Rosalyn D'Mello: Suspended in a tale of two cities

It feels odd to be back in Delhi, surrounded by its familiar scents and sounds, even as memories of Melbourne still linger in the mind

I woke up this morning emotionally suspended between two continents. I was curled up in a thin blanket; the monsoonal weather had prompted a nippiness of skin. Through the open windows, the world in the immediate vicinity of my corner building in Delhi crept in; the blare of someone playing the Gayatri mantra on speaker, as if to spiritually cleanse the neighbourhood; this punctuated by the occasional exclamation mark that only a pressure cooker can produce as the steam gushes out past the weight; little clamouring of bangles as women ready their kids for school, the brushing of brooms against makeshift floors. Sounds that I am otherwise able to mute out in the final stages of my slumber came crawling through my ears after three weeks of Australia’s sometimes deafeningly silent ambience. My jetlagged body thus had every indication that it had been returned home, nestled in the distinct din of the megapolis of Delhi.

The Melbourne skyline reflected in the Yarra river in the hours before daybreak. Pic/Getty Images

And yet, I woke up with a clear and considerate craving for Lune’s croissants; a culinary experience I had been initiated into three days ago in Melbourne. I had skipped the breakfast at Sofitel, whose novelty was already lost on me in lieu of taking the tram towards George’s street, where I met my writer friend, Catriona Mitchell at the Brooklyn Arts Hotel, so she could, as promised, guide me through the 10-minute walk to the establishment that had started out as a hole-in-the-wall joint elsewhere but was now set up in a chapel-like roofed structure. When she was in New York, Catriona, who has spent many years in Melbourne, read a review that had credited Lune’s for serving the best croissants in the world. Having sampled them herself, she was keen to introduce my tongue to these treats.

We stood in a serpentine line with bated breaths, afraid that the croissants we truly wanted had perhaps already run out, even though it was just around 9 am.

The Chinese gentleman in front of us had just ordered at least AUD 130 worth of croissants. He was returning home to China that evening and wanted to take these edible souvenirs for his relatives, which was very generous of him. I, on the other hand, was unable to keep my take-away lemon curd cruffin under wraps. After I had ravished the ham and Gruyere croissant, I dug into the brown paper bag to extract the hybrid dessert, which I slit through with a knife and ate piece by piece, amazed by the lightness and restrained tartness of the lemon curd and the perfected consistency of the muffin-like base that had managed not to be doughy or floury but supple and savoury.

The last 24 hours have involved a series of such wild cravings and in-between-ness. I imagined the two-hour transit in Singapore would have afforded me enough time to withdraw gracefully from all things Australian that I had come to secretly and unabashedly enjoy.

It was the jet lagged state of consciousness that allowed what I ought to have carefully repressed to surface, so that when I finally permitted myself to sleep for an hour or two in the evening yesterday, I awoke disoriented; my body firmly in place in Delhi, but my soul still wandering the legendary laneways of Melbourne, hopping on and off trams, sometimes in the wrong direction even, and pausing to watch the little penguins arrive at the breakwaters at St Kilda, waddling through the rocks, stealing our attention away from the twilit sky which had Mercury and Jupiter grandly resplendent above in such seemingly intimate quarters with each other.

I hadn’t realised, until this morning, how much I had missed the din of other’s lives invading your own, entwining you in a nexus of being. It feels odd, though, to have arrived from a different hemisphere, where winter was quietly receding, to a place where the monsoon is still asserting itself, where the much-awaited season is yet to arrive. I will miss the hidden bars of Melbourne, the Japanese speakeasy where you’re meant to ring a bell and wait until someone opens the door; Whiskey and Alements, where the attention is simply on the experience of sampling the best single malts from around the world, and not on any accompanying culinary feast; and that secretive, standing-room-for-five-only bar I was taken to on my last night, where the waitress played Jazz as she prepared us our promised Martinis post midnight.

Most of all, I am convinced, I will miss the freedom of walking the streets unencumbered by exploiting gazes, and the uninhibited ability to use public transport late at night. It was truly exhilarating for the last four weeks to not feel restricted by my gender, to not be trapped by prying eyes and eve-teasing tongues. To be treated as an individual first, then a woman.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputed art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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