Miscellaneous
The Peripatetic
In Copenhagen, the skies are perpetually black, and the rain is incessant. Each moment that the clouds part and the sun peeks through feels heaven-sent. In this dark, dank city, it is easy to feel depressive and despondent.Pranaya SJB Rana
In Copenhagen, the skies are perpetually black, and the rain is incessant. Each moment that the clouds part and the sun peeks through feels heaven-sent. In this dark, dank city, it is easy to feel depressive and despondent.
It is a wonder then, that the Danes are considered the happiest people in the world. It is perhaps testament to their resilience that they brave through the bleakness of their climate and find comfort in hygge, the Danish concept of cosiness.
I have yet to find this hygge. Where I live, in Vesterbro in the heart of Copenhagen, there is a constant stream of people and traffic. Outside my window, drunken tourists scream well into the night and sometimes, for no discernible reason, fireworks go off in the distance.
Down on the streets, a 7-11 stays open all night, staffed by bleary-eyed youngsters in their early 20s. Right opposite, a Turkish restaurant whips up durums and kebabs with practiced efficiency.
The bearded man at the counter once asked me where I was from and when I said Nepal, he seemed disappointed. On weekends, prostitutes patrol the streets, pursuing single drunk young men while drug dealers set up shop on the corners.
It is telling that in Denmark, the casual hello often comes from these prostitutes and dealers. Danes tend to studiously avoid making eye-contact. A smile is rarely returned. Sometimes, a quiet ‘hej’ is proffered hesitantly.
The Danes are a taciturn people. They value their privacy and maintain their distance. The space between is hallowed.
Copenhagen is not a pedestrian city; it is a city of bikes. But the bike does not supplement the relaxed stroll of the flaneur. There is an urgency to biking, a destination I must get to.
I am at the mercy of bikes lanes and traffic lights. I am part of traffic. I prefer the walk, where I can change my pace as necessary, stop and stare, take detours and count my steps. Most importantly, here, when it rains, I can open an umbrella or find an overhang.
It is on these walks that I have found a quiet solace in Copenhagen. I do not love its dark skies. I am prone to despondence and I find my pathos reflected in the darkness. It is a cyclical process that leads me ever downward.
But walking is a salve. It is therapy of sorts, the quiet rhythm of my feet acts like a metronome, lulling me into a hypnotic state where often I find that I am not even aware of where I have walked to and what turns I have taken.
I fight the urge to take out my phone and map my way back home. I want once again to do what I used to in Kathmandu—lose oneself in the city.
I am reminded often of Paul Auster’s book City of Glass: “Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within...By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was.
On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.”
To be nowhere is to be everywhere. To reach that point where all spaces become equal and it no longer matters where you are. If Copenhagen were Kathmandu, if Vesterbro were Maharajgunj. It is necessary to keep your eyes open but it is not necessary to see.
Often, there is just as much that one can gain through the other senses, the ones that are always subordinate to the tyranny of the eye. At Norreport, I hear two Nepalis chatting animatedly with each other and just a few metres ahead, another Nepali speaking into their phone.
The smell of turmeric hangs heavy in certain neighbourhoods of Norrebro. The pavements here, irregular and uneven, hard but steady under your feet.
But sometimes, it is impossible not to see. For we are a species of spectacle. A few weeks ago, I watched a woman fall from a second-story window onto the hard, unyielding pavement below.
She whimpered while she lay broken, as the ambulances rushed through the city streets to get to her. Pedestrians attempted to comfort her, covered her in a jacket and one woman held her hand. As the ambulances took her away, I wondered if she would survive. I can only hope she did.
When I first arrived in this city, it was a maze. Now, it has become a labyrinth. Mazes are meant to obfuscate and confuse. There are multiple paths through the maze but its purpose is to hide, to be lost in.
Labyrinths, on the other hand, have one route and one object—there is a minotaur at the centre. And you must either make a friend of the beast at the heart of the labyrinth or be consumed by it.
I know that I must find the beast in this city and I must get to know it. In wandering the streets, I am attempting to find that one path that will lead me to it. It will be a long search and perhaps I will never find that route, but it is enough to seek.
Like Kierkegaard wandering the Copenhagen streets in search of the self in his constant tussle with god and religion, I too attempt to find the self that is unique to this city.
For, I believe we are made anew in every space we inhabit. Every city creates a new self. The space deterritorialises you and you reterritorialise the space. In that dialogue, you are remade.
Even under clouds that rarely part and a rain that never ends, where light is gone before it has even arrived, where the cold creeps into your bones, where you are alone, surrounded by millions.
Even then. This is the city that has made you, as much as you have made the city. The city is a speech-act and you are its speaker.