A tale of many cities - A tale of just one city

You know you are in Kanpur when

1. You go to a mall, the city’s best and biggest, itching to spend some money and the only stuff you find to spend it on is some really oily dosa and half-boiled corn
2. A walk on the main road at 2 in the afternoon is punctuated by vulgar comments and some really vulgar comments
3. There is no transport that looks palatable, except if you want to make your journey with some suspicious looking characters in ten-seater tempo-vans. I dare you, especially after having had a sufficient dosage of the afore-mentioned vulgar comments
4. Every T,D and H (and by that I do not mean Tall, Dark and Handsome) dons a leather jacket
5. On the subject of leather, you see carts and trucks piled with leather shavings. You see towering tanneries dotting the landscape fortress-like
6. There are more educational institutes and coaching classes than tanneries
7. There are more chemists and angrezi dawakhane than educational institutes and coaching classes
8. There are more angrezi sharab ke theke than chemists

Like my Senior from Savories, I too fall in love with cities. I fall in love with the time having spent there, with the people.

That special Kanpuri accent, actually central-UP accent. Enunciate every word. Not like your Dilli-rajdhani that eats up half its words and blurs the edges of the remaining.

Nahi Bhaiiiyaa. Har ek shabd ko dabake boliye. Haan. Bilkul aiise hi. Kya samjhe?

For the first time in my life, I don’t feel I will be taken to be an outsider because I speak with the newspaper-wala and the dukaandaar and the traffic cop and the thanedaar in Hindi. Hindi is the local language here. (In Delhi, you don’t speak to anybody. I don’t know if they have devised an advanced technique of robbing you just by speaking to you).

Then there are the paan-walas of Kanpur. I saw a board which said - Ladies Paan Center. Go figure.

Oh, the milk-trains. UP and Bihar are not called the cow-belt for nothing. So everyday thousands of men from villages make their way to the towns and cities with their pitchers of milk. I saw a train the other day and the entire length of it had milk cans hanging from outside its windows.

Yes, I have lived in many cities and each one has a place, in my mind, in my memories.

I do feel like an outsider though.

I always will. In any place in the world. Except one.

These others, they mean nothing. I keep coming back to you and you draw me into your steely embrace. You make me feel like I belong. I admire your sensibilities - your ability to absorb, your ability to bear, your temperance, your infinite aspiration, your tendency to flatten everybody into nameless entities - the great leveller that you are, your resourcefulness - you never disappoint, your devilish dual nature - you want to crush people into oblivion and yet and yet, you want them to crush you, you want them to prove their mettle to you so that you can elevate them to the dizzying heights of achievement.

You know you complete me.