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The Walk:

We’ve walked this street many times now. Mostly together, sometimes alone. With each walk we had a new conversation, noticed new things, and walked in new conditions. The street came together for us in pieces. Some moments ephemeral, others rooted in more permanent structures.

Oxford Street is a busy street. So many different types of buildings and landmarks. A street where one could be too overwhelmed to notice things. A street that could look like any other place of business. One of my first impressions of the street was that it reminded me of my time in New York. A city campus, food spots, bars and theatres.
The morning I walked the street in a hurry, rushing to a meeting, nothing stood out to me.

I noticed the insomnia cookies, which reminded me of St. Marks Place, New York. I turned the corner, walking on a new street now. Five Guys, Starbucks, I was caught between familiarity and newness.

I think I’ve been to Five Guys more outside the US than when I was there. Fries and a Shake became our ritual- a treat for when important things end: a paper, an exam, a presentation, a degree, a performance. Maybe you’ll see us here, with our fries and shakes, and we’ll see you looking at us, thinking your thoughts and listening to ours at once.

The second time I walked the street, I realised that I had experienced nothing like it before. Within a span of 10 mins, I walked past universities, sports stadiums, bars, eateries, theatres, museums, and even parks. From the arts to sports, and if you go further down even hotels. All accessible with only a 10 min walk between them. That’s why I chose this route. It’s rare to find a street where people with diverse interests may be drawn to and cross paths.

You must have reached The Footage.

If you feel like it, Cross the road. Walk in. Grab a pint. Find a seat. You can always go back later too.
If you do, pause this and play the track called “pub”.

If not, we’re going to continue walking now, so come with us. The pub from the outside looks unique for a British pub. I’ve gotten accustomed to the kind I saw in London. A rather predictable uniform look - a building with an exterior with horizontal beams, slotted windows. Usually an assemblage of two colors- black and red, black and green, or sometimes simply white, or brick. An emblem. I’m sure there’s a history to this. But I couldn’t tell you anything you couldn’t google.

What stands out to me is how much I associate London with a specific kind of consistency. Every neighborhood will have a pub that looks like a pub, a charity shop, a chicken shop, a corner store, a theatre, and a park.
This one is different though. The pub. It looks like an old theatre from the outside. It’s also called the Footage, maybe that’s what makes it feel this way.
It looks almost like a bathhouse, with its dome-like structure on top, round stained windows, and slightly weathered exterior.
We saw a sports match playing on a TV here the other night. Maybe it’s not as different a pub as it looks from the outside.

The Chaiwalla next door reminds me of home. The new café-like tea spots that Bangalore and most Indian cities are now filled with. Chaiwalla here, Chaipoint, Chaayos, and MBA Chaiwala being the ones I see the most there. A tea break, or a tea cig break (chai-sutta as most of us call it) has so often been part of my routine. And yet, it’s the GongCha that calls my name. Maybe later I’ll come back for bubble tea. I haven’t had it in so long. Sometimes breaking routine is what makes the day exciting.

Let’s keep walking.
The Aquatic Center on the Left
I used to swim as a child. I even crossed the road once just to see if I could smell the chlorine at the entrance. I couldn't.
It’s so odd, perhaps it's the weather or just this road. But I’ve noticed that the smells don’t change. From the restaurants to the aquatic centre. The city has a pretty consistent scent to it here.
The Royal Northern College of Music on the Right.
Do the students from the college of music ever walk into the music stores we passed by earlier?

Yesterday, I saw a man get caught by the police here. They were asking for his licence… do you need a licence to drive a motorised scooty? It’s the first time I saw the cops in the city.

We saw the 85 drive by, a poster of ‘A Gentleman in Moscow.’ What is that– a Russian novel? Have you read it?
No, but my mom has. It’s about an English man who gets stuck in the huge fancy hotel just off the red square, the Metropolitan. One year when we were spending new news in Moscow, we went to have tea there just to stare at the big chandelier. It was cold, and it did feel like a refuge.

Everytime I stand at this intersection, staring at the bridge to our left- I can't help but read it. You were meant to be here. Such signs that are a part of the city, not on posters or buildings, really mark the presence of universities for me. How a part of a city itself becomes a University campus. How a bridge becomes a site for some soft advertising.

‘I’m meant to be here.’ It reminds me of the Tracy Emin artwork that hangs in the Eurostar terminal of St Pancras. I’ve never seen it when I was leaving because I’m too preoccupied on the way out. But every time I arrive, it’s what hits me. It says, ‘I want my time with you,’ in neon, loopy pink writing, hanging over the terminal like a bridge. It makes me hurt a little and makes me grateful more for the people I’ve just left and for the people I am coming back to. Whenever I start something new, too, especially when I move for education, there’s a long period of constant looking, shifting through the place until a moment of grounding happens – this is where I should be right now.

Let’s keep walking
A little faster this time. Past all the Uni buildings. Manchester Metropolitan University, The University of Manchester. Cross the street when you get a chance. And keep walking straight.

