An Ode To Delhi
I had dreams of escape when I came to Delhi. It was imagined as the perfect place– cosmopolitan, away from home and not as orthodox as back there. But what ended up mattering for me was not that it was not home by the end of my college stint in Delhi. After three years, pollution, a flawed university administrative apparatus, at times, terrible food, I could reasonably be expected to hate the city.
But as my rather free undergrad years came to an end, I began missing the city. The city represented to me authenticity, progress and growth. A city navigating tradition and modernity, care and gruffness, barbarity and civilization. It was a welcoming city that took me as I am and gave the awkward me, time and space to grow. I learned about life and literature, from Orwell to Maya Angelou to Rawls in our classrooms with dedicated professors who carried years of experience and engagement with the subject matter. More than their scholarship, it was their kindness, understanding and engagement that inspired me, even if administration and student apathy to their subjects had tired them too. I was free to read Carnap and Russell and Gandhi and Ambedkar for our course work and explore Plato and Odyssey and read the Symposium, in the oft complained cardboard box of a library that was the library of our college.
I learned of administrative efficiency and how not to be from our college administrators. I learnt of the kindness of the big city, where you could be an atheist, a queer person, a poet, a writer, a nerd, a weirdo without constant serious judgment. You were mostly free to be yourself. And of the kindness of the mostly rough and sharp people, who would, no matter what and how firmly you say no, run across the road in a sweltering summer, to hand you a cool drink for free. How they sound angry, and in a way, they care deeply. I saw this poem recently, which compared Delhi to an angry old lady, which seems apt — Sick, tired, wheezing and grumpy, yet kind at the core, with years of wisdom accumulated through labor and age.
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Today as I sit in Bangalore, I understand the beauty of the land that I left. Bangalore is beautiful, cleaner, but the energy is too corporate. Modern architecture, construction all over the place…the NOISE. One cannot hear themselves think. There is lack of historical consciousness in the city..a lack of what I would say is humanities energy. The city is oriented towards the purpose of money making, partying and optimization. Perhaps I should learn from the words of a character in Fault in our Stars, who said that people find what they look for, when asked about Amsterdam’s reputation as the city of sin.
While spaces of the humanities energy may be in Bangalore too, and not all buildings or activities may be oriented to profit, it lacks the charm of Delhi and our terrible, small and quiet college in DU. The city lacks the sense of history, the mix of modernity and tradition and a sense of overwhelming wandering and the kind and rude and grumpy people.
On learning, I miss the more unstructured DU, the annoying but now loved professors who asked what you think this or that means. And the limited amounts of the basic readings and the time and space to wander through what you wanted to study. NLSIU in that way, through its rigid structure illuminated for me what Tagore had written about education.
Papers, assignments, lecture, case law– Done and Repeat. That has been the method till now. There was talk of Socratic method here, but rarely have we engaged in discussion of what is right, what is just, what is law? We had more Socratic method in our annoying political science lectures, where the professors would ask us to define what democracy or liberty or equality meant. Once I had scoffed at it, but today I realize it’s value and wish I had used it better. A pursuit of marks, internships– I wonder whether this was what Mr N.R Madhava Menon had intended for this law school? I think not. That perhaps the unstructured and relatively light coursework was a blessing than a curse.
So today I know one thing– Delhi and Delhi University (despite the university’s best efforts) have won my heart. The sense of freedom, history, nostalgia and unique humanities energy of Delhi and DU, they remain precious and meaningful, that they taught me a lesson– That you should be kinder, that you do not judge a book by it’s cover and the pursuit of knowledge should not be too tightly structured. Oh and the coolness of the winters, even with the pollution, is impossible not to love. These, in a way, were all the reasons I fell in love with the city and is sort of my ode to it.
As Always..be kind and be free. ( I’ll try to write more in spite of the amount of work here)
