Nostalgia

W
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geography
hen I told my mother I had a chance to write this story, she refused to let me drop it, despite the jaundice that kept me home and my own fears about whether I still knew how to write anything besides an angry press release any more. stop being dramatic, and let me help you. and so begins our story, with a gigantic album from my great grandfathers archives, scrapbooks falling out of Godrej cupboards, postcards from my father, and my mothers refusal to throw any of it away, lest we grow too big for our baby booties and forget where we came from.

VizAG, a persoNal

lived memories of Vizag intertwine with the citys recorded history, overturning an attempt to delineate its boundaries.
TexT aruNa ChaNdrasekhar

Pages from history

Vizag is where my great-grandfather, Ns Tyagaraja sastry, decided to drop anchor during his fathers tenure as deputy collector of Narasaraopeta, while andhra pradesh was still part of the Madras presidency. one of the first Tamil settlers in this bay city, he was an advocate during World War II and the freedom struggle, when few who needed legal remedy could afford to hire a lawyer and payments were often made in kind. I listen wideeyed as my mother tells me about a city I can scarcely believeof curfews, a mass exodus after

Dummy Messiahs, by Louie Cordero and Carlo Ricafort at the Department of Avant-Garde Clichs (DAGC)

Image courtesy DaGC

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Below: The group exhibition, Xing E Jacinto, at Tin-aw Gallery Right: Here Be Demons by Bea Alcala, Tin-aw Gallery

the Japanese bombings of 1942, a time when men of society would discuss politics over cigars and billiards at Century Club, while disguising loans to keep the house running and maintain appearances as theyd conspire to overthrow the same gated structures in favour of Independence. Drive past the Naval Coastal Battery today, train your eyes to see through the haze of iron ore and coal dust that clings to the original faades, and glimpses of old Town come alive amidst the chaos of the fishing village in the city whose boundaries Im not sure I can fathomthe Town Hall, the Hamilton Memorial Masonic Temple, the lighthouse near st aloysius High school, the bustling Kurupam and poorna Markets, and ross Hill, home to a temple, mosque and church overlooking the port whose expansion threatens its existence.

The past stares out at me from these pages. To me, Vizag had always seemed utterly predictable; every bend in the road loaded with at least a years worth of memory. I always felt I could ride blindly through its streets, arms akimbo, hurtling down the treelined slopes of andhra University, open my eyes and spot a friend shooting hoops at the YMCas basketball court, continue down to the beach, past the Victory at sea war memorial, past the mermaids, the overgrown babies, the concrete shark and other questionable, psychedelic attempts at public art, familiar faces everywhere I go. None of it seems to match, but it all fits in the map inside my headthe black-and-white pictures that lie in my hands, the undying flyover knocking at my door, and my own understanding of familiarity that has welcomed and infuriated me in equal parts, as I tried to understand my own place within it. and so, permit me to drift, if I may, navigate this bay of personal geography and show you my home on the east Coast.

family tree
I was born here in 1987 to a family of doctors, in a tiny ward in King George Hospital or KGH. one of the citys oldest standing structures, it was established as a civil dispensary in 1845, and though the edifice is now yellowing, and it has acquired some infamy, it continues to treat the poorest of the poor from across the east Coast. KGH is also where my maternal grandfather, Dr NT subrahmanyam, served as medical superintendent for five years, while he was acting dean and professor of medicine at andhra Medical College. It was here that he taught three generations of doctors, including my mother, who blames him for her lack of a social life in the 70s, just as she admits that he was her favourite professor. everything I know of this city lies in Thathas (grandfathers) magnanimous shade. even though my earliest memories are from Naval park on the western edge of the city, his home, Tyagaraj, is the closest we have to an ancestral home. It is also now the only house on a road once dotted with five banyan trees that has any foliage left.

