I walk by the Ukedo river, watching how the wind keeps rearranging the sakura petals that float on its surface, spelling out some word in some language. Spring steadily surges towards summer, and silent nights like these in the company of cherry blossoms will inevitably turn to walks ushered by the cry of cicadas. There is beauty in both, or at least one must try to convince oneself so.
“I suppose I could spend time theorizing how it is that people are not bad to each other, but that’s really not the point. The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what’s too high, or what’s been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog.
[…] This caretaking is our default mode and it’s always a lie that convinces us to act of believe otherwise. Always.” - Ross Gay, in The Book of Delights
I think why I am drawn to tourism as a mode of community building is its power to recall our attention to constructive caretaking. To show somebody a city is an opportunity brimming with a tender power: here, in this moment, you can make them fall in love. You have the ability to facilitate a lifelong romance. To show inherently carries the nuances of seeing. What can you show if you haven’t seen? To make somebody fall in love with a cityscape, you must fall in love with it a thousand times over. When I kneel by the river and search for the moon’s reflection, I let that be my prayer: to consciously, continuously love. To make that choice with humility. To allow myself the space to be silly, too. I think of Dilli, as I always do — suji waale gol-gappe at Amar Colony, malai makkhan at Chandni Chauk, strawberry milkshake at CP A-Block which papa introduced me to in the midst of hourly breakdowns about what I should be studying further. I think of how my memories of the city are so specifically woven with its landscapes but still have a startling universal quality to them. What I am trying to say is that I am able to love the cities I have been blessed with the chance to stay in because of the love that Dilli first ignited in me.
I sit across some friends in a quiet eatery in Namie(Fukushima, Japan), taken aback by how perfectly grilled today’s hokke is. We talk about language and monkeys, discovering that 木耳 are called cloud ear mushrooms in English. Six months since I started trying to know this city and slowly allowing myself to be known to it, I think I am slowly starting to fall in love. And like the case is with all love, it is the eccentricities that truly win our hearts. The other day, a friend showed me a sakura tree where the flowers bloom exactly ten days before the rest of the trees. He showed me a short stump in front of the tree that I can use as a marker to remember which tree it is. I know already that I’ll be searching for it next spring, waiting for the tiny buds that will serve as prelude to an entire season.
For now, this is all. Khuda Hafiz.
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