CALL OF THE CITY
- Madhukar Dama
- 3 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
The synthetic instinct that replaced the real one
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INTRODUCTION: A BIOLOGICAL ERROR
Animals run toward water.
Birds fly toward warmth.
Bees follow the scent of flowers.
But humans—
They run toward cities.
For peace. For health. For learning. For jobs. For partners. For joy. For status. For even a “dignified” death.
They no longer ask why.
It’s not instinct.
It’s installation.
A collective hallucination injected into society, where every man, woman, child, elder, teacher, patient, healer, farmer, and beggar begins to believe:
“If it’s important, it must be in the city.”
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PART ONE: THE ARTIFICIAL INSTINCT INSTALLED IN EVERYONE
1. The Parents
Even a mother with a healthy, joyful child starts fearing: “What if she doesn’t speak English? What if he doesn’t get into a city school?” So they move. Not for education.
But for reputation.
2. The Farmer
He wakes up under a banyan tree but still dreams of a flat in the 8th floor. His millet-fed body is strong, but he wants supermarket rice. Because the ad showed him respect is in the city.
3. The Patient
She has herbs in her backyard.
But she boards a train to see a doctor who prescribes the same pills to thousands.
She doesn’t believe healing is possible without machines.
4. The Lover
Two people love each other in a village, simply and truthfully. But they move to a city to feel “progressive.” Soon they speak more to devices than to each other. Love dissolves in the acid of urban ambition.
5. The Grandfather
Even he wants to “settle near a hospital” in his final years. So the forest-fed man dies surrounded by machines and strangers.
6. The Poor
They don’t migrate toward dreams.
They flee the manufactured death of villages where all resources were sucked dry. The city doesn’t welcome them.
It uses them.
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PART TWO: THE CITY IS THE CENTRAL VENDING MACHINE FOR HUMAN NEEDS
Every natural need is now routed through the city.
HOW THE CITY HAS BECOME THE MIDDLEMAN OF LIFE ITSELF
1. Food:
In the past, people grew their own food, bartered with neighbors, or foraged from forests and farms.
Now, people rely entirely on cities—buying from supermarkets, apps, or corporate chains.
2. Shelter:
Earlier, families built their homes with mud, wood, and local materials—shelters that breathed, aged, and belonged.
Today, shelter is a transaction—EMIs, rentals, loans, and high-rise flats with no memory or rootedness.
3. Healing:
Traditional healing involved herbs, rest, fasting, local midwives, and wisdom passed down generations.
The city offers hospitals, prescription drugs, lab tests, and specialists—most of whom don’t know your name or history.
4. Learning:
Real learning happened in life—by observing elders, practicing work, storytelling, and curiosity.
Modern education systems concentrate in cities, revolving around schools, coaching, credentials, and competition.
5. Companionship:
People once found community through kinship, shared labor, and local festivals.
Now, relationships are arranged, swiped, networked, or screen-mediated—often shallow and transactional.
6. Celebration:
Earlier, festivals were about shared meals, folk songs, and handmade rituals.
Now, city celebrations happen in hotels with decorators, photographers, DJs, and paid guests.
7. Security:
Safety once came from familiarity—knowing people around you and trusting them.
In cities, security means CCTVs, digital locks, passwords, and mistrust.
8. Death:
Death used to be a community ritual—surrounded by loved ones, open skies, familiar prayers.
Now, it happens in ICUs, morgues, elevators, with forms, fees, and fluorescent lights.
Cities have become the middlemen of life itself.
And the tragedy?
We think that’s progress.
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PART THREE: CITY PROMISES EVERYTHING, DELIVERS EXHAUSTION
1. The City Says “Come Here to Belong”
But you become anonymous.
You walk past thousands. And know none.
2. It Says “We Have the Best Doctors”
But everyone is sick.
With fatigue, reflux, obesity, and anxiety.
And the waiting rooms are full of well-dressed, deeply broken people.
3. It Says “Your Dreams Come True Here”
But it never tells you
—your dreams were manufactured by marketing.
You dreamt of the very cage they sold you.
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PART FOUR: WHY EVERYONE RUNS (AND WHY NONE FEEL ARRIVED)
1. Cities are Broadcast Stations of Insecurity
Ads, hoardings, social comparison, Instagram—
All shout the same message:
“You are not enough. Come buy your identity.”
2. Rural is Painted as Regressive
A person who wants to grow his own food is mocked.
