For her, it all began with a movie.
“I wondered to myself where this Delhi existed, and why I hadn’t discovered it yet,” says Arushi Mathur. She remembers a radiant Nargis Fakhri — clad in embroidered cashmere shawls, bathed in the winter sun — jaunting through the anachronistic lanes of the capital.
The movie was ‘Rockstar’.
Arushi, a performing artist residing in the angular vicinity of Patparganj, has always found charm in eclectic possibilities. Upon being asked if she was able to discover this city of old world charm, she says that she was, though in her own way. The alumna of Hindu College, Delhi University, shares that it was her century-old campus in the northern part of the city that became the venue for her tryst with changing temperatures.
“There is not one particular memory, but a phase of a few years that changed my mind about the cold season,” she says. It was during her graduation years that Arushi realised why people loved winters. Here, on the vast campus that boasted a labyrinth of bylanes bordered with bougainvillea and a cluster of colleges that each had open grounds the size of mini football fields, she was a free bird.
“Although some of the places I saw in that movie, like Agrasen ki Bowli, are still on my bucket list, I had begun enjoying the season on my home turf. The North Campus of the University is a beautiful place in itself,” she says. In those years, she sunbathed on a bed of green grass, mostly alone. “I could sit just about anywhere in the world and not care. I loved my own company and didn’t care what people thought [of appropriateness],” she says.
If you ever meet Arushi, you will understand well why she does not love the institutionalised lifestyle her school life had offered before this. Until she was ready to graduate to a new phase of life, chilly mornings had been passed in gloomy classrooms on a campus where there wasn’t enough nature to seek refuge in. Imagine a herd of cows milked for their potential, but never allowed to graze the open pastures.
Once she entered her adult years, the forbidden treasures of solo meandering as well as caffeinated drinks (just as important for her) began making their way into her hands. A warm cuppa in the middle of the afternoon is another reason why a colder Delhi feels warm to us.
Experimentations with attire began as well — leg warmers, shawls, fuzzy sweaters and woollen bandanas. Today, Arushi is known among her circles as a successful carrier of boho fashion. This is a woman who knows what she loves, and carries it with enigmatic grace. The capital might have been ruthless when it came to climatic trends, but it was also extremely liberating when it came to offering freedom of expression. One could discover their own voice and carry it with pride. Back then, at least.
She relates that one time, she was sitting on the pavement of the North Campus, and a group of passersby were frightened by its spectacle. It was understandable, she says — here was a woman draped in shawls and headwear, sitting in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing in particular. But in possession of her freedom and in love with where she was, Arushi didn’t care.
