Any city stands exposed when seen from a vantage point. One could be in London and watching this city from Horizon 22, like we did yesterday… well, we have seen London sitting in a capsule of London Eye, from the roof of Tate Modern, from the Sky Garden, and even from the walkway above the Tower Bridge. I remember getting a pleasant view of a part of the city from the observatory in Greenwich, the Battersea Power Station, and the viewpoint in Hampstead Heath. We have never been up the Shard but I am sure there will be nothing new from there.
Any city, viewed from a high point, stands exposed. The roofs become ribs, the streets arteries, the river a breath held between tides. You don’t just witness the city; you glimpse its inner workings, its quiet, relentless heartbeat beneath the stone. It is a fragile, fleeting moment of communion — as if the city has let you in on a secret, and then, just as quickly, turns its face away. London flattens into lines and dots, miniature buses, anonymous rooftops, rivers like stray ribbons. It can seem sterile at first: a toy city viewed through glass.
But wait.
There is something in that ‘distance’, something about seeing the city uncoiled and unarmored. The fog softens the symmetry and the deliberate asymmetry of the intended geometry of a city. The spires pierce the sky like old hymns. The eye roams, and the mind — untethered from the weight of the street — begins to wander too. This is not just urban sprawl; this is London retold in light and shadow.
Virginia Woolf, always keen to chase the ephemeral, once stood at the top of St Paul’s Cathedral and wrote of it with trembling reverence:
“The city was all around us. Miles and miles of streets, of chimney-pots, of slate roofs glistened in the sun. It was an immense panorama… and over it, the eternal smoke, the eternal sound of London.”
As I stood there high above the city, I could see stories flying around wildly and with no intent at all. They were willing to be caught and held captive by anyone interested. Woolf felt them, as you too might, standing alone above the pulse of millions. The view, while seemingly still, hums with unseen motion. It’s not about identifying each roof but about feeling the strange ache of looking down on a living city — your city — and realizing how large, and how small, you are within it.
So yes, there is art in it. There is loneliness too, and awe, and that kind of silence that presses the soul into poetry.
Is the feeling the same in Delhi, the city where I have lived for more than four decades now? I remember the view from my seventh floor balcony in central Delhi from where I was able to see even the ramparts of Red Fort and the minarets of Jama Masjid on a clear day… though this was around twenty years back when other high rises had not come up. Yes, I could feel the city roar and rush with restlessness but I could also see the apathy of the people living in areas like Pahar Ganj and Sadar Bazar where many houses chose not to plaster external walls. One could sense the stress of living there. The laundry lines danced and tried to imitate the kites or even the maniacal pigeons in the sky or squatting in a line on the rusted water tanks… they all had their own story to tell. I watched Delhi from a high perch and sighed. Always. There were poems rising slowly from this kind of a cauldron. All kinds of poems. Even seismically romantic. London, however, is different. There are stories, yes, but poverty, the way it gets defined in a city like Delhi, remains absent. Romance, the way Delhi defines it, isn’t here. Delhi too inspires… though London remains my favourite for now. Even when viewed from above.
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Arvind Passey
Uploaded on 28 April 2025
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