A wave from my sooty window (Angsty post about my current location)

Kanpur is a large industrial city on the banks of the Ganges River, in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The city is famous for its leather and textile industries. Kanpur was an important British garrison town until 1947 when India gained independence. East of the city, along the Ganges, the Massacre Ghat riverside steps were the site of an 1857 massacre during a rebellion against British rule. In the suburb of Jajmau is an ancient mound and archaeological site. According to 2011 Indian census, it is the eleventh most populous city while the population of city and its suburb were around 4 million making it the ninth-most populous metropolitan area in India.

Kanpur is a peculiar . It has a violent, gory history, and a rowdy, lawless present. Kanpurias are proud of their roughness (not just around the edges, all through), their bad habits, their filthiness, and indulge in political unrest, community-based contempt and institutionalized corruption. Moharram juloos * evenings and days are tense periods, when “ordinary citizens” wait with bated breath for the unsavoury demonstrations to be over, the demonstrators themselves revel in their self-flagellation, and undoubtedly, certain individuals lament and salivate at a lost opportunity for “communal riots”. Yes, I'm myself judgemental.

Everything that is lamentable and disagreeable about India, is present, and magnified and focussed in Kanpur, like a fantastic and formidable concentrate drink. The character of a place can, to an extent, be estimated from its dialect. Take, for example, Mumbabiya Hindi - Beedu (pal) and Maamu (duffer, actual meaning "uncle") are terms of endearment, and the exaggerated attempt to display oneself as crooks, and street-smart, and badass ... Hyderabadi Hindi - with the nasalized plurals, and "Parson" meaning any damn time in the past year, instead of "day before yesterday" in standard Hindi !!! Personally, I dislike urban dialects - this is because it is used by people who identify themselves particularly with a city - while I am all-Indian, ... although I have nothing against rural dialects, they exist for natural reasons. The Hindi of Kanpur sounds like a tongue of the slums. “It's a dog-eat-dog world”, and Kanpuria is the language of the Dogeater-dog.

Once upon a time Kanpur was called “Manchester of the East”. I am not sure what it means. What Manchester was, at the time when Kanpur was so known, I do not know. The silent and massive witness of that era is the red Lal Imli Building. There's nothing so futile, nor so difficult to let go, as a glorious past. It is said, that in that glorious past of Kanpur, nobody slept hungry. This, of course, is said of every town or city by its inhabitants, and is completely unverifiable. There used to be prestigious houses of Vehicle manufacturing, and textiles. In the 1970s, the trade union was the thing in India, even the hero in the Hindi movies was mostly a hardworking, morose labourer. I once read in an essay that Florence Nightingale is attributed to have said "whatever a hospital ought do, it ought not spread a disease" and the author of the essay had stated, "whatever a trade union ought do, it ought not close down factories". Well, in Kanpur they did. and the vehicle manufacturing and textile industry never recovered.

Even today, Kanpur is a land of entrepreneurs. In 2014, there was a fair held, called “Kanpur Brand Festival”, with lines of true brands, however small, big, or in-between, originating in Kanpur. It was fascinating. Probably, it was not a commercial success for the brands involved, for, it did not get repeated. Even now, Kanpur is a busy industrial centre, especially in the category of "Fast Moving Consumer Goods" including processed and packaged foods, and home cleaning products. The leather industry is a big thing too, and is majorly responsible for the pollution of the Ganga in Kanpur.

Sometimes, people ask me, where I'm "from". (5 seconds pause and) I'm from all over. I grew up and went to school in Bhilai, in central India, a small town and a township for the employees of the "Bhilai Steel Plant", and their families. I went to college in Hyderabad, the city formerly of Nizams, and presently of the IT industry. and then, I've worked, for a few months each, in various locations in the NCR, the south, Mumbai and Pune. So, how did I end up here? I married a homing pigeon, and it is his hometown. People used to (comparatively) civilized environs of Delhi and Mumbai dare not settle here, and there was a window of opportunity to be seized. Also, no need to pay house rent or office rent, at least initially, since the parental house is here, and it can accommodate a small office. “Cheap labour” would have been another plus point, as the employees too are local, and are saving house-rent on their part, which they would need to pay in the Metro cities! I have a “transferable” job, with a semi-Government company with branches all over India, and took a “request transfer” here, on "family grounds".

40% of all middle-class women here are teachers of some or the other qualification. It is true that the population is very high, there are many schools and ample kids in all of them, but it seems that somehow the college-going girls here were brainwashed to believe that becoming a teacher will fetch them a good husband, or perhaps better still, fair complexion!! As these two are the most coveted blessings in these young girls' lives. Of course there are many professionals, engineers and doctors and “MBA”s originating in Kanpur, but the IT industry is in a handful of Metro cities, and that is where the “engineer daughters” (and sons) are.

