I have been trying to walk in Vrindavan in the way that I walk in Bangalore in my parents’ gated community jogging track. But here, I walk in fear, mostly generated by the arborial presence of monkeys. The arborial creatures have a remarkable advantage of surveying levels of spatial existence and choosing to descend on someone’s shoulder if it appears desirable. It’s probably the way very tall folks see the world - in levels. Monkeys are like birds in a sense, but with very strong will. My other fear is that I will lose balance in the narrow geography of negotiation between bikes, e-rickshaws, cars, cows, bulls, people on the one hand, and the open drains on the other. Needless to explain that this is a dynamic space, a conveyor belt of movement which in itself is in motion.
I begin to assess the assumptions about space that underlie my history of walking. Cleanliness, smoothness, comfortable pace, relatively good weather, absence of arborial creatures who may disrupt my walking, relative absence of noise. I learnt the art of walking from Benjamin’s Arcades. But the boulevards of late nineteenth century Paris are quite a radically different order of place from the Parikrama Marg in Vrindavan. Order - is a key word in this reflection. The spatial and organizational order that we take for granted is disrupted, and this leads to fear - anxiety at the very least.
But I walk, and watch, and listen, while being anxious about the radical interruptions in spatial embedding - from every sensory alleyway. In the mornings, I listen to Proust’s Swann’s Way as an audiobook. The power of an acute, childlike attention to hawthorn, and handmaids, and dripping of water, and afternoon quietness, and gossip, and rustling of silks - spreads inside me. Proust offers a listening experience that is quite like music. The prose spreads out like a sonic Persian carpet. Can one write like this about really anything, - just this and that - lunch and dinner? Can one write like that about the spatiotemporal riot that is Vrindavan? I am inspired and intimidated and curious about Proust’s craft really being about nothing. Just attention.
[A still from Un homme qui dort. Bernard Queysanne, Georges Perec, 1974.]
Perhaps, ethnography too is just that. Heightened attention.