Written by: Anwesha Mahanta
In recent years, the streets, riverbanks, hills, markets, and neighbourhood lanes of Guwahati have increasingly found a second life on social media through short-form videos, also known as “reels.” On any given day in Guwahati, someone is recording something: a slow walk along the Brahmaputra at sunrise, friends laughing over tea at a roadside stall, children playing in a neighbourhood park, or a crowded street glowing with lights during the festive season. These moments, captured on mobile phones and shared as “reels,” are quietly reshaping how the city is experienced, remembered, and felt.
This is not just a local phenomenon. Across India, reels have become the dominant form of short-form video content. A recent study commissioned by Meta and conducted by IPSOS, surveying over 3,500 respondents across 33 cities, reveals that 92 per cent of users now prefer reels over other formats, with 95 per cent watching them daily. The format has particularly deep penetration among Gen Z users and those from higher socio-economic groups, making it not just entertainment but a daily habit woven into everyday life.
In Guwahati, this national trend takes on a distinctly local character. What might seem like casual content creation is becoming a powerful form of digital placemaking—a process through which digital media adds layers of meaning, memory, and connection to physical places. Reel-making here not only documents the city but also intensifies people’s sense of belonging and attachment to it.
Cities Are Lived, Not Just Built
Urban scholars have long argued that cities are not defined solely by roads, flyovers, and buildings, but by the lived experiences of their inhabitants. In the 1970s, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan described “sense of place” as the emotional bond people develop with their surroundings. Around the same time, urban theorist Edward Relph warned that places lose meaning when everyday life is ignored.
In this sense, reels can be understood as a response to long-standing urban theoretical concerns. They prioritise lived, affective, and everyday experiences of the city, foregrounding the experiential qualities of Guwahati and articulating how the city is felt and inhabited in daily life.
Everyday Guwahati on Screen
Scroll through reels tagged to Guwahati, and a familiar pattern emerges. There are morning ferry rides across the Brahmaputra, evening skies filmed from balconies, street food stalls lit up at night, traffic jams turned into moments of humour, and casual neighbourhood walks where nothing dramatic happens and yet everything feels familiar. This emphasis on the ordinary is significant.
Jane Jacobs, one of the most influential urban thinkers of the twentieth century, argued that the vitality of a city is produced through its streets and everyday routines. Reels effectively capture this quotidian urban rhythm, presenting Guwahati not as a spectacle to be consumed but as a place that is continuously lived in, negotiated, and collectively shared.
Parks, Crowds, and Collective Presence
The placemaking power of reels becomes especially visible during moments of gathering. On weekends, parks fill up with people, and reels capturing moments of families walking together, children running around, and friends meeting after work show the city as socially alive and emotionally warm.
During festive periods, this effect becomes particularly pronounced. The city becomes crowded with people drawn to lights, decorations, music, and collective celebration. Reels depicting crowded streets and individuals recording these illuminated moments circulate well beyond the city, visually articulating festivity while simultaneously conveying a sense of collective presence and shared urban experience.
These videos reinforce an important idea: that Guwahati is not merely infrastructure, but a shared social space. The repeated visualisation of people occupying public spaces strengthens emotional attachment and affirms these places as sites of belonging rather than just transit points.
Belonging Through Recognition
Belonging is not just about being physically present in a place; it is also about being recognised within it. Under videos of familiar streets or parks, comments often read, “This feels like home,” “I walk here every day,” or “Missing Guwahati so much.” These responses transform individual videos into shared spaces of memory and emotion, through which personal experiences are reframed as collective ones.
For students, migrants, and individuals residing away from the city for work or study, reels assume a particularly significant role in sustaining connections to place. They allow people to remain emotionally connected to Guwahati even when they are not physically present. Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City explores urban loneliness and disconnection despite physical proximity. Reels work in reverse, creating connection despite physical distance. In this way, belonging becomes networked, extending beyond geography.
Reclaiming the City’s Identity
The use of Assamese songs as background audio, informal Bihu movements performed in parks or streets, local slang, fashion, humour, and food practices anchor these videos firmly within place. Even brief clips of friends dancing in public spaces or walking through Christmas-lit streets carry cultural meaning, without adopting the intent of official or promotional media. Through repeated circulation, the city emerges as a shared, familiar, and affectively meaningful place, reinforcing collective pride and identification.
The Algorithm as Urban Space
Social media algorithms function like public spaces, deciding what becomes visible and what gains attention. When reels from Guwahati circulate widely, the city gains presence within these digital environments. Reel-making enables Guwahati to assert its cultural presence within national and global digital spheres through everyday moments.
From Watching to Attachment
Why do reels create such strong attachment? While each video may be brief, collectively they construct a layered and continuous narrative of the city. Over time, engaging with these narratives cultivates familiarity, recognition, and emotional resonance.
A City with an Extra Layer
Reel-making does not replace physical experience. People still walk, gather, celebrate, and move through Guwahati as they always have. Rather, reels introduce an additional layer of engagement, wherein streets and parks simultaneously exist as lived spaces, memories, visual representations, and shared digital experiences.
Guwahati today exists both on the ground and on the screen. Through reels, the city is continually produced and reproduced as a space of belonging. Everyday moments increasingly find renewed life within digital spaces. Through their circulation, these shared images enable the city to be continually remembered and re-experienced, even from a distance. In this way, reel-making demonstrates how digital platforms can cultivate affective attachment, rendering Guwahati not only a city that is lived in, but one that is deeply felt.
Anwesha Mahanta is a doctoral candidate at Cotton University, