And the things that shape you

Early experiences of an architect from Mumbai in Germany.

Random Musings: We start forming associations with the city through the experiences it offers that spark a sense of joy and belonging. Do we read a city just through its buildings and infrastructure or also by the stories of its citizens? A city starts feeling like home when one can feel it can house both one’s joys and sorrows…phases of companionship and loneliness. Does the city make you feel like it can absorb you …or does it make you feel like an outsider?

Walking around Berlin, I have often wondered what the stories of people here must be. When I walk around the city, I try to observe what their situations and aspirations must be, so as to absorb the place better and not feel like an outsider/tourist.

Don’t we also make a certain sense of ourselves through the community around us?

Back home, I could attempt to speculate on what people’s stories might be. And also, since people were more open, they would comfortably talk about various aspects of their lives. The idea of community was so vast – the web of people in my life existed way beyond my immediate family and friends. I still remember how a rickshaw driver consolidated the teenager me when I was going to give my board exams while my dad was in the hospital. I also got a random smile from a policeman that day, his eyes communicating that everything will be okay. I remember how the local vegetable seller would talk about educating his children and the conversations with the househelp about ways of developing resilience post her husband’s passing away. The local pharmacy had a rough idea of the medical history and requirements of my family, and the street food stall uncle knew just how much chutney I would want in my chaat. The delivery guy or the Ola/Uber driver sharing their grievances about the shit pay that corporate companies offer to them as a consequence of increasing their urban consumer base. The printer xerox uncle knew just what type of paper I want my drawings to be printed on and what my undergraduate thesis was about. In Mumbai’s densely packed local trains, when I have travelled in the gent’s train compartment, most men have been so cautious of giving a seat to a woman first and to stand at a safer distance, so we women feel comfortable. These stories of hardworking and compassionate people around me are endless. This web of stories is what also constituted my idea of home.

The depth of belonging I felt in Mumbai also increased manifold during my undergraduate architecture course. There were a lot of studios that required mapping the city, comprehending the needs of the residents across all socio-economic groups, and interacting with multiple stakeholders. I could see what the city meant and offered to different people. The idea of theory was also somewhere absorbed as an abstraction of reality/practice. There was a sensitivity which was developed for eg. When reading feasibility reports and policy documents – we had to comprehend that it is just not numerical statistics but real people and their lives. I would learn a lot about who I am as an individual through learning about the city and the people around me.

There is just so much a city gives an individual beyond housing and work

It gives a chance to dream

It gives the freedom to explore

It pushes you to experiment with parts of yourself you didn’t know could grow

It lends a sense of purpose, a state of being

You make sense of the world through the stories witnessed around traversing the city

The city keeps the magic in people alive

That’s how the city is alive

What triggered me in writing this piece is reading about a recent inequality report published back in India, my attempts at trying to feel a certain connection – both towards myself and the context over here. It made me start introspecting about who do I see myself as? What has shaped me?

We somewhere individually exist in a constellation of our context

A context of the people we have in our lives

A context of the place we come from

A context of the memories that shape us

However, where and how do we start colliding and forming new constellations together when moving to a new place?

Memories of walking in my city with streets evolving as per different festivals of various religions still come back to me. The city became an extension of celebrating this diversity. I just love how reflective and introspective streets back home would feel. They are like an extension of our collective selves. The streets reflected the joys and sorrows, the pride and prejudices, the wealth and the struggles, etc. It's wondrous how the vibe of the streets would feel different in different cities. And that’s how I learned that streets are akin to a mirror, and you can read the city like a book by walking its streets. It's like they reflect the pulse of the locals. Diversity has been such an integral part of our upbringing that it doesn’t surprise us when I hear recent talks of multiculturalism in the global north. Now when I aimlessly stroll around in Berlin, I attempt to absorb its pulse and the small little discoveries give me much more joy than moving around with a set agenda. So yes, when I travel from Dessau to Berlin, for the first half of the day I have a certain place to visit in my mind but then after that – I just stroll around as I feel like.

Being an architect and writer back home, I would constantly feel a strong sense of purpose. In Mumbai, I met people from different parts of India (which I now realize is still so limited after coming here). In Berlin, I am attempting to meet people from different parts of the world (I have been in my shell for the past 8 months as it took me a lot of time to feel a little okay being away from home). One of my first attempts at doing so was going on a city walk with a Syrian refugee. (Still need to figure out more such attempts). In a single lifetime, it is humanly impossible to travel to every single place – but maybe I can broaden my understanding of the world when I come across stories from people who have come here from across the globe. (Hopefully, I become stronger than my anxious inhibitions to be able to successfully do all these things that I am talking about. Most of the time, I am just a messed-up person here and find it very difficult to even strike up a conversation)

Berlin is a city where everything looks majorly organized and polished – comparatively free from the triggers I witness back in Mumbai. Everything over here gives an appearance of being designed with such strong organizational principles and capital investment. Even though it is a city which faced a lot of devastation during World War 2, it has managed to rebuild itself into a global metropolis. Over here, I often search for any hints of spatial transgression just to get a feeling of how various social groups appropriate the urban space. Even though I don’t live in Berlin – I am attempting to imagine what it must be to be a “Berliner”. It is my one way of trying to find some belonging here in Germany.... away from Mumbai.

It’s a strange feeling that the social class disparity is not so glaringly obvious here. When I walk around in shopping districts like Kurfürstendamm, I cannot help but wonder how people here experience life in this part of the world so differently. Sure, I can also feel a difference between richer and poorer neighbourhoods when I see different parts of the city through my random S-Bahn rides. For people living here, the idea of the world must be so different no?…and isn’t it enormously varying for all of us? Aren’t we all just an open-ended algorithm of our respective varied, unique set of situations, choices, consequences, and conditioning? Places and communities shape us up as individuals so differently, don’t they? But it is so mystical to come across how people bond differently. Some people find their whole world in a handful few people they choose to surround themselves with. Some people are able to find small little worlds in everyone that they encounter.

The patterns that individual notices reflect their inherent social conditioning and experiences unconsciously. We experience the world through our inbuilt mental compositions and that is how different people notice different things even when they are in the same space. And it is in observing these small little things that I am trying to comprehend the puzzle of where I belong over here. Strangely the design profession makes an individual very much an overthinking person for him/her to develop his/her own creative voice and language (or so it did – in my case). So finally, I am trying very hard to discover who I am over here - away from my family, my friends and my city. I constantly feel like I don’t understand anything and falter in the smallest of things however I keep trying with whatever energy I have on that particular day. I hope to take back to Mumbai, a deeper understanding of Berlin/Germany with me.

Why ponder so much about all these things? Because I have realized that I will not be able to live away from home unless I find something that I truly connect with over here. I am trying to re-ignite the relentless Mumbaikar in me by travelling to Berlin and building myself from the ground up, especially on days when I feel I cannot connect here and feel like running back home.