Balajinagar...Bangalore..India

The last time i posted something on my blog was in August, long long ago...I was in India, then went to Paris, and now i am back to Lebanon, so i decided to start blogging again. I want my first post after this long absence to be about India, about these unforgettable 6 month i spent there. I want this post to be a tribute to a wonderful country, to the kind people over there, to my irreplaceable friends i met in Bangalore...

"So full is your presence...so radical is your absence", I love this expression of Simone de Beauvoir to Jean Paul Sartre.. it summarizes a lot of things that we have been through..that is how i felt when i left my home in India..the change was so radical, suddenly everything disappeared, moments lived became memories that we struggle to keep, dearest friends became digital photos we look at, we try to speak to them, to create conversations that could have happened. The lively noise and chaos suddenly go away and you start to hate the quite peace in your mind that you always wanted...like everything was a day dream...

Balajinagar is the street in which i lived, Bangalore is the city and India is the country...

I hate morning routines yet i want to have them, they give me an illusion of identity, of stability and uniqueness. In Balajinagar i had my own routine, wake up in the morning, wash my face, go down to the micro-size shop near the house to be 2 King cigarettes, and Hide and Seek biscuits.. then i go back to the house and prepare my morning turkish coffee and listen to Fairuz.. it was my own way of blending my happy time in India with the nostalgia of Lebanon.. it was my way of living my day by listening with enchantment to the sound of chaos, recomposing it in order to become the music to which fairuz will sing...

In Balajinagar, in Bangalore or like the residents like to say "my Bangalore" i was a foreigner, a stranger but never felt like one..maybe i am mistaken, or for sure i was mistaken, but it didn't matter to me. I had that sweet feeling or illusion of belonging, of attachment, i regained that sweet fragrance and sense of home.. you know what i mean? this feeling i had lost 5 years ago when i left my parents house to go to Beirut..i lost home, home was for me the pain of injury while playing football in the village, the smell of oranges, the sound of oil being made in our backyard, the snails i smashed when i was a child, the feeling of lightness when walking in the street...in Bangalore, i regained this relief of home, it was different, it was the sound of the traffic jam, the smiles of the kind people in our street, the kurta i wear from time to time, the milk coffee by the corner, the basketball games in college, the fragrance of spice... and more..

I traveled a lot, and every time it was like a miracle, a new country, and endless amazement... but it was always great to come back to Balajinagar..

I am not used to posting such personal notes on my blog, but bear with me, maybe it will not be the only one. Travelling for a long period does things to people..it will make you realize that there is no such thing is a homeland (watan) to which we should be patriotic and loyal. you travel, and you leave some of yourself in the people you love and the places you were..you leave something, but also you loose something of your being...something that you will never regain... i don't know what it is...but no matter what, it is always worth..

Once a dear friend told me: "I like to travel more often to meet people like you, was it in a dream that i met you? maybe, but the most important thing is that we should not allow the coincidence to let us forget that the most beautiful moment is what we are living now...maybe..." back in India i always realized that the most beautiful moment was what that which i was living there..and now..

Bangalore, a first suspicious impression (the english version)

Beirut, Cairo, Bangalore and many other “southern cities”, we think that they are so different. We start digging for specificities to brag about, and we point out our singularity. But in reality they give you a similar feeling, contradictory emotions and suspicious first impressions. That is what I thought when I arrived to the Bangalore airport and took the crazy bus to the city. From the window I saw the people, the cars and the sometimes dusty roads. It felt like Beirut...no like Cairo, or maybe it was Bangalore.

The characteristics of daily life are redundant in these cities. The same suffocating traffic jams, crazy drivers but their skin is different, crowded streets and roads, blinding dust that nests in your lungs, and other things you see in expanding cities that devour people, and make you fall in love with this chaos and mess You say to yourself: yes, there are people living here, and a lot! However, you begin to wonder is this chaos a sign of creativity and freedom, or is it mere self-destruction, desperateness and resignation from every will to change the oppressing reality? One thing is for sure, those cities will inhabit your spirit, for better or for worse…

On the road to the university, I thought that I was facing the reckless taxi drivers of Beirut, passing through its traffic jam under every bridge. Here also small shops grow everywhere like mushrooms, beggars sell inutile items on the road, buses race with cars, every existing cab horns for you to get in. I saw a bridge wrapped with publicities and filled with cabs, I almost stepped off the bus to take another one to go to Tripoli, but I remembered that I wasn’t under the Dora Bridge in Beirut! I couldn’t really get where I was until I have succeeded to merge in my mind the picture of a Palestinian camp with some areas of the southern suburbs of Beirut and the suburbs of Tripoli…it is Bangalore…

When I was in the plane, one thing came to my mind: finally I will get to the country that the Europeans have been fantacisizing about, just like for the Arab east, making it a mystical land, they used to say: that is the magical East! Yes, I found the east, an east made of cement cities, the randomness unorganized urban planning, the east of poverty and beggars, the east of social contradictions where in the middle of a street crowded with simple and humble people, a big fancy and ugly residential building, guarded by security men, rises up and besides it lies a commercial center alienated from its surrounding. This is the east, where there are electricity cuts, where corruption becomes a part of daily life… tourists come with the luxury of finding themselves and their souls, but they find a people alienated from himself, their souls are tormented with poverty and social injustice!

Those are suspicious first impressions. The scene is full with women wearing the lightest and most colorful of cloths, their bellies show but it is indecent to show the shoulder or the leg. As a stranger you see that people are dressed alike so you can’t differentiate them socially, always with smile and humbleness. The spice is in every meal, even breakfast, as if it was their way of saying to the murderous hot weather that they don’t care. You drink a coffee immersed with milk in order to temper the fire of your body temperature, or it is just the way that the English prepare their coffee, it is not important! You sit, observe people laughing, talking and getting emotional, then you say to yourself: they are not that different, they only shake their heads from right to left to acquiesce, and their smiles are wider, and they drive on the left side of the road…But it is just a first suspicious impression…