By Sreenithi
A temporary but urgent call to action! Centre of the Web partner Versy Talks is kindly running a free public online debate about the publishing industry from 21st to 31st May 2026. It does not take long to take part in the debate and state your opinion, and everyone is welcome! Sharing your voice will help boost both COTW and Versy Talks. Please help us grow, so that we can platform diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world. More information can be found here.
I loved walking through Edinburgh Old Town, up and down the Mile from crag to castle. I loved walking through Holyrood Park and sitting by the lake. It was called St Margaret’s Loch, and you could spot an entire fleet of swans on the water, looking stately and proud. I was terrified of them though. At close range, you could really see why birds are the last living dinosaurs. But I digress.
Having lived most of my life in the busy, metropolitan Bangalore, I was not used to the idea of walkable cities. Perhaps that is a uniquely European indulgence, making it a great tourist selling point. Bangalore is too big…and too chaotic to be walkable. Need I even mention the hellscape of road traffic that could easily consume your daily commute?
It wasn’t as though I was out and about every day. Much to my shame, I barely knew my way around my hometown. I mostly stayed indoors, sitting and stewing in my own thoughts and dysfunction. Suspended in grief for over ten years without even realizing it, there was no real sense of normalcy. My family was paralysed too, frozen, and barely getting through each day. I hated being at home, but I struggled to get away.
I didn’t go out for walks. I didn’t learn how to ride a scooty or bike like the other kids to give myself that independence. I didn’t join extra-curriculars or explore sports. The only way I managed to prolong my ‘outside time’ was to hang out with my friends after class. But not for too long, because then I would have to worry about getting back home late, relying solely on unreliable public transport or a known auto uncle from my neighbourhood. Sometimes if I was lucky, a friend would drop me home on his bike.
The thing was, I wanted to get away from home, but I hated going outside. Because I hated myself. I hated my face and my body and my hair and my clothes. I wanted so badly to be seen but I didn’t want to be perceived. But there was something more insidious: I was stuck in debilitating survival mode. The poor city planning and waste management, the collective disregard for traffic rules, the noise and pollution, the fragile bubble of safety (if you’re a girl) – all these were navigable if you had the resourcefulness and a can-do attitude. ‘India is not for beginners’ as the meme goes. You just learn to deal with it as you go, to embody the chaos yourself.
But I was too incapacitated. Too broken and grief-stricken to be a proactive go-getter. Which is why moving countries for my master’s degree was quite a seismic shift. It meant that movement was no longer optional. But it was also no longer hindered. The easy, serene, walkable streets of Edinburgh were an essential scaffolding to get me out of my own head. For the first time in my life, I was going outside on my own terms…every single day. And I loved it!
Edinburgh was so beautiful to experience. I couldn’t get enough of it. I learned everything I could about this quaint, historic little city. The closes and wynds, the undulating lanes, the view of the hills, the faint speck of sea in the distance, and the perpetual grey sky, all these became etched in my mind’s eye. This was the right place for me – not too big to overwhelm, not too small to suffocate. It was the perfect size to hold fully in my heart. It was the first place that I fell in love with, the first that I chose as home.
But for whatever reason, my journey there was constantly turbulent. For one, I moved house over eight times in a span of just three years. Not to sound too superstitious, but it felt like the city would simply not let me settle. ‘You will not find success here,’ someone at a party said to me once as she did all of our horoscopes. Not too long before that, my childhood grief had burst out of me, delaying my career and jump-starting the healing process rather violently.
My first job was terrible. I felt so poorly treated that I quit in just four months and I have been unemployed ever since. Perhaps I shouldn’t have visited the castle at the start of my course. But how could I have known? Nobody told me it was bad luck to go there before graduating. There were days when I walked down the streets, sat in buses and parks, crying bitterly, baring my ugly tears to the city. There was even a time when I broke down inside a church, and I am not the religious kind. But things only got progressively worse. It was part of the recovery, but it left me so hollow.
And yet I loved this city to bits. Vehemently. The thought of leaving was agonising.
‘Why do you even want to stay when this place is not serving you?’ a friend asked me.
‘Maybe you’re not meant to be here, maybe something better is coming,’ said another.
I was told well-intentioned things like this all the time as I resisted the prospect of leaving. How could I even begin to explain that it was as simple as wanting to walk up and down the streets? Not any street, but Edinburgh streets, and the closes, because they had become the rugged topography of my newfound agency. How could I explain that it was as simple as loving the old, gothic buildings and the sound of bagpipes sneaking up on me from around the tourist-heavy corner?
I didn’t just fall in love with the fantasy of this city, I loved it to its bones and grimy underbelly (yes, the Fringe venue too). Sometimes I close my eyes, and I can see it all so clearly. Vivid little snapshots, as though I never left. Usually, it is a flash of the road starting outside Waverly mall, sloping down to meet the small intersection on Market Street before opening into Cockburn Street and curving upwards. I don’t know why this is the chosen snapshot. But then I open my eyes again, and it is like I was never even there. Like a faint afterimage from another time and consciousness.
I am now in the Netherlands, trapped once again inside a visa deadline which is fast approaching. The city planning here is even more impressive. It is brighter, nicer, and the Dutch surely love their flowers. Perhaps I learned to contain my attachments. Or it is just a natural consequence of growing older. But I don’t feel the same magic. I like Holland but the experience has been somewhat flat (no pun intended). Could it be that I am more well-adjusted now? Or too numb?
But how nice it is to be here! The clean air and the easy, walkable roads. This permission to exist so naturally and freely in public space, something I cannot quite experience in Bangalore. At least not without effort and privilege. Sometimes, it really is as simple as wanting to hold onto the material comfort of a place. Don’t fault a migrant for their superficial goals, I guess.
I miss Edinburgh Old Town and Holyrood Park.
I miss the agency that warmed my legs as I walked back to my flat, late, on a cold winter night.
I miss the person that I used to be walking up and down those hilly streets.
It was a place where I felt like myself.
It was home.
Centre of the Web 