Kolhapur

When you read a book and it describes a place, a real city where things happen, how closely does the reader experience the city? How close can a reader really get?

Especially if you have lived in that place. You know the lanes. You know the smells that might emanate from a certain street. The way the hot tarmac feels on bare skin. The vocabulary of the natives. The pools of light and shade that lent themselves to your games. The known strangers that spoke to you. 

This book brought alive the Kolhapur I grew up in.The book maybe written in english but the words were richer to me because I was hearing them in the language of my youth. I know these characters. I might even have met and talked to some of them. 

It's not the town that exists today - I don't recognize it. The alleys and roads lead to nowhere familiar. It's expanse doesn't spell tranquil love. The small mindedness of the place has evaporated, taking it's small aspirations with it. Being unbothered is a state it no longer knows. It's just another place on this planet that isn't home. 

I heard a journalist once speak of rooted cosmopolitanism. Of how he grew up in 1960’s Cairo in Egypt and that world has been lost forever to a parallel universe. The hometown of my memories has been consigned to the same black hole of temporal obscurity. Today, I miss it.