Popagandhi

Calcutta, West Bengal, eastern India
Howrah station at 7 am. I am always arriving like this. Fresh (or not so much) off my 37 hourlong train rides, usually from Bangalore, sleeper class, other times from Guwahati, 16 hours, also sleeper class. If you travel Tier 2A you are told you have not done India until you go Tier 3A. If you travel Tier 3A you are told you have not done India until you go sleeper class. After several cycles, I have finally arrived by sleeper class, and did not think one could descend any lower down the food chain. But… You have not done India until… you go unreserved 2nd class. I make a mental note to not to speak unless I am spoken to, and to continue my Khasi disguise, which works two ways. One, Indian men don’t harass me as much (or if they do, I pretend not to understand them); two, you don’t have to be obliged to conversation with scruffy backpackers on the basis of a shared scruffy foreignness and how a 65L backpack contains all your lives’ belongings for months (or years). Howrah station, 7.15 am. I am in my element in Calcutta. This mad city probably is chaotic, dirty and noisy as it is at any time of the day (or night), but I do not hear or see it. Howrah Bridge, 7.45 am. We are still crossing the Hooghly. I am merely one of four million pedestrians who will cross Howrah Bridge today. I keep returning, and I am always reminded I am a speck in this city, and this world. Calcutta humbles me, loves me, and hates me with equal vigor.

Laitryngew, Meghalaya, Northeast India
What is it with hills, especially eastern hills — and why do I love them so? Shillong. Darjeeling. Cherrapunjee. Faded ghosts of the Raj, their famed public schools, their excellent teas, the air of… otherworldliness. I felt I belonged, the moment I stepped foot into Guwahati. People no longer stared but gave me approving glances. But here I was in the world’s wettest place at the tail end of the monsoon, hanging out at a limestone quarry and kiln shortly after crawling through a coal mine that morning. Rocketstar Marwein and his workers chewed betel nuts. You would too if you worked here. Someone had to keep standing on top of the furnace to shuffle pieces of lime around, noxious fumes going directly into his face. Others were overseeing the explosions of various other parts of the quarry. It was very Sebastião Salgado in “workers”. And I? I was sitting on a giant rock, a remnant from the previous explosion, trying to fathom a betel nut. I could not.

Syedpur, Nilphamari, northern Bangladesh
I rarely venture to places of which I know nothing about, and never without prior, meticulous research. In my Bangladesh adventure, even if I tried there was absolutely nothing I could find out about nondescript towns in nondescript provinces. We were driving to Nilphamari because we had to go to the elephantiasis hospital. The only specialized elephantiasis hospital in Asia, my driver kept saying. I am not generally affected by graphical images of medical conditions; raised by healthcare worker parents, I am fully capable of enjoying my dinner while thumbing through medical encyclopedias depicting dissected lungs and cross-sections of brains with Alzheimer’s — part of the reason I was put on this assignment. But I am affected and deeply moved by people, and their words and stories. The engorged scrotums, and close-up views of stage 7 lympathic filariasis, did not move me, as my profession demands. Everything, and I mean everything, are first about people, then about their stories and pictures that tell their stories. For the first time I felt like a vulture preying on their plight: move this way please and show us your engorged scrotum… and smile! But not too much! (How do you say that in Bengali? I knew that at some point!) A seventy year old woman held my hand. She told me in the Bengali I once understood that she didn’t know she had elephantiasis; for thirty years she had believed God was punishing her. I returned to Syedpur depressed and greatly affected, for inexplicable reasons. And in a nondescript shack masquerading as a restaurant in a dusty Bangladeshi town, every villager and his brother crowded around my table to stare at me eating lunch with my hands, and those who could not fit peeked through the windows to stare at me eating lunch with my hands. I don’t remember a time when four servings of white rice, beef, mutton and misti doi tasted as good as that dusty afternoon in no man’s land.

Bombay, Maharashtra, western India
As with many Mumbaikars my life in Bombay lies on several linear paths running parallel to the train tracks. Mine runs between here, Colaba, and there, Andheri, then that stretch, Chowpatty and Marine Drive. Mine is all about sitting by Marine Drive contemplating my future, then stumbling into Colaba and literally stepping into it. Mine is all about how I can never seem to leave. It was about running amok in the Mumbai monsoon with the crazy hippie Englishman who changed my life, quite literally, sitting squashed against the delectable cake counter of my favourite place in all of Bombay, Basilico, entertaining talk about his imaginary matrimonial (with me) from Basilico all the way to Gokul all the way to Sports Bar all the way back to Leopold’s, good old Leopold’s. Bombay, city of dreams and city of dreamers, makes me believe we all run into people we are destined to love, in more ways than one, and usually quite literally. Because between the stretch from Barista to Leopold’s to Theobrama’s, I’ve met more than a few of them. People you will not see much at all, but will always count on meeting in third cities, be they London, New York, Bombay, or even Allahabad. Cricket came on on the telly in the bar, the congregation stilled and was moved. India won. I could not stop beaming.

Bangkok, Thailand
This could be home. When booking flights home, if there is a cheaper ticket to Bangkok as there usually is, it is as good as being almost home for me. It’s obvious where my allegiance in cities lie: to the huge, sprawling metropolises, the more chaotic the better. I know in ascending and descending order the routes of the Skytrain, the subway, and the canal boats along the khlong san saap. I know all of Sukhumvit, Ari, Din Daeng, and Phaya Thai by heart. I have begun holding ten minute long, syntactically well-formed conversations with decent vocabulary; my most practiced conversation is the one that is repeated to every single taxi driver in every single taxi journey, yes me Thai look same same talk same same but mai chai! I am not khon tai! mai chai! my parents are not Thai neither are my grandparents and yes I’ve checked my great grandparents too. Here where it is impossible to eat badly, and here where I fell in love: with that feeling of happiness from having my life packed away into a backpack and a camera bag. Laundry bags optional.

Singapore, Singapore
I have never felt at home here, even though it is supposed to be. I have felt out of place for as long as I can remember, and if you press me for specific reasons, I cannot give you any except a description of how.. odd it feels for me to be here. It is home, and it is family and friends. And yet… it is not enough. How can I ever be happy to swim in a pond, and be content at being well-fed within one, when there’s an exciting, scary, infinitely endless ocean out there? It isn’t about quitting and it isn’t about thinking other places are better. In my pursuit of happiness on any matter I have always thought there was nothing I wanted more than to be able to say, this is what I chose, this is what I will live with, this is what I will be because I chose. I did not choose this and am afraid I cannot. So I choose to leave. And whether or not I return is of no consequence.