Anna Nagarum Naanum

Anna Nagar’s been through it all with me. I was all of 16 when I first moved to live in a city. Everything from traffic to crowded buses to endless roads that seemed to keep the city expanding no matter how further you walked, equal parts fascinated and scared me. All I knew for the first 2 years was that 3 buses plied from school to Anna Nagar, and if I delayed catching one long enough after school was over, I could walk my way back home looking wide-eyed at the neon lights of Maha Beauty Parlour and Seashell restaurant. Sometimes, I liked to mix it up with lanes around the Tower Park, where seasonal flowers would be strewn on the sides of the roads almost all through the year. If I saved up for a week, I could make a 5-10 minute call to Anaya in the xerox/std shop on the way. Come college, bus trips became share auto trips, and the sundal akka by the bus stop and I became friends of sorts. She’d only ask me why I hadn’t come in a while if I skipped a day, and if I’d like my usual order, no further questions. Neither of us asked our names or shared any stories. She was always there, and I’d always eat a plateful of hot, spicy something, and that was until one day, she wasn’t. Metro excavations began. Two-ways became one-ways. Bus stop location changed. Sundal akka would open shop once a week or so, and then she vanished. The guy I used to date would stay on call with me until I walked my way home. I don’t remember much from the conversations, but I remember how he would ask me where I’d reached every couple of minutes. Since we’d both be broke pretty much all the time, ‘hanging out’ meant eating a plate or two at sundal akka’s, and walking the length and breadth of Anna Nagar. I’d discover new roads every single time, sometimes covered entirely by kondrai poo. And since I am terrible with remembering names of roads, I would never be able to find said road again most times. Ask me directions and I’d tell you to go by the mango tree, turn at the supermarket, walk past the stationery store, and stop by the vehicle repair shop to cross the road. Now, the guy would ask me where I was, and since we’d have walked by those roads, I’d identify them with what we had seen or what we’d been talking about when we last walked by it. ‘Where now?’ ‘Road roller,’ I’d smile to myself, proud of this precious story only the two of us shared in the entire world. I’ve sat by pavements, holding my face, sobbing, while this one dude hit me in anger, and then profusely apologised, while reassuring me that anger stems from a place of love. He was sorry it hurt, that my cheek swelled, but also, ‘urimai,’ he told me. I’ve walked by the same neon signs, crying inconsolably, trying to make sense of a failed relationship where I sat consoling the dude, telling him that his love troubles with the other girl he had fallen in love with will truly be sorted out soon. I’ve been picked up and dropped by some roads after I wanted to go to the beach at 5 am to wait for the sun to rise. I’ve been hugged long enough, I felt whole. I’ve caught a precise moment when I knew I was falling in love. I’ve caught a bunch, when I knew that the intensity of it wasn’t the same within the person across. Time and again, I’ve let people in, shown them my walking routes, my favourite small eateries, old houses I lived in, houses I liked looking at while I walked back home, with all those creepers, and plants, and pink bougainvillea. I’ve grown up, watching people blotch up the places I once loved with memories I struggle to come terms with. Sometimes, I wish I was that high school girl who would carry a small notebook and pen during her walks, and sit by practically any pavement to note down an idea or a feeling I’d think was worth writing about - and then I’d remember how confused and scared she was – I was, and how I was always pining for an out, somehow, somewhere, so much so that that would be the one feeling that would keep me going. To be honest, I did run away, cautiously letting new people make memories only in new places. I ran as much as I could, only to be pulled back in here, looking down at the cloth bag that mother shoves into my hands as she tells me the grocery list, only now, she’s no longer handing me a tattered piece of one side of an envelope with ‘u.paruppu and ka.paruppu,’ but wants me to note it down on my phone – she does not have time to whatsapp the list to me, she says. There’s the metro now. One-ways are back to being two-ways. Kondrai population has grown. Tower park still plays the same instrumental music. Mr. Pronto hasn’t changed its logo. Pubs (!!!) have crawled their way into the landscape. Some biriyani places have been replaced by some burger-pizza places. Karthik Tiffin Centre has branched out. McDonald’s and Bata have stayed, but pretty much every other store around Round Tana have been replaced by shiny new ones. I don’t really know who I am, but an exhausted and overly-cautious cat, at the ready to snap with claws at anything that attempts to get close. I almost always feel like a collection of different people, who all had a different story of which road was to be called what, so alien that thinking about them, I feel like a time-travelling ghost. I think this is an attempt to compile visually, how I wish one of those people I let in, saw me. Or documented our times. Or reminisced about some of it once in a while; a year or two even. Or skipped a beat when they remembered about what a big deal the story behind Skywalk’s naming was at one time. Or self-love, bottled with only the good shit. Something like that. ** You might enjoy looking at the pictures while listening to this number. Hit play. :)