I am complaining again

Jaipur, popularly and very gaily called Pink City came out tops in a 2011 Happiness Survey by Outlook-Mahindra Club (don't bash me up for Pink/Gay/Happy connotation, I am just feeling undiplomatic. Read Love in the Land of LGBT for my real views). Back to the survey - it's another story that about 2000 people out of 1.27 billion were surveyed for happiness. 

It’s soon going to be a year. Yet I don’t like the city any better. But that's my incorrigibility. I have whined before about not liking Bangalore's weather, it made me glum and suicidal; now I have a dislike for Jaipur's happiness. I feel hemmed in here. In this dead peaceful city, my restlessness grows. I am biased. I don’t like the street names I say - Imli fatak, Jaleb chowk, Jhotwara, Jhaalawar, Jhaalana Doongri, Moti Doongri. Awful, they sound. What do I prefer then? Timarpur, Mayapuri, Munirka, Masoodpur? Maybe.

I am a fan of the metropolis. I like the pulse of a big city. The glamour of non-stop action, of which you may or may not be a part; the madness of millions (including the serpentine traffic jams), the seedy underbelly and the anarchy. I love their unrestrained frenzy, loveliness, ugliness and vulgarity. Delhi, Gurgaon and Mumbai. (Bangalore is an overgrown halli). 

I miss Delhi. Its exquisite beauty in the winters, wrapped in fog. Throbbing with life and sweat in the burning summers. Bursting at the seams during rains. The green of the city's affluent, the brown of the down-to-the-wire, and the yellow haze of everything in between (like the glow of DDA flats in the fading sun). The boorishness of its men, the pigeons on its window sills. I love it all. The city's characterless character. Loosely moralled. With no respect for boundaries. Much like myself. Lacking in compunction. Standing tall, stuffed with pride, despite its failings. Yet, groveling time to time, to get what it wants. More like me.   

Jaipur is a peaceful city. Its people seem to have values. Values are supposed to be good. Family type values. Extended-family type values. Stable group of friends (who must be family folks too). They keep you grounded (chained, I think). Tethered. Like a farm animal. With a defined grazing radius. Lest you graze too far, run amok, snitch other’s people’s stuff, cause destruction. (In Jaipur, the State Women’s Commission is housed along with the Livestock Development Board. Such coincidences are not without reason).

To me, this city represents confinement. An oppressive pinkness. An unnecessary gaiety of the bazaars. Arches, pillars and havelis stifle you wherever you go. An old worldliness like a veiled threat 'Stay old and conventional'. It represents the suffocating safety of long marriages (not to be confused with security, physical or emotional). The elevation of virtuous women (the ubiquitous bhabhis) that cover their heads and spend their lives tending to families, birthing (and rebirthing, till they hit the right chromosomal combination). A city of 40 lakhs, confined by anchors - peace, joint family type values, stability, safety. None of the virtues I could ever hold dear. So what do I do? I spend my days foreboding about my de-tethering, if and when it happens. 


"We brought you to Richmond to give you peace," says Leonard Woolf in The Hours, when his crazy wife tries to run back to London.

Virginia Woolf responds, "I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the capital. That is my choice."