RETURNING home every night from the day-long hobnobbing with news in The Hitavada taking different routes has been the loosefooter’s hobby for the past four decades. The shortest distance between office and home is 3.6 kilometers. But the journey back to home in the night is far longer -- may be in double-digit kilometers. And the reason is simple -- to haveafeel of the city by night. That is an entirely different feel. By night, the city of Nagpur is an altogether different entity -- very endearing, very inviting, very calm, very cool and most of all very orderly.

 

There may be some brazen and drunken drivers on the roads all right occasionally. But overall, the city conducts herself with extreme sense of civility, to say the least. Of course, the feel during the day, that is from mid-morning to mid-evening, is fairly disgusting -- what with brazen violations of traffic norms (and now COVID-19 norms), ill-disciplined parking, unmonitored movement of the street-hawkers and pavementencroachers ...! The night, however, offers a wonderful and pleasant contrast. One can have slow rides along the deserted roads and haveagood look at buildings old and new, squares and plazas -- and also at the parks and gardens and open grounds from the road as the car slides noiselessly along. No matter what some may say, Nagpur by night is still a fairly safe place even for lone women returning home from work.

 

Police vehicles on night rounds do make occasional appearances on the scene, driving slowly and purposefully. One can sense enquiring eyes those vehicles with multi-coloured lamps announcing the police presence. Four or five squares often attracted the loosefooter for a little lingering there -- the Reserve Bank Square, the Variety Square, the Shankar Nagar Square, the Laxmi Bhavan Square, the plaza in front of the Liberty Cinema (lined by the All Saints’ Cathedral, the Bishop Cotton School and the VCA Cricket Stadium a little distance away, the Government Medical College Square with a huge round-about, the Ajni Square with the battle-tank and Rajiv Gandhi statue and the municipal clock-arch, the Ram Nagar Square with Baji Prabhu Deshpande statue at the centre of the round-about, the Law College Square on Amravati Road ...! The loosefooter often left his vehicle -- which could even be his Silver Bird Raleigh of England bicycle occasionally -- by the pavement and saunter around for a few minutes looking lazily at the rarefied traffic, and enjoy a different comradeship of the city of his birth and work -- and of course of the end-of-the-story a few years later. ... !

 

In the past few years, however, most of these places have changed their character, either disturbed by the monstrous construction of the overhead MetroRail tracks or by senseless crowding of ill-disciplined structures that pass for shops.Afew of these spots have still retained their oldness, and attract the loosefooter even today, for example, the Laxmi Bhavan Square, not far from home. And the COVID-19 new-normals also have changed things dramatically and drastically. Never mind all that, the city still offers an altogether different persona by night -- andamotivation to the loosefooter to keep late hours at work -- so that he can have that cool nightly feel.