A mother who wants her child to play in the mud is shamed.
Villages are shown as dirty, superstitious, unsafe—
So people escape, not out of will—
But shame.
3. Every City is a Promise, Every Exit a Guilt Trip
Even those who want to leave feel trapped.
“I studied so much—how can I go back to the soil?”
“My children won’t get good education.”
“My spouse won’t survive village life.”
So they stay. They postpone peace.
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PART FIVE: THE REAL INSTINCT NEVER DIES—THE CALL OF THE WILD
Despite all this—
People slowly remember.
Not logically. Not loudly. But somatically.
When they touch clay.
When they hear real silence.
When they eat homegrown mangoes.
When they fall sick and realize hospitals don’t care.
When their children cry and they realize nothing in the city can hold them.
Then...
The original call returns.
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PART SIX: WHO RETURNS AND HOW
1. The Retired
They seek a last breath in peace.
They go back to villages they once ran from.
2. The Rejected
Those fired, cheated, broken—
They go back to heal.
Some to farms.
Some to teaching.
Some to simply be.
3. The Rebels
Young people who see the trap early.
Who lease land.
Start communities.
Grow millets.
Unschool children.
And unlearn pride.
4. The Broken
Who have tried everything the city promised:
Foreign travel, flats, jobs, luxuries—
And now carry deep sorrow.
They return not to escape.
But to become real again.
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CONCLUSION: ESCAPE FROM THE SYNTAX OF THE CITY
The call of the city is loud, slick, and sophisticated.
But it’s not natural.
It’s a global software update pushed through media, education, policy, and fear.
So powerful that even your longing for peace is redirected to a resort booking app.
But the original code is still within you.
It’s there when:
You walk barefoot and feel something awaken.
You hear birds and stop scrolling.
You talk to an old villager and weep without knowing why.
That’s the call of the wild.
It may come late.
It may come gently.
But it always comes.
The question is—
Will you hear it in time?
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HEALING DIALOGUE: “WE ANSWERED EVERY CALL OF THE CITY—NOW THE WILD IS CALLING US BACK”
A tired, three-generation Indian family arrives at Madhukar’s off-grid home near Yelmadagi. For decades, they answered every call of the city—education, career, marriage, healthcare, retirement plans. Now, they are exhausted. The city took everything but never gave home. The call of the wild grows louder—but their past experiences with managed retreats, permaculture scams, and branded 'natural farms' left them betrayed. Can they still return to truth?
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CHARACTERS
Madhukar – 43, a former veterinary doctor and professor who now lives off-grid with his wife Savitri and daughters Adhya and Anju.
Shivanna – 74, patriarch, retired engineer from HAL, Bengaluru.
Rajeshwari – 69, homemaker, once proud of her children’s “city lives.”
Ashok – 48, Shivanna’s son, works as a senior executive in a multinational.
Geeta – 45, Ashok’s wife, teacher in an international school.
Tanmay – 21, their son, recently dropped out of engineering due to mental fatigue and social anxiety.
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PART ONE: THE UNRAVELING
(The family arrives mid-morning. Dust on their shoes. Faces tired. Madhukar serves coconut water in clay tumblers. No one speaks for a while.)
Shivanna: We never missed a step. I did what the world told me—study, job, house, school, city. We followed the map. Why are we still... lost?
Ashok: I’m tired. It’s not just stress. It’s soul exhaustion. The traffic, the noise, the screens, the pointlessness...
Geeta: We tried! We even took breaks—went to a natural farm, tried permaculture. But all we got were curated packages. Entry fees. Instagrammable compost bins. Empty talk.
Rajeshwari: It was all managed. Even the so-called wild had a receptionist and QR codes.
Tanmay: I just want to feel something real. I don't want a program. I want silence that doesn’t cost anything.
Madhukar: Then you are not broken.
You are healing.
This ache is your instinct returning.
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PART TWO: THE CITY STOLE EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE YEARNING
Madhukar: You all answered every call the city made.
Education? You migrated.
Jobs? You left roots.
Marriage? You bought halls, not homes.
Health? You paid lakhs, never healed.
Retirement? You chased gated communities, not peace.
And now, the wild is calling. But you're suspicious—because even nature is being sold in city fonts.
Ashok: That’s the worst part. We don’t know what’s real anymore. Every “alternative” seems monetized.
Geeta: Every natural living movement is a brand. A curriculum. A workshop. A YouTube channel.
