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Journalism of Courage
Charles Baudelaire once described Samuel Taylor Coleridges restlessness as a grave malady,in which the sufferer experiences a terrifying dread of returning home. Baudelaire himself suffered from it,as did Edgar Allan Poe,Khalifa Harun al-Rashid and Kaliprasanna Singha. Bruce Chatwin described Coleridge as a night wandering man,a stranger in his own birthplace,a drifter around rooming-houses,unable to sink roots anywhere.
I grew up with a restless knowledge that there was the great,large world outside and I was somewhat restricted from accessing it. I felt a great need to step out of the door and step into the real home. Its probably because,not unlike other boys of my age, I had a parallel fantasy life with many alternate homes found in Captain Haddocks Marlinspike,Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyays Kilimanjaro Chander Pahar,Premendra Mitras Beniapukur Lane and in the base camps of countless number of mountaineers and adventurers. Growing up in Calcutta in the 80s,I never thought of home in terms of a physical space. In my imagination,it could be a mountain cabin in Tibet,an Arctic station or among the Tuaregs in Sahara. It was later,when I left home to study in Delhi and in London,that the image of home developed.
I met my wife Bani Abidi,Pakistani artist in Delhi. Our relationship flourished a year later. Bani was living in Chicago at the time and I was in London and we would meet in Spain for 10 days. In those 10 days,Spain became home,a place where we would fight and make peace only when it was nearly time to go back. We discovered home anew when we returned to Delhi,after getting married in London and spending a year in Germany and half-a-year in Budapest.
Neither of us ever wanted to live abroad. When we returned,I thought I had burnt all bridges with Europe,not knowing that pretty soon the same continent would come to my rescue. Home was the first floor of an old-school bungalow in Delhis Panchsheel Enclave where the sun streamed into the living room in the afternoon,a lush garden of beautiful plants acquired over time by my wife on the terrace,a large photograph by Sooni Taraporevala of men working in a typing-pool in the living room and bedrooms that opened to bird songs. Home was there with our books,photographs,rugs and our friends who dropped by all the time. The Panchsheel house really had a buzz,there were people all the time. Great people,people who make Delhi such an exceptional place and still the strongest idea of home for us. But nazar lag gayi. As a Pakistani,even though married to an Indian,Banis rights were severely restricted. She could leave India only once a year,and each time she left Delhi,she would need permission,technically even to go to Gurgaon. Her life was in the hands of dirty geopolitics and petty officials. A life spent in the corridors of Jaisalmer house and the Delhi secretariat. Imagine if everyday of your life is spent trying to get an LPG connection. Eight years before she can hope to get a citizenship,of which the last five years she cannot leave India. Suddenly,my home in Delhi felt strange. Everything was ephemeral. Theres a Freudian term unheimlich in German,which literally means unhomely. Our lives too were circumscribed by the conditions thrust upon us,by the realisation that,at any moment,all of these can go. It was psychologically devastating. Around this time,Bani got invited to a residency in Berlin. We were in two minds about taking it up,but finally,we decided to move for a year and decide.
Berlin is cosmopolitan,lots of Indians,Pakistanis and international artists and scholars pass by; it feels like the London of my college days. Our move to Berlin,however,has changed my personality. I feel more anxious,older and my wife complains that I am grumpier. I suppose thats because of the cultural vulnerability that one feels when one has to keep explaining ones context repeatedly. But I also realise that its good to have that vulnerability. If you are too much of a home-body theres the danger of becoming the Chaudhry of the pind. You become a cultural bully,a majoritarian with a sense of entitlement. I suppose I too was in the danger of becoming one in Delhi. It is what privilege does to you. But if you are in the business of humour,you cant afford to be one of them.
Now Berlin is almost home. My son Mir was born here last year,Bani is buying an apartment,the government is fair. But if we had the opportunity,we would still give it all up and move to India as the Indo-Pak relationship normalises. But thats not really going to happen. We will just have a lot of nonsense like aman ki asha. As you might have noticed,Aman has gone to Canada and Asha is waiting for her visa. Even getting a three-month visa for my wife to visit India to celebrate my sons first birthday is proving to be remarkably difficult. My son who is an Indian passport holder.
My idea of homes more mobile now. Home is portable,a few sq feet and a few of my belongings my old T-shirt and chappals,BBC World playing on the radio thats home. It reminds me of my early days in Calcutta,of travelling by train from Howrah to New Delhi. There would be men,travelling salesmen some of them,who would board with attache cases. Once the train took off,they would put on a lungi,slip into hawai chappals,take out a tiffin-carrier and eat their meal of egg curry and rice with great relish and then settle back with a Hajmola and a detective novel. That image gives me the deepest sense of home.
