Streetscapes

April 26, 2019



Every time I set my foot in a new city, it fills me with a sense of wonder, I imagine how the city is specked with buildings old and new. I visualise the lives of the people who brought this city to life in their own ways. I remember, all the histories these walls could have seen, the windows from where once a young woman like myself must've peered out to see what was all the chaos that was happening on the streets. The streets, where children must've played hide and seek and drawn their games on the ground with pieces of chalk. The nooks and crannies, where those boys who were coming of age were being clandestine about. The small patches of quiet corners, at the end of the lane and to the left, right and left, where there was an expansive view of the sunset over mountains or the sea; I would've run through these paths, and known them like the back of my hand when life got too much. I think of the way young lovers with a spring in their steps describe every detail with rosy overhauls of these streets, sitting next to water bodies, with idealised beauty, where the world is a safe place, full of hope. The Pied Piper of a cart puller who sold that guilty food and drove everyone hearing the bell cray-zee. I can imagine it all, walking by these crooked corbeled streets. I feel like I've lived another life. I feel like I lived another persona, a young man who prepared to start a rebellion, the young lady who is returning from work early morning on a winter day in a subway car, an old man who has returned from the war with wisdom, an old lady who tells tales of magic to little children and lives with a kitty, the child who can imagine spirits of dragons and mythical creatures walking beside him...all through these streets...