This is an ordinary story of how a girl from a small town — book-smart, with nil sense of the street — fell in love with a brash city; yes, a city. Like the typical yesteryear love stories one watched on the silver screen, it did not start with a courteous meet-cute. 

An overnight train journey away from my hometown, Chennai was a land of dreams for those who wanted to escape the follies of destiny. Like everyone else in search of new fortune, I arrived here at the Central Railway Station lugging my large suitcases with an incessant hope within.

Like an inconsiderate and entitled urban dweller who does not acknowledge small-town courtesy, this city was demanding in its own way. I first moved into a then humble neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city, twelve years ago. I was the stark outsider and everything here, including the wind and water, was alien to me. When I walked the streets, there were uneasy gawks, like those that follow a newlywed woman in her marital home. Despite it all, the city had the familiarity of food and language and I held on to that thread of identity. Desperate to form a bond with a stranger I was forced to live with, I looked forward to the blissful honeymoon phase that I had only read about. The one where they say love consumes every other emotion and there is nothing left in your body to feel. 

This port city, a popular trade hub in the past, as it is now, is older than my ancestry — as old as literature and the early Chola Empire. It carries in its heart the words of the wisest men from the past and the music from the legends of the bygone times. These words and tune still linger here — sometimes loud, at most times a whisper, but omnipresent in the trees as well as the waves that hit the shore.

In Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love, when the omniscient Sufi enters the city of Konya, he feels the saints from the past watch him as he walks the streets. The saints from this land may or may not be watching every person entering or leaving the city, but their words and thoughts reverberate here.

Though the place as a city grew from its colonial origins, the land has seen its own share of plunder and exchange of hands since the rule of the early Chola Kings. The shores were open to all kinds of new settlers and in the process, it has seen its share of tumult. It carries wounds from the wars waged between settlers from the west. The city was tossed and kicked in the years leading to its formation and it is the same hardships it inflicts on most people who arrive here with hope. I was no exception. 

This city had its plans for me. It has a peculiar method of working into your psyche. In the beginning, it exploits and slowly it manipulates you to believe in its largesse. When you begin to trust in a small intermittent reward, it drags you down a deep hole and you are back in a pit crying for help.  However, each fall teaches you resolution and makes you believe in the strength you thought you never had.

Chennai is not the passionate lover who coddles you with gifts and flowers or writes poetry and sings for you. But the city is a benevolent lover with a big heart who offers security and freedom; only if you learn to connect with it deeply.  It was late summer by the time I began to acclimatise to the fierce heat and muggy wind. Just as I started looking through the dust to find beauty in the streets lined with Neem, in the lingering charm of the copper pod blooms and the quiet lanes of my neighbourhood, grief struck me in the most unexpected way. The spark that loomed was diminished even before it had a chance to flare. The blissful honeymoon phase never came.

In those years of dealing with grief when memories from the past burdened my breath, the heavy coastal wind offered some solace. While I carried the many existentialist doubts in my mind on life and death, I walked the streets looking for temporary relief from the hurricane in my mind. There were more days filled with hatred than anything else. From the song of the Mynah to the unceasing vehicular noise, every sound at every decibel was annoying me. Through these years, the city and I were the confused partners in a new relationship, wondering if what we have is worth it in the long term.

Walking through the streets with Neem and Peepal trees that have survived decades of tribulations, in the platforms of the suburban train stations and in the vibrant flower markets, I felt the pulse of this place. I sensed what Orhan Pamuk called to feel the chemistry of the streets on your skin. All around me, I saw resilience — in the face of the mother feeding her infant in the pavement, in the launderer who ironed beneath the tamarind tree through rain and scorching heat, in the women rushing home from work in the evenings to feed their families, in the shopkeeper who lost his child, in the children playing in the open spaces who helped me cross puddles, in the smiles of septuagenarians reminiscing old stories in the park, in the impeccably dressed corporate employee waiting for her ride, in the flower vendor in the corner sharing endless stories with her customers. 

