T.S. Eliot had observed somewhere that the first thing that struck him upon arriving in a new country was the different mixture of smells. Doubtlessly this was very true in the first sixty-odd years of the 20th century when Eliot was travelling around Europe. From the early 1990s, I myself remember the very particular olfactory welcome Paris used to lay out for people who had just come into one of the city’s many stations: petrol fumes, French tobacco and coffee, the whiff of freshly baked croissant-family items in the boulangeries and so on. Across the world and a bit earlier in time, there were the smells of Bombay when you got off at VT station: the sea air, the different petrol fumes and interior smells of the Fiat kaali-peeli taxis, the smell of old books and comics in the lending library very distinct from similar booths in Calcutta. The other thing that always made a difference was the season in which you arrived, whether it was Ajmer in mid-monsoon or New York during the stiflingly hot dog days of August. Thinking about this now, another aspect becomes clear: while some smells stay constant in a place, others disappear, taken away with the period to which they were specific. Today, returning to a small town like Ajmer, you miss the horse-dung of the now almost extinct tangas, the air in Paris is no longer ruled by Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes, and Ahmedabad no longer has that whiff of old scooters and the overpowering spice mixture of the tea boiling in the station’s tea-stalls.
It’s my first visit to Lisbon or, indeed, anywhere in the Iberian peninsula and, upon landing, I am disappointed to find that the airport and its immediate environs smell like any other modern European air-travel hub. Nevertheless, as soon as I find my way down to the ticket-vending machines for the metro, the ‘desi feels’ needle flickers strongly as a certain familiarity imposes itself. Things are fully functional but the dim lighting is more like at home. The vending machines are slightly dented and the digital displays sulky and erratic, as though speaking the language of an automated machine from home. The uniformed metro helpers stumble slowly from tourist group to tourist group explaining things in limited English, facilitating the arguments with the recalcitrant touch screens. After London, Paris and Berlin, the simplicity of the metro map almost has me laughing — there are four lines in most basic children’s colours and they intersect almost comically, as though placed to teach a small child the principles of underground rail changeovers. Looking at the stations and the changes I require, the new language begins to spin its web. The colours: vermelho (red), azul (blue), verde (green) and amarelo (yellow); the station names: some slightly familiar — Saldanha, Alameda — mixed with tricky new ones — Odivelas, Olivais, Olaias (how many lovers assignations have disappeared in this Bermuda Triangle?); the direction signs: entrada, saida, zona and, my favourite so far, enxurrada (which apparently also means zone).
August in Lisbon is hot, but it’s nothing like Goa or Daman and Diu. The sky is a pure, clean blue that you rarely find in the tropical urban centres, and the old city that rises and dips under it belongs firmly in Europe, even as it makes space for palms and banana fronds to rub shoulders with pines and plane trees. It being the peak of summer, the city is emptied of local residents who have escaped to beaches and mountains. Instead, walking around, you find yourself among the heavy throngs of tourists who have taken over the squares and avenues. And yet, the energy is never manic as in summertime Paris or Venice, it’s as though the laidback attitude of the local populace has transferred to the visitors — people wander, they look, they meander, pausing again. But there is no pushing and shoving, there is no panic at the big sightseeing points, there seems to be no great fear of tourism-crime like pickpocketing, snatching or any other kind of hustling.
As a Calcuttan and an Indian, I have often felt resentful envy of the great imperial capitals and other so-called first-world cities that have managed to protect and ‘keep alive’ their historical buildings and areas. This preservation and dynamic daily use often seem like a continuation of the foundational exploitative acts, managing to preserve and monetise your own ‘heritage’ (the architectural fruits of your villainy), even as the former colonised nations often deliberately or inadvertently manage to ignore, destroy and otherwise devour their own historical material. Here in Lisbon, that resentment was both somewhat contained (those desi feels) and sharpened by the ample evidence of sub-first world dilapidation (if they can do it, why can’t we?).
Of course, most comparisons between Calcutta and Lisbon are foolish: the larger metro area of the Portuguese capital has a total population of three million, while Calcutta currently teeters on 15 million. Even so, walking up and down the steep lanes of the Alfama district with its little cafes and bars tucked away into the smallest ledges of space, the beautiful old buildings somehow untouched by the assaults of dish antennas and cluster of phone wiring, I couldn’t help wondering — yet again — what it would be like if there were areas of Calcutta where the residents suddenly developed wisdom and changed things around a bit, got rid of unnecessary modern junk, proscribed most motor vehicles and created a space that people could enjoy wandering through and tarrying in without the usual trappings of aggressive tourism.
Looking at the locals sitting in parks and cafes (even though most have gone off for the month), the envy shifted away from the preservation of old areas to the idea of just having pleasant spaces for a city’s denizens where people could sit in a cafe and have a drink while their kids played safely in playgrounds nearby. Moving from the park to a restaurant that friends are praising, a small group of us desis examine the menu of Indian fusion food. Unlike most new-fangled ‘Indian’ places, the descriptions are clear and the combinations sound interesting. As we order our food, it becomes clear to us that this is the restaurant’s final night — it’s shutting down the next day. The food comes and it’s really good. The chef, a young woman, comes out to meet us and we discover she’s a Bengali from Calcutta. As my friends laugh and make Bong jokes, she explains to me why the place is shutting down but then tells me she already has a job in another restaurant. “I like this place!” she tells me. “Ami kothhao jachhi na!” I console myself that if Lisbon can’t come to Calcutta, bits of Calcutta can move to Lisbon.
