Why Kanpur?
The New Delhi – Kanpur Shatabdi Express was late by some thirty minutes that day. In the pre-winter of the previous year, I was in Kanpur for the very first time. This March I am here for the second time. The question that almost every other person had asked me, was for once by then, tickling my own consciousness too. Why Kanpur? Of all the places in and around Delhi, why does one choose Kanpur? On this long weekend while travel enthusiasts and backpackers were all set to leave for the mountains of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, why on this Earth was I traveling to Kanpur instead? Besides the fact that all these years I have been attempting at establishing alternative ways of traveling and seeing, I too had no precise answer to the question. Nonetheless, I was sure this short trip to Kanpur shall in many ways be an attempt at answering this question. I was sure I would succeed in redefining travel and establishing the agency of the crowd and the cities, bey...