Cuppa' Joe

Anger, apathy, the fire burns so cold. The flat grey sky above, the cold morning light, the world seems so indifferent. The sun is lost in clouds, having perhaps tired of the routine. It’s freezing out – at least there’s something to feel. Children walk to school rushing headlong towards a future of certain bleakness. The world, it would seem, has fallen off its axis. The morning’s news only makes it worse – greed, apathy and worst of all, naïve optimism. The fire burns brighter but it doesn’t warm – instead its harsh light makes the dullness even more impossible to ignore. The once comforting ritual of coffee brewing seems now oppressive and forced – enjoy this coffee before it turns to ashes in your mouth. And then, the coffee pot burbles plaintively and an aroma tickles the senses – the smell of what a morning ought to be, reminding me of the faint ember of life that still glows in the corner, weak yet defiant. The first sip is a tidal wave of sensation and thought, the ground shifts underfoot, the world rights itself with unbridled violence. Vast as the blackness is, it is nonetheless powerless to resist the flashlight beam cutting a swathe through it… context! In one glorious swoop, context redefines reality… I exist, I live, I thrive. And, people ask me why I don’t get my coffee at Starbucks…

Shifting sands

Have you ever returned home from a trip to find it intangibly different from the way you left it? It’s happened to me lots of times. But always, the feeling has been transient. Except in the most recent case; and, this time, it wasn’t my apartment that felt vaguely alien. This summer, I traveled to Chennai (the city formerly known as Madras), India – the place I’ve thought of as home for some years now. However, when I finally landed there, after some drama with an overbooked connecting flight, there was a nagging emptiness, a lack of emotion that just wouldn’t go away.

[Cue a segue out of left field.] The feeling reminded me of a rather peculiar neurological disorder – it results from damage to the brain, specifically to the connections between the fusiform gyrus (the face-recognition area of the brain) and the amygdala (the emotional center of the brain). People with such damage suffer from a curious form of face blindness, where they recognize the faces of people they know but think the person to be an impostor. The rationale behind this pathology is rather simple: from memory, they recognize the pattern of the face but the recognition is not accompanied by an emotional response from the amygdala, as happens in healthy individuals. As a result, the brain concludes that the person, who looks familiar, must be an impostor.

Now that I’ve wandered hopelessly far from whence I started, let’s return rather abruptly to the main plot. The problem wasn’t that I was bothered by Madras having changed in my absence… I had noticed changes during every visit too. But it had always retained an ineffable quality that made it unmistakably Madras, unmistakably home. However, this time was different… it had changed in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on… I felt like I’d walked into someone else’s home, nonetheless at the location where mine had been. And what bothered me most was how indifferent I felt about this. What had changed?

Like a child relentlessly picking at a scab, I kept digging into my thoughts until the little voice in the back of my brain was suddenly a deafening scream: “Fuck it! Nothing is yours! Nothing remains!” Ah, at last, a clue! Despite the oppressive summer heat, the city felt cold, aloof, uncaring, even unfamiliar, it’s rhythm suddenly different from the one that had so mesmerized me years ago. I realized that the city once again felt every bit as unfamiliar as it did when I moved there in 1997. But what had changed about ‘my city’ that should bother me so? Or was it really I who had changed? Before I even began to find an answer, I knew it would have to involve both… I had certainly changed but the city had likely changed too.

The answer came to me in a stunning moment of clarity as I sat in a restaurant eating an excellently cooked dosa. The food was excellent, I was in the company of family… but something irked me still. And then I put my finger on it… it was the rest of the restaurant… the activity, the buzz, the palpable impatience – people wanted me out of there – the harried waiters who could no longer even feign politeness, the hungry customers with pocketfuls of cash waiting for a table…they all wanted me out of there. And that was it… there was simply no room to relax any more, the city was too busy being a rat race to be fun.

The why was easy enough to figure out – all I had to do was drink a few glasses of tea (yes, glasses, not cups) and keep my ears open. Road-side tea shops are the real nerve centers of Madras, where one feels the pulse of the city at its strongest. (And, I am mixing up my metaphors, I know.) So, there I was, sitting on a wooden bench drinking strong, sweet, creamy tea and listening. With each conversation, I felt my perspective widen, my understanding grow clearer.

As it often does, it all boils down to time and economics. The 21^st century has witnessed economic progress hit India and hit it has, with all the subtlety of a tropical cyclone and as much balance and planning as a riot. Not that it could have been much different – this is India after all, and we Indians jus do not do simple. And Madras has definitely kept pace with the rest of the country, if not led the charge. It’s visible – lots of shiny new Audis and BMWs on the roads, stores peddling every luxury brand under the sun. But not all is well – the nouveau riche must still drive their sports cars past the same old slums and at every stop light, they must still ignore the destitute beggars. In a city trying unabashedly to gentrify itself, land is at an all time premium and as the rent rises inexorably skyward, all but the very well heeled feel the ground eroding away from under their feet. All this has turned Madras into a city full of people hanging on with grim determination and desperate people do not have the time to be nice. And, so it is that the place I once called home has turned too cold and unfamiliar to give me the time of day now. Suddenly the saying that “home is where the heart is” seems like rather cold comfort indeed.