if this country had a slogan it could easily be something like, “isolation, stunning imagery, isolation”. last week we moved houses and finally found ourselves in a more densely populated township, a thicker neighbourhood. the mise-en-scène of this side of gothenburg doesn’t differ too much from Langedrag, where we lived for two years. but there are more people on the street during the mornings and evening.

this pocket also very strongly betrays that the city’s population is a mere 622,174. i texted a friend that we’ve moved from being close to the sea to being close to the lakes. this is how you measure distance and access in this city. with your proximity to a form of nature.

‘you’re living in a valley area with many nature reserves around,’ M’s colleagues tell him, as we trudge out for a walk to bring in the long weekend. and we see a winding long circuitous road snaking ahead of us. small summer cars zipping up, old people with their picnics packed inside, an craggy old cat purring on a stoop.

gothenburg’s lakes, seas, hills, valleys, horizons feel remarkably untouched, as if they all largely exist as they likely had centuries ago. we walk through winding narrow lanes that run behind apartments and bungalows and take in the vistas of vegetation. a little doggo yaps and yeowls at us in joy and licks all over my face. his mother apologizes, smiling she says: “he’s only a little puppy!”

walking this new side of city, i think of this entire landscape as tabula rasa. the individual in its initial state is a “hypothetical, primary blank” or it could refer to the “empty state before receiving outside impression”. this could also be suggested about the relatively barren, byzantine landscape around and in gothenburg. especially in summer and spring it seems bounding with an untapped potential to harness, beauty to reap, and the capability to inspire artistic creativity and love. but come autumn and winter, it feels ruthless, almost majestically so.

a surplus of solemnity withdraws the people from basking in the glory of a certain romantic notion of loneliness. leading them into a hermit like, peculiarly closed off existence. boundless vistas, scenic views, breathtaking forest trails seem to me like the perfect places to luxuriate. i take in these photogenic vistas, the calm sunlight like there’s no tomorrow. june 21 is close, and so therefore is the winter. the sun will set around 1530 but the skies will be an adamant grey for the entire day.

this punishing landscape also delivers on a different plane: there’s not the slightest possibility of real human intimacy, not in nature, not in the streets, not in people’s lives.

the winters here are so stark, i privately theorise that directors try to paint a more luxuriant image of the place by focusing so much more on the summer months. in my two-ish years here i’ve captured on my piddly phone camera some crystalline natural panoramic views, that apportion their beauty carefully. but have i been able to get through to any human beings here? that’s a question most foreigners who live here find themselves asking.

there’s a community amidst fellow outsiders, a kind of kinship among the cast outs, because the locals are just too busy summering with their childhood friends or close family friends they’ve known for nothing less than 40 years. i stand not a chance! nada. so we trod on, make more pictures of nature, conquer more trails, lakes, archipelagoes.

living life in this cut off manner makes one take stock. often friends and acquaintances will discuss the lack of friends over beers or coffee. the coldness is a kind of matter of fact virtue we outsiders propel ourselves to win over. seen from a cinematic lens, we might appear like a scattered cast of misaligned foreigners waylaid by this hypnotic, roomy, wide-angled beauty of the landscape that stretches around us.

seen through this lens then, our lives here can often feel like an existence frozen in time; beautiful, bulbous, magnetic photographs thrown into a random slideshow playing against the most mismatched Beatles track. i know friends who will flinch wordlessly at my decrying of this odd social isolation, but being a writers are enfant terrible so i might as well live up to the reputation.

there’s an overall sincerity to the city and the landscapes it offers and that has its own dividends, even for what it lacks in friendliness: there’s a silence, a poignant isolation that especially for those of us from verbose cities like Delhi, come to luxuriate in, even cherish. “i go for runs even when it’s dark,” is a refrain i often find myself flaunting before friends from other parts of the world.

but these very precious experiences could be alienating too. they don’t harmonize with the risks we’ve taken so far. a fondness and love remains in my/our hearts, but so does a forlorn quality, a texture of foreboding that all these people around us have always kept away from us and so also eliminated any form of connection whatsoever.