But this is how I first became aware of the city: because of those long bus rides, the brazenness with which I skipped classes or invented extracurricular events, the exigency with which I rushed home afterwards. One takes for granted the place in which they have spent all their lives. Only a jolt, an uprooting or bereavement, reveals its true nature. For me, exhilarated by my newly electric body, this was how I understood that the city, too, was a sentient creature; by criss-crossing its arteries almost daily, I learnt its heart.