Gradually, I realised that what seemed like chaos to me had a rhythm, a tune. I walked more, this time in search of that rhythm, through the temple lanes that have seen a millennium, crossed math of famous thinkers from the past, wandered in the places where wise saints from the west preached, stared at the miracles they left behind, walked through the remnants of forts from centuries gone by, stared at the tombstones and symmetries and listened to their stories.  

Italo Calvino’s famed traveller in Invisible Cities says, You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answers it gives to a question of yours. What this city gave me is not an answer but some direction. 

As months passed, this place shed some light on the paths I took, showed some signs and opened a few doors. Soon it turned into an understanding partner, the wise companion who knew the burden I carried and comforted me with his perpetual warmth. For someone like me who ferociously safeguarded her emotions and feelings, this city was the partner who heard the words that were not spoken. 

The small steps that I cautiously treaded and the opportunities that came my way (along with their own tangles) would soon lead me to a place where I truly belonged. I didn’t know it then. 

In Elif Shakak’s Forty Rules of Love, the wise dervish gives his mystic view of places: Cities are erected on spiritual columns. Like giant mirrors, they reflect the hearts of their residents. If those hearts darken and lose faith, cities will lose their glamour. Chennai, built on the archaic wisdom and infinite humility of its people, gave me much more than shelter. It taught me to look beneath the superficial layers and connect to the rhythm underneath. 

Soon, like the millions in the city who came in search of a living and found themselves hard in love, I began to trust the stranger and fell irrevocably in love with the vastness and its infinite capacity to give. 

The pulse of the city has two starkly different beats. The contemporary pulse, the one that never stops its expansion with its glass-cast buildings, malls and high-rise towers along with the manicured gardens and fountains that accompany them. The other beat, the primeval and mystic one with the secrets from its past, audible in the bylanes around the temples, their ponds, in the campanile of the churches, in the fishing villages by the sea, in the colonial buildings scattered around and in the endless shores. It is the latter beat, the prolonged one that appealed to me. 

With every step I took within this expansive, buzzy city, I learned to pause, look around and pick a rhythm that suits me best. No matter the pace I chose to traverse, I always found a few people willing to walk along and motivate with their stories. 

When I look back, I cannot pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love. Maybe it happened in those moments I cried to the waves for help, or the times I marvelled at the banyan and peepal trees lining the streets on a happy day or the days I gazed at the lakes from its bank, imbibing some of the calm from the air. Maybe love hit while I walked the roads and ruins, trying to understand the morphology of the city, while lost in the invincibility of space and transcending in time. 

I may have fallen in love with every act of kindness this place blessed me with. When I waded through knee-deep water in one of those brutal monsoons, I had hands to hold. When I looked for shelter from the sharp pangs of the late summer rain, I was offered space. When I lost my way in the maze of streets, I was offered a ride home. In crowded public transport systems, there were other mothers who protected me. With every kind gesture, I learnt to look beyond myself, my grief and my troubles.

Rudolf Steiner, the literary and philosophical scholar who also lived in this city for a few years, believed in the existence of a ‘folk spirit.’ This spirit was a kind of a collective soul of a race/lineage/ ethnic group or a land that interacts with all the members, giving them a certain uniqueness that also affects their destiny. He believed in connecting with that spirit of the land with mind and soul.

In a little more than a decade I have spent in this city, I have tried to decipher that spirit. To me, she is an austere mother who is generous with her warmth when you are looking for comfort but also the devious assessor who makes you run around in circles before she rewards you with her magnanimity. Every passing day, I try to forge a stronger connection with that spirit.

When you survive the brutality of the humid heat on a typical summer day in Chennai, there is a pleasant wind late in the afternoon that gets more pleasing as the evening passes and prolongs into the night. During my time here, I have learnt to accept the harshness of the mid-day heat, for I know that the pleasant wind is just around the corner.

I came to this place clueless as a young woman, ready to walk any lengths in any direction. Through the trials I faced, this city has guided me to the path that suits me best and has trained me to stay determined along the way. More than anything, it has taught me resilience. When I wake up each day, I find a novel reason to love this place, even on the days I feel barren within. Like Lao Tzu says, by falling in love deeply, over and over again, I have gained courage.