I can only imagine how crowded these streets get. Waves of people walking, trying to get to their next destination. Students, faculty, and employees, and other citizens, each with their own movements planned by day of the week, month of the year, special events, desires, and needs. Like our new routine this week- Take the 85 bus. Lunch at Babylon or Zaytoni. Coffee at Cafe nero or starbucks, a space to work in the humanities building. A new routine. A routine does feel like grounding to me. Or having a sense of familiarity in the place you're in. To know what you like to do and where. where you feel comfortable. Where the best coffee is, or the best brunch. Which shops are open late and how to get there. Or like in London, when I just instinctively knew where we would be able to find chalk for our blackboard.

Past the circular, grey, University of Manchester building, comes a lawn with the Hogwarts looking university building across the street on the right. And to the left short, quaint, simple square buildings. Polina wasn’t all that excited about walking through this green patch. But I am. It’s rare to have small gardens from where one can gaze at the busy city streets.

If you feel like it, take a seat. Pause this track. Or continue listening, experiencing the rest of the street from here.It’s a nice spot to look at the Hogwarts-esque building too.

It’s funny to me that you describe this as a Harry Potter building. Durham played host to one of the scenes from the first Harry Potter movie, when Harry is sending Hedwig off with a letter from a courtyard. That was filmed in the cloisters of Durham Cathedral. The Cathedral was my favourite place while living in Durham. I had read Harry Potter twice by the time I started uni – once in Russian, and once in English – and the entire world of it, with prefects, feasts, school houses was the stuff of magic. And then slowly, I realised that it was just British. The kidney pies and treacle tarts, head boys and girls and intense rivalries. And that I don’t really like any of that? The food is the same as a Sunday roast. The rivalries are demeaning, the hierarchies exhausting. And amongst all of this, people are often lonely, really lonely. Something I thought was magical was actually so so routine, and something I didn’t want to be part of. So I’ve often opted for places that are outside of routine like museums. And Cathedrals – formerly places of routine and now more of archives of anomaly. There’s something the same about them all, the big unpopulated space that is open to your own ghosts. And those are the places I instinctively look for in a new place.

Walking on.
Cross the road again, when you get a chance. The student union on the writing, a place to grab some food on the left. I wonder why there is so much outdoor seating in Manchester despite all the rain. The student Union is calm today. The first time I walked this route, there was a line around the block. People selling t-shirts and cowboy hats stood outdoors. Some folx sat on the road, tired of waiting in line. It was a rare evening when it wasn’t raining.

It’s these really crowded spaces that I find to be lonely too. To be around so many people but to not know them. I hate feeling lonely in a crowd. I often felt grounded when I found my people, it really informed my routine, where I went, and at what time.

Another interesting building as we walk on, the Contact theatre. The church draws less attention than this building. Why is it Catholic? A group of men stood looking at it in confusion last evening. Under a light drizzle they felt it necessary to stop, point and ask each other, what's this place? I had the same reaction to its unique architecture. It reminds me of a lego castle, fills me with questions of why, how, what does it look like on the inside? WHo built it? When. But the next day I walked passed it and nearly missed it… do things blend into our surroundings so easily?
There are so many shades of red brick on this road, changing, pacing it, and yet making the same impression. Kremlins are sort of like that. They’re much more different than foreigners realise, but at the same time walls, just walls with bricks of different colours trying to give an impression of importance. When I think abstractly, it all comes down to similar things. Maybe that’s why I like concepts more than concreteness.

Did you notice the posters Some intact, some torn, some in conversation with the one next to it.
Organise Against Imperialism
Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism
Why is the British Government Supporting the Brutal Murder of Innocent Civilians in Gaza
Are you a communist? Join the RCP. Abstain in voting Labour
Our Future is Red
Posters small and large. Layered on top of each other. Some revealing the text of the posters underneath. A palimpsest.
Being in the UK and seeing the socialist campaigning as urgent, as daring, as liberating is something that has not worn off over the years. It’s gymnastics for my mind, the one for which the excesses of socialism are routine.
Remember when I showed you a scene from Taj Mahal 1989? And the communist posters and how the liberal circles I hung out in often identifying as Marxist Communist? I’m just surprised to see these posters in the West.
As we keep walking we see Big Hands, a bar right after the little parking lot. At first it looked like a regular pub. Because of its little terrace-ey outdoor seating section that is visible first. And then once we reached the door, the little alleyway, the posters, the lampshade and couches you can see through the window, the little stage and drumset just waiting for a band, and the DJ booth. I felt like I’d been here a hundred times before.
I wonder why I find it unusual for arts and sports spaces to all exist in close proximity to each other. As though they are fundamentally different. In Pondicherry there’s a place called Kalarigram. Martial arts, dance, music, theatre all practised in the same space. They even host a festival. Another dichotomy I have internalised. I suppose what surprised me was that there were so many worlds on this one street. So many types of a city, or parts, or subcultures, all in this one 10 minute stretch.

It isn’t until I get off this street and see some suburbia, the same lines of two story houses with two windows at the top, the bay window at the bottom, the door on the other side, that a sense of wholeness is restored and I feel at ease. Just this, this sameness – of the residential arrangements of rainy evenings when darkness is on your toes as you flick the rain from your shoes, the slabs of the sidewalk reflecting the wire of trees above.
So go, find your own routine in your space, you’ve seen ours.