its usual quiet, well-behaved, matronly self, allowing us the space to indulge our high-energy selves but offering next to no encouragement to any boisterous behavior.

But that sleepy, laidback Chandigarh now lives only in my childhood memories. The Chandigarh of today, as I discovered recently, has thrown off that slumber and reticence and emerged as a sleek, sophisticated city that offers everything from trendy restaurants to shopping malls to swanky five-star hotels that would do any metropolis proud. And, more to the point, the once-silent city has found its voice. It still has the quiet, tree-lined streets with the most polite traffic I have encountered in India. But now, it also speaks of prosperity, energy, and a certain can-do spirit at every turn.

The best parallel I can think of is former Test cricketer-turned-TV performer, and now Punjab minister, Navjot Singh Sidhu, who – by all accounts – was a nice quiet chap who barely spoke two words during his cricketing days, but is now impossible to shut up. (Though, to be fair, Chandigarh is a tad more restrained.)

As I drove down its impeccably-clean roads, I started to think about how all great cities have a personality of their own – which may or may not change over the years – an identity that belongs to them alone and which makes it impossible to mistake them for another.

I grew up in Calcutta, feasting on its faded glory of crumbling colonial buildings, run-down infrastructure, over-crowded streets and dilapidated markets. But for all its decrepitude, there was a certain grandeur to the Calcutta of my childhood and youth: the vast expanse of the Maidan, the looming visage of Victoria Memorial, the shabby but beautiful Strand where we went for boat rides down the Hooghly, with the magnificent Howrah Bridge providing the most spectacular of backdrops.

Just like Chandigarh, the Calcutta of my childhood no longer exists. Now, when I go back to the city, I am overwhelmed by the new construction, the bustling malls, the endless network of flyovers (not to mention the one-way system that I have yet to master). Even the colonial structures I grew up with no longer look the same, now that they have been blue-washed by Mamata Banerjee’s government.

But strangely enough, the spirit of the city survives. Once I look past the gleaming skyscrapers and the sprawling hypermarkets, I can see that Calcutta (sorry folks, it is always going to be Calcutta to me; Kolkata is for when I speak Bangla) is still the same City of Joy, one of those rare places where a live culture can survive outside of a bowl of mishti doi.

Most people who move from Calcutta to Delhi seem to spend their days bemoaning their loss. They miss the easy charm of Cal; they hate the hard-headed, cold-eyed indifference of Delhi. Well, I am an exception to that rule.

From the moment I moved to my tiny little barsati in Defence Colony, I fell in love with the city. I loved its changing moods through the seasons: the flowering roundabouts heralding spring; the blooming laburnum announcing the arrival of summer; the parks bursting with green as the monsoon hit; the trees shedding their leaves in preparation of winter.

I also loved the fact that Delhi allowed me to be. This was the big tent I had been looking for all my life. This was where I could be whatever I wanted to be. If I wanted to immerse myself in theatre, art and culture, there were enough museums, galleries and artistic hubs to do so. If history and antiquity was my thing, then I could spend every weekend exploring historical monuments dating back to medieval and Moghul times. If I just wanted to let my lungs expand in some green spaces, then they too were available to me.

The space granted to me in Delhi was not just literal but metaphorical as well. And it allowed me to grow in ways that I could not even have imagined when I first moved here.

Yes, I know what all you folks in Bombay (oops, sorry, Mumbai; though like Calcutta, this will always be Bombay to me) are thinking right about now. Delhi? Really? You love Delhi? But surely, you know that Mumbai is much better? This is the city of dreams, the city of endless possibilities, the city that never sleeps, the city that, oh well, never mind!

Well, you know what, guys? It is possible to love both. I can enjoy the beautiful, tree-lined boulevards of Delhi just as much as I cherish the sea views along Marine Drive. I can embrace the Staid Dowager that is Delhi just as fondly as I hug the Brash Bruiser that is Mumbai.

Because while cities have personalities of their own, identities that are theirs alone, people like us have the luxury of embracing them all and making them our own. And why settle for less, when so much more is on offer?

