A city is many cities. Depending on where you stand your
view of the city is changed. Barbizon School painters and the Impressionists
painted rural areas in different hues based on the changing effects of sunlight
on things. But cities are the dreams of the Impressionists. It is not just
about the light and its various shades. It is not just about the people,
streets and the architectures. It is about many things including locations and
economics. Even the vehicles that you choose to travel could bring in a new
city within the city that you dwell in. A poor man’s view of the city is
different from that of a rich man. A person who lives on a high rise would see
the city differently unlike the one sees it from a hamlet in a shanty town.
City is different for a late night reveler and a pavement dweller. The lonely
man or lonely woman in cold city street in the dead of night experiences a totally
different city. A walker’s city is different than that of a person in a
vehicle.
A walker, not really the flaneur, sees the city differently
provided he or she keeps the head high. Some people walk with their head
hanging. Those proud people who scan the city with their eyes see so many
things that most of us miss out. A walker maintains a different relationship
with his city. A regular walker even knows the count of steps that he uses to
cover a particular distance. He grows friendly with the street dogs, hawkers,
trees and birds. He gets a smile and a few goods words from a bored security
man at a rich man’s gate. Perhaps, only a walker experiences the city. In a
city like Delhi, a cyclist cannot really focus on the scenes around him. A biker, for the fear of his life veers through
the traffic until he reaches home safe. A man or woman at the wheel distracts
himself either with music, idle chat or the FM radio ramblings. The people in
the buses are saving their pockets, bodies and souls from others’ incursions.
People in the metro are focused keenly on their smart phones. A walker sees
everything.
As a walker, you get people asking you for directions. You
will be really happy to show them the right direction. Suddenly from nowhere,
another walker appears who might have seen you in social media and introduces
himself to you. It is good to know a stranger reads all what you write and all
what you paint. When you walk you can hum a tune, you can talk to yourself and
laugh at the people who are in the vehicles hurrying to some destination. While
walking you cannot be really show off your self-importance. You are one of
those few people who walk. And you are often seen as either lacking in money to
hire an auto or who cannot afford a car or taxi. But you don’t know that a
walker, like God sees everything.
Today, while walking in the India Gate circle, I saw this
beautiful sight (which is in the picture). It is a steel banyan tree inside the
premises of the National Gallery of Modern Art. It is a work of art by Subodh
Gupta permanently displayed in the NGMA. I do not know whether anybody notices
it while speeding around the India Gate. It is like a full moon on a very dark
night. It is lit up from all the sides. It suddenly appears before me not as a
work of art that is encountered by an art critic; but as a thing of beauty
before an ordinary human being. I have seen this work in different contexts and
in a different day light. But today it looked heavenly. I have seen, while
walking in Connaught Place, the glimpses of the India’s national flag (the
proud tricolor), a huge one fluttering in the night sky, all lit up in LED lights
from down. I take it in me not as a patriot but as a thing of beauty and
immensity. I don’t feel any nationalist sentiments while looking at the flag paying
with the night breeze. I have seen huge and thought provoking public art murals
behind the rows of cars and the Pollockian stains of public urinating. One has
to walk to see all these. And I wish more and more works of art come in the
public space, in the open, lit up in heavenly lights so that people could see
and wonder at the beauty of their city. Let’s walk.
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