On Nativity And Belonging

I undertook a wild trip of Chennai today – I know it sounds grandiloquent when I say that, but I took a trip that was definitely wild on my own terms. My first discovery was that not only had I seen just half the city, but was also under the false impression that there was nothing more to it. My blatantly wrong assumption was quashed fully when I went past Chennai Central (as we know the Central Railway Station) and arrived in that part of the city called, simply, the North. The peoples in other parts of the city – the parts familiar to me – were all immigrants, and had been naturalized over the course of three centuries to make up everything that was cosmopolitan about the state capital. The natives were in the North, unconsciously preserving as well as relishing all that was and is Tamil – the language, the food, the sunrise, the sunset and everything in between.

As we (me and my magnanimous friend, known only as V) drove hither and thither, him pointing out to me all that had changed in the last four years, forgetting that I had known quite nothing of Chennai so much as two years ago, while I told him of all the quaint remnants of the British occupation that I had noticed and researched. V was the quintessential free spirit, the praxis of freedom, while I preferred the sequestered and sound-proofed confines of a room with a view. We each had known Chennai as two distinctly different entities for the last few years: I had known it for the city it was, the residue of its history and no more, while he knew it was a living, breathing being. He would tell me about his experiences with the people he had met, their sufferings they had recounted to him, and the struggles they faced on a daily basis that, in his mind, seemed to define the state of being Tamil. You only had to listen to him speak, and you knew it was true.

That V could find so much nativity in him would sometimes put me to shame. Let alone being a free spirit, I have never even appreciated the outdoors; call it selfish, call it what you will, but my interests have always been with facts, with the physics and the mathematics of this world, and anything under their purview would soon come to be under my purview. All that I have ever known about this city, this beautiful city, is, sadly, only a result of such observations; then again, I have only observed, I have never surrendered my expectations to the promises of the city and seen. What I write today about the Marina beach may seem original because I have been there – but I know, even if you can’t discern it, that there is nothing that prevents me from substituting the word ‘Marina’ with the name of some other beach in some other continent and still be left with a sensible description. There is no qualitative content that I am capable of contributing with, and that is what leaves me ashamed.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The Marina"][/caption]

At the same time, my logical faculties – faithful as they always are – tell me that all is not lost, that there is still something left in me to give to the city, something it might unfortunately lack, something it might circumstantially need. It is true that this world has always vacillated from states of imperfection to perfection, and it is also true that it can never peacefully exist in the same state. I may not know the pulse of the city, but that only means I am endowed with the unfortunate capability to know and, moreover, understand what is perfect and what is not. In other words, I am the logical faculty of the city. Note that I speak only in singular and first-person terms: I am only contextualizing my role in terms of my emotions. Even in all this shame and defacement, there is an urgent need in me to contribute to an entity I have always only indirectly known, an entity, when not an area on the map, that is the port I set my bearings toward when I am lost in the stormy seas of identity and individuality. I am not trying to get rid of my guilt – I know that only because as soon as the guilt is gone, I will still be its humble servant.