Late Autumn, 2023
Music: Concerning Hobbits, Howard Shore
It is rare to be in a place that holds itself to be part speak-easy and part hobbit house. It works surprisingly well. Dim lights and circular windows occupy the center of that particular the venn diagram it seems. A hobbit apartment situated on the second-floor somewhere in semi-fancy New Delhi. A second floor hole, lost in the metropolis.
This city, it isn’t really made for hobbits. But if you are desperate for hobbit-vibes, Chatter House isn’t the worst place to look for one. India, as I gotten to know her, isn’t very conducive to hobbit-vibes. Hobbits belong in England, and not (even less than the English did) here.
Even so I can imagine a hobbit here. Sitting in a too large leather chair. Right there in the back corner where an unused bar on wheels serves as storage for empty pitchers. I can see him smoking his pipe whilst joyfully chatting to some travelers. A tipsy wobble as he hums a song about home. I can almost hear it. An illusion spell cast by my own imagination.
It is impressive what Tolkien’s and my imagination can accomplish together. How they color my perception of reality around me. Some say great literature will teach you about the human condition. It can make you experience a life unlived. Fantasy can make you part of a world nonexistent. Despite its lack of existence, Tolkien’s world shapes my current reality. Without Tolkien, without Peter Jackson, I wouldn’t have seen this place in the same way. It would just be a speak-easy-like bar with cute circular windows. I wouldn’t even know the concept: ‘hobbit’.
In this way fantasy tells us a lot about the human condition. At least the role of imagination in all of our realities. What other creature has an imagination that shapes its environment so thoroughly? Who but us creates out of nothing something that completely changes our perception of the world?
How often does the idea of a future job influence our actions? Aren’t the fires of flirtation stoked by whatever could be? Even dreams of empire were, and still are, seeped in our imagination. Thick with desire, and the will; to manifest our desires. The trajectory of human history is as much dictated by reality as she is guided by our imagination. For better and for worse.
My mind wanders to Pondicherry; a place where many years ago French colonialist imagined a home on a far-away coast. A home of which the architecture and croissants still remain. There they used their imagination, ingenuity, arrogance and cruelty to forcefully marry their imagination with the reality that was already present. They used the same human imagination as the Indian freedom fighters who are now commemorated on the promenade of Pondicherry. Their dreams of liberty were too made manifest. Now, even though the French have left, fragments of French still remain. If through nothing else at least through the ever enduring French croissant.
I would lie if I said that a good croissant doesn’t tickle the imagination.
I wouldn’t dare to compare the stout French republic to the English hobbits. But as I can almost see the hobbit next to me, I could nearly see the French gendarme patrolling the streets of Pondicherry. I could almost hear the hum of La Marseillaise. History lives on in our reality as much as she lives on through our imagination.
Here in Chatter House, with her curved brick ceilings and her dark brown wood, my hobbit friend will never be made manifest. The world’s practicalities will not allow for it. No matter how many circular windows they put in, the laws of nature still apply.
One may hope that dreams of empire will not be made manifest either. Though I fear that battle still rages on. From Kharkiv to Hong Kong, the fight seems far from over. It could well never be over. Ethical consideration seem far less restrictive than practical ones. Maybe we all should be a bit more like hobbits. Creatures with little expansionist imaginations, just a drink, a song, and a pipe. Perhaps one day we could all be in Chatter House, where one speaks easy and imagines oneself hanging out with hobbits.