Ode to my hometown

By Anushka Navetia

When I left Kanpur. Stepped onto the bruised and battered car, wheezing past the trees and building. Rode into the freeway, past lights and sights and all remaining bucolic shit. I knew that I will never miss this shit hole. Kanpur didn't owe me anything and I didn't owe anything to her. She just sat there, on her top list of 'The Dirtiest city in India' and watched as I was bullied, harassed, molested, perfidied and became the worst version of myself. I knew that come hell or fire, Kanpur’s air was as polluted to my soul as it was for my heart.

Four months in an unknown land. In four months I adapted myself with more volubility than my Mother did in our home. I learned new words and new slang for people to 'spill their tea' and not be salty. I recreated and recreated myself. Adapting till there was nothing to repent anymore. I had friends who went to MUNs and talked about feminism as if it was an extended limb of theirs, I had peers who went to therapy in secrecy and kissed their partners in broad daylight.

After four months I came back, more sure than ever that Kanpur was just a blip in time for me. The Dursley's home that we all forgot about when Harry went to Hogwarts. It was my blackhole.

On the way up to the freeway. I remembered. I remembered the pharmacy just past my Ripples Elementary School, where I went on my bicycle for some Advil. I didn't have money. The man, with a disinterested grunt, gave me the medicine and asked me to return soon with the payment. I still owed him.

In my elementary school; Ripples, my headmaster used to take me to the nearby general store and used to buy me a packet of chips every time I had to stand outside the classroom for being dumb, which happened a lot. I still owed him. On the way to my parent's home, the broken road made me slip and tumble more times than I could remember. I unlocked the achievement of a double wound there where I fell on the same place, in the same area, at a time when I was healing from a wound already made. That road still owed me reparations.

On my way through the freeway, I realised that Kanpur owned me. I owed Kanpur in so many little ways, ways that if I wanted to count right now, I would never stop. Yes, Kanpur was a negligent caretaker, maybe it gave me more trauma than I could ever resolve. But it was also my balcony, my ledge where I used to sit and fantasize about a world greater and bigger and better than my present. It taught me to dream. And for that, I'll always owe Kanpur.

By Anushka Navetia