city in light

the mornings nowadays are overcast with an unseasonable drizzle playing atmospherics on the drive to school on the highway. the fog settles in around goregaon and jogeshwari near the green of aarey milk colony. it makes the disappearing highway and the silhouettes of high rises appear like a landscape from some post holocaust future. the road melts into white.

that is, until, a few days back when the milky white carried the rays of the sun across the sky in gold and amber, across the highway from the hills to the east to the bluing sky in the west. the sunlight hit the tops of the slum rehabilitation buildings to the right and suddenly the city was different. it rose into a relationship that was made unexpectedly through shifting light. from the ritualized daily trudge to work down the same road, i suddenly saw the city lifted beyond into a new space that made it seem small and insignificant yet heroic.

yesterday aparna and me were talking about nature and living in the city. i don’t know how much difference living in a terrace flat where every single change in the light outside means that a façade of the house has changed, has made to the way i am. there must be some reason for my romanticism regarding the idea of nature and the edge that urbanity imagines in between. what makes the ‘outside’ for the humongous anthills in which we live and what meaning does it have for us?

i remember walking on carter road and watching people on the edge of the sea. while some looked outwards at the moon on the water, others turned to look at the promenade and the people walking by. i remember thinking about the double inversion of that phenomena. while those looking outwards at the ocean were looking inwards; those looking inwards at the promenade were reaching out to others. the line in between is where both of these were allowed to happen. another place that fascinated me is the tops of flyovers in the mornings and evenings. there must be something to being able to perceive a horizon at eye level, even if it is the horizon of vanishing tracks, that makes it a place to romance and hang out.