Madhukar: That’s because your soul is seeking a return.
But the system now sells even rebellion.
It packages “escape” and sells it in EMIs.
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PART THREE: THE FALSE WILD
Rajeshwari: When we tried to grow spinach on our balcony, it was mocked—“What’s the point?” they said.
Shivanna: We visited a permaculture centre. They had slideshows. Guest houses. Filter coffee.
Not one person had cracked feet or soil-stained hands.
Madhukar: That wasn’t the wild.
That was wild-themed entertainment.
The real wild doesn’t advertise.
Tanmay: Then where is the real thing?
Madhukar: In slow mornings.
In washing your own clothes.
In pulling weeds without checking a tutorial.
In cooking without measuring.
In sitting without scrolling.
In letting the day pass without trying to win it.
It is not taught.
It is reclaimed.
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PART FOUR: WHAT YOU MUST DO NOW
Madhukar:
Lease a small plot, but not to escape. To return.
Grow one food item for your family. Not for purity, but memory.
Forget branding. Forget perfect technique. Nature doesn't care.
Let your bodies ache. Let your backs bend. Let your egos break.
Ashok: We may not do it right.
Madhukar: There’s no right.
There’s only real.
Geeta: How will we know if we’re on the right path?
Madhukar:
You’ll begin to laugh. Without effort.
Your sleep will deepen.
Your breath will slow down.
Your parents will weep and say, “This is what we left behind.”
Your children will ask less, and observe more.
That’s how you’ll know.
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PART FIVE: 12-MONTH FOLLOW-UP – A QUIET RETURN
(The family returns a year later. Their clothes are faded. Their posture straighter. They carry finger millet, jaggery, and their own pickles. No QR code in sight.)
Tanmay: I didn't go back to college. I didn’t need to. I found a teacher in the monsoon.
Geeta: I teach five kids in a village nearby. We don’t have a syllabus. We have goats and questions.
Ashok: I still work part-time online. But I start my day squatting on the earth. I know now: soil is sanity.
Shivanna: I built a bench under a tamarind tree. I sit every evening. I wait for sunset. No clock needed.
Rajeshwari: I cook from scratch. My fingers remember more than my brain ever did.
Madhukar: You answered the call.
Not of the city.
But of your cells.
Of your body.
Of your buried wisdom.
And you didn’t run.
You returned.
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CALL OF THE WILD
we obeyed.
oh god, we obeyed.
every damn call
from the city’s glowing throat.
study here.
work there.
earn this.
marry that.
buy fast.
die slowly.
we ran toward
flats that locked us in,
degrees that taught us nothing,
schools that killed curiosity,
hospitals that never knew our name.
we packed our roots
in bubble wrap
and left them behind
because they didn’t fit
in our new lifestyle.
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and then,
just when the soul began to wheeze
from decades of sitting straight and being good—
we heard the whisper.
the old one.
the wild one.
it wasn’t in English.
it didn’t have a logo.
it didn’t ask for payment.
it said—
come back.
to your back pain.
to your muddy hands.
to your uncluttered sky.
to your goddamn breath.
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so we tried.
we searched “how to go back.”
and found...
retreats.
they called it permaculture.
they called it farm stays.
they called it regenerative.
they called it healing.
but what it really was—
a QR code
next to the compost pile.
a guest house with filtered coffee.
a “wild” farm with Wi-Fi.
a consultant teaching us
how to touch the earth
while wearing gloves.
it was nature
in a PowerPoint deck.
it was wilderness
with menu options.
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we paid to escape the city,
and found the city
sitting inside the wild
wearing khadi
and selling authenticity
by the hour.
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so we stopped running.
we got quiet.
we got stupid.
we got real.
we leased a patch.
not to show off.
not to brand.
not to “become farmers.”
just to remember.
how to grow.
how to stay.
how to fail.
how to eat something
that didn’t come wrapped
in guilt and logistics.
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we let go of healing programs.
we let go of influencers.
we listened to ants.
we followed birds.
we burnt the brochure
and built a bench
under a tree
without asking if it was “sustainable.”
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and slowly
our backs straightened,
our breathing slowed,
our eyes began to look—
not for success,
but for seasons.
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this isn’t a rebellion.
this isn’t minimalism.
this isn’t a curated lifestyle.
this is the last instinct left.
the only one
they couldn’t kill
with noise and dopamine.
the call of the wild.
and this time,
when it came—
we didn’t buy it.
we answered.
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