I had visited
Hong Kong for the first time shortly before the British were to return the
city-state to China. There was a palpable sense of uncertainty on the island. I
wondered if this is how it had been in Goa in 1961 as the enclave lingered
between Portugal and India. My layover in Hong Kong was on the return journey
from what had been my first visit back to Goa after I had emigrated to
California. Already, I missed being with family and friends.
Seeking a sense
of familiarity, I followed the spice route – or at least the fragrance of
spices – in the narrow hallways of the building in which I was rooming and
arrived at a tiny Indian eating place. It was so nondescript, it could not even
be called a restaurant. Mostly incongruous because it was nestled in a
skyscraper, it fit right in with the other eateries and little guest houses
crammed into the many floors of the building. Throughout this Kowloon landmark,
backpackers, entrepreneurs, and clients from across the globe made up its
hustle and bustle. Infamously captured in a Wong Kar Wai film, the ground floor
shopping area had been reduced to nothing more than a seedy underworld. There
was much comfort to be had in this world within, ensconced as I was among these
fellow migrants of similar hue. It was the best Indian meal I have ever eaten.
True, I do not even recall, now, what the dish was. All that mattered was that
it was eye-wateringly pungent and that the South Indian waiter, who nodded a
welcome, had filled my plate with more food than that of any of the other patrons
there. 
Nearly twenty
years on, at a dessert cafe in a back alley that can only be described as a
hipster paradise because we are seated by the side of trashcans and the weekend
crowd we are engulfed in would not have frequented this neighbourhood in times
past, I tell the people I am with that I had been to the now-Chinese territory
before. They are a group of expatriate architects that I meet because of the
conference I am attending in Hong Kong. “I’m sorry,” one of them scoffs when I
say the name of the place where I had resided. He recapitulates quickly upon
not receiving the reaction he had expected. “They’ve cleaned it up lots, I
believe,” he equivocates.
Certainly, when
I stopped by the building a few hours prior, I had noticed the changes. An
anthropologist colleague had accompanied me to the iconic building which she
had read about in Gordon Mathews’ book, Ghetto
at the Center of the World. There, we found what we had scoured the entire
city for – a pair of dolls from the Disney movie Frozen. The popularity of the film had caused the toys to fly off
shelves and appear on eBay at several times their original value. “My daughter
will be so thrilled,” the anthropologist said as she studied the knock-offs.
“And when she’s old enough, there’ll be even more of the story to tell her
because I got them here,” she mused, as we walked around the warren of shops. The
place had not changed to the point of being unrecognizable. Somehow, in this
ultramodern city, it had managed to retain its unsanitised history – a hive of
multiculturality, at once retrograde and the very definition of globalised modernity.
Just before
leaving for Hong Kong on that maiden voyage two decades prior, a European
student who was on holiday in Goa gave me some advice on traveling to the then
colony. “Whatever you do,” she warned, “do not stay at the Chunking Mansion.” I
remember staring up at the sign outside the building after I had gotten a room
there, and I had thought to myself how amusingly inappropriate the name was.
An online version of this piece as it appears in print can be seen here.
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