Calling it a day

Where will you head when retirement beckons?

My cousin is on a bit of a high these days. Both literally and metaphorically. Her dream house in the mountains, with a spectacular view from every window, is finally coming together. The woodwork is done, the plumbing works, the furniture is in place, the curtains have been hung, and the kitchen is on its way to being fully functional.

This is where she intends to retire when her work is finally done. Living blissfully among the clouds, breathing the fresh mountain air, cooking the vegetables she grows in her own back garden, going for long walks, spending endless afternoons reading and drinking green tea.

It sounds like an idyllic retirement, doesn’t it? Well, I guess it does to most people. But when she showed me the pictures of the house and the view – both amazingly beautiful – and told me of her plan, the first thought that popped into my head was: “Where is the nearest hospital?”

No, of course, I didn’t actually say that out loud. That’s not the kind of thing you say when someone you love announces the fulfillment of the dream of a lifetime. Stamping down on that voice in my head, I went through all the pictures and told her how spectacular it looked – and it truly did.

But all the while I was making the right noises I was thinking about logistics. How long it would take to get to a doctor? How she would negotiate the steep climb up if – well okay, when – her knees went? Instead of voicing these concerns, however, I restricted myself to encouraging her to persuade her sister and brother-in-law (both doctors) to buy a house nearby so that they could serve the tiny community’s medical needs.

Yes, I know, I sound like a complete nutcase. But the truth is that when I think of my own retirement plans, the one thing that takes precedence over all else is the proximity of medical facilities. I would never dream of moving to a faraway village in the hills, no matter how lovely, if I wasn’t sure that there was a good hospital a short ambulance ride away.

The other thing that I am obsessed about is having a single-level house. I have done my share of duplex living, trudging up and down from bedroom to living room and back again. But as my knees begin to twinge every time I walk down a staircase and my heart rate goes up when I walk back up, I have come to realize that I can’t keep this up for long. In another two decades I will need a living space that allows me to shuffle slowly from one room to another, without negotiating any steps along the way.

And where would I like this home to be located? Well, having being born and bred in one big city and lived in several others, I know that country pleasures are not for me. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a trip to the beach as much as the next person. I love to take a break in the mountains when the heat in the plains gets too much. I read, I sleep, I take long walks, I revel in the natural beauty, I unwind, I detox, I distress. I slow my life down, tune out the static so that I can hear myself think. I get in touch with myself.

But after a week of this enforced calm, I start to get itchy. The quiet seems to weigh heavy upon me. I start to miss the energy and excitement of the big city. I begin to long for a visit to the cinema, a quick trip to the shops, eating out at my favourite restaurants, meeting up with friends, catching an exhibition, attending a music recital, or just sitting at a coffee shop, sipping an excellent cappuccino and watching the world go by.

All of which leads me to believe that I would not enjoy a retirement spent in the mountains or beside a beach. The truth is that I only ever feel truly alive while living in a big city. A city that keeps me engaged through night and day, through the seasons, and indeed, through the years.

A city where there are enough public spaces where I can spend an hour or two with friends, with a good book, or even by myself. A city dotted with museums and monuments, where you can drop by when you want a sense of the past that shapes our present. A city that hosts everything from plays, art exhibitions, musical evenings to seminars and international conferences, to keep your brain stimulated in the best possible way. A city with enough beautiful green areas so that taking a walk doesn’t seem like drudgery. A city that is safe enough for a single woman to negotiate on her own, no matter how late she is getting back home.

At the moment, the city that best fits the bill is Delhi – with its verdant Lodhi Garden, its amazing monuments like Purana Qila and Humayun’s Tomb, and the full menu of programmes at such venues as India International Centre and Habitat Centre. The only area where it falls short is on women’s safety. But with luck, by the time I am old and doddering, that problem will be sorted out.

Until then, I live on a hope and a prayer in my one-level apartment, a stone’s throw away from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). And take comfort in the fact that at least medical help is only a (very) short ambulance ride away.