Sometimes a change of location throws up some stark realisations. Things that have been staring you in the face that you hadn’t fully articulated suddenly become clear, or, if you’d forgotten them, become clear yet again. For instance, I move between India and the U.K. most years because of work and family reasons and there is a pattern that repeats itself as I make the transition from Calcutta or Delhi to London.
Walking the walk
One of the first changes involves my creaking bones having to wake up and deal with the fact that this vilayat is a place where they need to propel me from point to point, i.e. make me walk. In India, I live in cities and it is rare for me to walk from one point to another; conversely, in London it is rare for me to find myself in a taxi or what we in India call a ‘private car’. This results in a kind of osteo-schizoid condition that is both painful (to me) and hilarious (to spectators, aka family and friends).
As a child growing up in Calcutta, I have memories of doing a lot of walking. We lived in an underdeveloped enclave in south Calcutta. In order to get to the city proper, to catch the school bus or the public buses, one had to walk. In south Calcutta generally, between the Avenues of Rashbehari and Southern, between the Parks of Gol and Jodhpur, you could walk. Visiting Bombay, you walked around the Fort area and, of course, on Marine Drive or Chowpatty; sometimes you were driven all the way to the wilds of Juhu, to walk on the beach there. Ahmedabad, another of my childhood cities, involved a lot of walking, some of it on hot sand, some of it on ancient stone in the old ‘pols’.
The south Delhi of the late ‘60s was a wasteland and needed motorised transport, but I imagined you could walk if you needed to because where’s the problem in walking on a flat expanse of dirt?
Returning to London, it hits me again that the walking areas in all these desi cities have shrunk radically. In fact, in all these towns you have to take some form of motorised transport to reach an area reserved specifically for perambulation because ‘normal’ walking is now confined to those who have no choice but to be pedestrians. So, while south Calcutta still retains what one might call ‘walkability’, the area around where I live (central-south) is impossible to traverse on foot with any ease or pleasure. The sidewalks are occupied by food stalls, the bits that aren’t are constantly dug up, the bits still remaining have the constant dripping from the overhanging air conditioners.
The pedestrian has no choice but to walk on the road, which is dangerous because, with typical sadistic perversity, Calcutta’s drivers think the asphalt — all of it — belongs to them.
Anti-pedestrian cities
If anything, large tracts of Delhi are worse. In no other city have I seen pavements specifically designed to be anti-pedestrian. I don’t know how succeeding governments justify the mini-canyons at every bungalow entrance in the Lutyens area.
As you walk down these roads, you are constantly stepping down and up about a foot at every gate. Around the really large government haciendas, you get to walk about 30 undisturbed feet between the steep steps; around the smaller bungalows, the distance shortens. Around the Capital’s flyovers and major crossings, the biped is really shown his place — ‘do not dare to cross here or you will die’ seems to be the message, so, even in the blowing loo , you end up walking an extra kilometre or more to be able to cross a road safely.
No matter which metro or sub-metro in India, besides the traffic and the bad pavements, the other factor is the pollution. To walk briskly or slowly is to fill your lungs with oxygen. This fresh air powers your stride, lightens your bones, puts a spring in your step. Or, in the case or Ahmedabad or Agra, Bombay or Bhubaneshwar, Calcutta or Calicut, Delhi or Dinajpur, not. Coming to London and walking under the glorious canopy of the newly green trees, you can’t help but feel, perhaps not completely fairly, that among the things that Empire stole were also our fresh air and our promenading areas. Then you realise that no, this is one bit of damage we have caused entirely by ourselves. In any case, pushing your bones out of their half-year sedation, you realise what a luxury it is, to be able to complain about needing to walk so much even as you crave the activity while waking up every morning.
