Small Town India

Nagpur does not fit the bill of being a "town" but when you have been through the travails of behemoths like Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, scales are subject to alterations. It can be a little befuddling to find that the very center of India may be so off its aviation map that the existence of an airport is a mystery to a few residents themselves. Such are the dynamics of economics though. Reason enough for me to categorize the place as "small" . A 24 hour long sojourn on the rail road didnt offer anything that can be remotely described pictursque and I refer to both sides of the coach's windows there. Heralded as the "orange" city, ( its the fruit and not the colour ) Nagpur came across as a beast confounded between choosing the frenzy of a metro and the low profile gaiety of a town. Food provided the most complete antithesis with the adjectives "cheap", "delicious" and "hygenic" being attached to it. The traffic, though, crawls at a snail's pace, notwithstanding the roads that may have bees straight out of the Autobahn. The untethered enthusiasm for festivals like "Rannaumi" betrays an inclination to hold onto the traditional but more so, deriving that sense of pride and bliss through collective celebration, something that seems alien to me in Bangalore. A couple of malls present a stark contrast to the otherwise bohemian city that owes its best pieces of architecture to the British empire. Clothing seemed to be in the conservative domain with high neck lines and low hem lines populating the landscape. No dearth of western outfits on show though. An epitome of what one may call "the best of both the worlds" and other may tag "stuck between cultures". The newspaper still had its priorties on local issues with no "Page 3" to be found for good measure. Publicity campaigns for huge townships where textile mills once stood promise to change the skyline of the city and taxis seem to be accelerating to replace the rickshaw with no engine to boast. The little jamboree reminded me of that kid who wants to reach out for the star filled sky without letting go of her mother's hand. May her reach know no bounds. Amen.