City Girl through and through

After a short trip to Chikmagalur, we disembarked in Chennai Central one Sunday evening.

At the station, a group was arguing loudly with a porter and blocking our way. We headed out to wait for our cab, which unfortunately got turned around due to a roadblock. There were too many people out on a Sunday night, and we even got stuck in traffic. Finally, we got home and barely stepped in before it started randomly, ridiculously pouring!
And every one of these things made me smile. Because I was home.

This trip to the mountains reminded me that I am a beach person, and more so, that I am a city girl through and through.

Now if you are imagining a 90s rom-com scene where a miniskirt-wearing girl lands up in (usually the male lead’s) village and turns her nose up at the archaic practices there, then it would be far from the truth (but not quite all that far!)

While ‘small-town girl in a big city’ is a beautiful trope where you take the protagonist’s side, if you turn the tables, people aren’t so forgiving.

Let me give you some context. I have lived in metros for the most part, and 70% of that in Chennai. At one point (more than two decades ago), we had to move to Aluva, a town near Kochi. I was about 9, and from the time I was 5, we had lived in Chennai and Bangalore.

Aluva was your quintessential sleepy town. It had a river running through it, long boats (thoni) that ferried you across, one main junction that was named after one main bank, and many buses to get to the big town (Ernakulam, which had not yet become today’s oh-so-fancy Kochi).

It's a pretty picture; I loved being there during my vacations, but living there? Not so much!

My most vivid small-town slap-in-the-face was when my Mom and I went to get vegetables at 8 PM, after she was back from work. The shops were shutting down, and the only vegetable vendor (who was wrapping up, I guess) was giving us the stink eye for making him work overtime. But nobody went out that late, my grandma and neighbours said. Why would you do all this “after dark”?

It was very new to me. In Chennai, we used to head out after Mom got home to either chill at Besant Nagar beach or finish some quick shopping at Food World.

There was also no library nearby*, no ice cream parlour, and no Pizza Corner (the ultimate treat). We had to go to the town an hour away for all this, and we could only go during the weekends.

As if all this wasn't enough, my clothes were weird there. A nine-year-old in sleeveless tops and jeans was odd. People stared. My working mother, with ideas of her own, was odd. She and her daughter, heading out after dark? Very, very odd.**

Did my young sense of imagination exaggerate all this? I don't know. But surely, there was a reason I felt that way and carried that feeling till now.

How materialistic, you may say. The city girl brought up in the laps of luxury cannot handle the lack of ice cream parlours! Isn’t that the common trope in the movies? The girl learns to slum it out in the field or milk a cow or something.

You think that's hard work? Fight for a space on a crowded bus/metro and argue with an Auto Anna about why 300 to go 3 kms is obscenely expensive, and then talk.

The other argument I have heard is the lack of a feeling of community.

Well, that depends on what kind of bond you are looking for. I may not know the ins and outs of my neighbour’s life, but I would collect their Amazon parcel for them and be ready with an answer when they ask, “Unga veetlayum current illaya?”

My feeling of community comes from the awkward half-smile I give to the regular passengers in my train. It is seeing my happiness or disappointment reflected on the faces of the yellow T-shirt-wearing folks near Chepauk on a match day. It is the bond I share with the other driver who is also yelling at the guy driving on the wrong side.

Me and my metro mates vibing for the announcements

It is a form of detached attachment. It is also irony.

Isolated places give me anxiety (or some variation of it). The silence and darkness are more intense. The crickets are too loud.

I don’t really want to interact with people, but knowing they are around, living a life like mine is comforting.

Being able to forget to buy milk, or bread, or sanitary pads, and then get it delivered to my doorstep 10 minutes after I remember, is also comforting.

Around the time when I was in Aluva, my mom did a short stint in Dubai. She told me about going out and getting Strawberry milk from Lulu in the middle of the night. I was fascinated. It became my dream. I like places where 2 AM looks like 7 PM — Airports, 7-Elevens, Bangla Road, Kora food street, Rams Tea House, and my own house on weekends.

I visited Singapore and almost laid down in supplication. God alone knows what I will do when I finally get to Times Square.

So in conclusion, do I like JCBs blocking my way? No. Do I enjoy gravel flying at me at 8 AM? Not at all. Is light pollution the Lavender Haze I want? Absolutely not. 

And yet, I’d take all of this, and pay skyrocketing rents, to be able to keep living in a big city.

Eating an ice cream at 23:41 while someone played a guitar on the pavement

Footnotes:

* The no library part was especially difficult, and you’d understand exactly why if you read this.

** Did you read it like Hrithik’s “was not funny” dialog in ZNMD? You should’ve.

1. My son says he loves “grasslands” and green areas. I think he is inspired by a resort's lawn and the videos of rolling meadows he saw on YouTube. I should ask him if he would still love it if he can't get books on overnight delivery.

2. Everyone talks of retiring and moving back to their native place. I just want to retire and stay right here. I feel that saying this would earn me the same looks Flynn Rider got when he mentioned his dream in Tangled (the one about lots of money. Can’t blame him, though)

3. I did write lovingly about Aluva long long ago. Though written like fiction, I meant some of it. Read this to know the other side

4. Did you think that me not being able to deal with silence is because I can't sit with my own thoughts? Hah! My thoughts are louder than all the construction noises around me. To get them out, I write blogs.