There are also huge no. of lawyers. The lawyers, if you believe the talk of my office, are the true "goonda"s, I have been told that the police (who are goondas in uniform) too are afraid of the lawyers - because, after all, the hearing will be at the court, and outside it, they will round up whoever they are dissatisfied with, and beat them up, including persons in Police force. Yes, of course, one can file a "writ petition" if one fears this, but the writ hearing will also take place inside a court , right? ... Oh! there are a handful of women lawyers, and, as is true of every rowdy profession, the women are the rowdiest ;)

Recently, the Bar Council elections took place. The traffic of half the town was jammed for two days :D This is nothing new. During Chhath pooja, conducted by Bihari  Hindus, the traffic of half the town is jammed for two days, During “Light Festival” of the Sikhs, the traffic of half the town is jammed for two days, and indeed, during the various political “events” and visitations, the traffic of half the town is jammed for two days. The traffic consists of n number of two-wheelers, three- wheelers of 3 kinds - the 7-seater, the auto-rickshaw, and the e-rickshaw, (and oh! the cycle rickshaw too), minibuses, actual buses, trucks (these are less, as trucks plying inter-city have a bypass outside the city), mini trucks carrying construction material, cars - hatchbacks and SUVs, and a few sedans, and then  hand-pushed carts and horse Tongas (these , as well as cycle-rickshaws have much reduced), AND pedestrians. If Traffic Jams generated  revenue in some form, Kanpur would be richer. And it is certain that it is not possible, due to the simple fact that it has not been done. Kanpur is not a city to let a business opportunity slip through its fingers.

So, why do I live on? Two reasons. Firstly, any place, which is not creeping with humans and Indians today, as Kanpur is, can easily become so, in a matter of mere months. And secondly, resilience, though the virtue of the virus, is still a virtue. I found life, and beauty, in the midst of all the filth and ugliness of Kanpur. Since I can afford a paid driver, I can afford to look out of the window. First I found the trees. Appearing from inside the monochrome grey dust, and the heaps of illegally-mined sand, rise the drumstick trees. It is not easy to guess who planted them, but it is easy to see the attacks on them.

Let me introduce you to the Drumstick. It is a vegetable, long pods (which are really soft when tender, and get really woody and need to be skinned when mature) with interestingly three-sided, eye-shaped seeds, cooked in various cuisines in India. Some love it, others hate it. The flowers, white smalls blossoms, are also edible, they have a slightly bitter, very specific taste, my sister loves it. Recently, it has emerged in studies that the leaves of the Drumstick tree are an awesome source of many vitamins and minerals, and some projects are encouraging poor people to plant a tree and use its leaves as "greens" in their meals. I do not know if this is the reason why random people decimate the roadside Drumstick trees.

Half-naked, rotten-toothed humanity aged 11 to 90 hacks away at them. Not only are the drumsticks reaped, but the tree is reduced to a stump. I used to, initially, seriously feel bad. Then, I saw the shoots. Rising vertically, like so many middle fingers pointed at the heaven. Humans will perish, and with them, the idea of “heaven”. But drumstick trees will remain. Right now, in January, their “bowers” as I am tempted to call them, are laden with greenish white blossoms, literally bowing. I remember my sister, in Amsterdam, she can't have access to any of these!

There are massive Gulmohars and Palaashs, perhaps 80 or hundred year old, and yet, youth visits them every year, and proudly they display their blood-red prime against the blueness above. There are Rangoon creepers and railway vines and Glorybower covering private and Government walls in ice-cream pink and wine red. And the Amaltas - Laburnum. It thinks it is in Europe! For the Laburnum, spring comes not in late February, but in Early May!

Then, I found the humans. What ultimately matters, in the passing of the day is not what the facilities and the amenities are, but who I see when I have the time to look around. I found those who take unpaid leaves from their paying jobs to carry food to and ensure the changing of dressing of injured animals at the SPCA – my informal Animal Welfare group. I found those who have to give up the city's last private children's library, because they have to rent out the space, but come back with a smaller one, because they just cannot not have a library for kids. I found my tribe. It is not close knit, it does not reside in one clan. It is spread over the city. Those, who, upon finding out that special kids are in need of entry to “normal school”, themselves went for a short course on Early Childhood Special Education. Those who itch for and crave books, and a bookish and literary atmosphere. Who dream up, chalk out, fundraise, and actually hold a LitFest. So, yes. I'm not planning on retiring in Kanpur, but as of now, I am working, staying, and living here.

*The Mourning of Muharram is a set of rituals associated with mainly Shia Islam. The event marks the anniversary of the Battle of Karbala, when Imam Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad, was killed by the forces of the second Umayyad caliph. In India, processions(juloos) are taken out, in which young men are showing their mettle (and their sadness) by drawing their own blood by various means