WoNder years
I swing open the old green gate and look up at the Christmas tree that was planted the day my brother was born and has long since outgrown him. Jump the side gate, and there lies the champa, easiest to scramble up with a book, hide in after a solid scolding, or stalk vampire cats on a full-moon night, waiting to see which of us would bail first. This backyard has been witness to hundreds of games of improvised golf played with a gigantic lime and my grandfathers walking stick as well as impromptu melas put up for the entire neighbourhoodnot to
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Images courtesy Tin-aw Gallery

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Nostalgia

mention the time Dad, a young surgeon lieutenant in the Navy, raised a dozen eyebrows the first time he came to see my mother. To us cousins, Vizag meant an endless summer holiday to run riot inmy brother anand, the ringleader, Vikram and I, his dutiful slaves, and sujata, the protesting scapegoat. our mission? To eat as many mangoes as possible, concoct the perfect imli lollipop guaranteed to give you a three-day stomach ache and to extract a story a day from thatha in exchange for pressing his feet (and going on full-blown strike when he fell asleep mid-sentence). The summer holiday ended when I was in class four and we moved to Vizag for good. My world grew biggerfrom waiting for the bus outside the same gate, homework done and well-oiled pigtails in place, to hiding out in the tin-shed canteen in Visakha Valley school, with its one-rupee samosas and kids too cool for tiffin boxes. But it was only once my brother left for college and I realised that I was completely off the hook did the city really open up to me. Naturally, wed blow our tuition money on matinee shows at Jagadamba Theatre, cyber cafes, and bike fuel, as wed zip around the beach without a license, Bryan adams screeching out of a secondhand walkman, feeling awfully misunderstood,

wishing we were elsewhere, where the deadlines were kinder and the boys less superficial. I started plotting my escape.

No PlaCe like home

six crazy years of Mumbai later, I was home again, just as confused, unsure of what I was doing with my life, angry with the events unfolding in the heart of the country, angry with my own inability to reach out to my people or make even the slightest of an impact as a journalist, acutely conscious of my own privileges. I realised I really knew nothing about my own city beyond a 5-km radius, no idea where its water comes from, where its forests lie, who its indigenous communities are who still live lives of a relative self-sufficiency thats constantly threatened and what their stories are, their upheavals, their notions of development. and so, a very different district presented itselffrom the tribal heartlands of araku valley and its struggles against bauxite mining to the lush Nagulakonda hills in Nathavaram mandal, from the Niyamgiri hills in orissa, home to the Vamsadhara river that feeds the city, to polavaram, avelthi and peddamallapuram in east Godavari district and sompeta and Kakarapalli in srikakulam district. Wherever I went, as people opened their homes to me, they became family, their struggles, their stories and geographies, mine. I stopped running.

Clockwise from left: The show Re:Surgo! by Christian Gfeller and Anna Hellsgrd at DAGC; Liwanag by Alfredo Esquillo Jr at Tin-aw Gallery; DAGC hopes to make art more accessible to people by focusing on reproducible and affordable fine-art prints.

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Nostalgia

Images courtesy DaGC, Tin-aw Gallery

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The group show, Star Cruiser Sopas Collision, at Now Gallery.

While change is at work everywhere else in Vizags race to become a Tier I city, with an eraser to everything that lies untouched or inconvenient, I have come to accept that some things, besides the sea, will always remain constant; Beach road will always be jam-packed on any given holiday; no matter how crowded, couples will always find a spot to conceal their affections, usually behind the yielding shadow of the submarine museum; andhra University remains the last bastion of calm in a growing sea of traffic; and a packet of popcorn at Jagadamba theatre still costs only ten rupees. That my mother, despite her million-dollar balancing act, still makes jars of pickle from the bounty of home-grown mangoes every summer; my paternal grandpa, at 93, still types letters to the editor of The Hindu and stakes out the post office, with grandma on his heels, cooking up a storm. Dad will always be the pied piper of any neighbourhood, cheering me on in whatever hare-brained thing it is I do and thatha will always have a story, for anyone who takes the time to really listen. No matter what changes, there really is no place like home.

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From the works of graffiti artist collectives to city-commissioned murals Manila hopes to get its art out on display.
Images courtesy Now Gallery

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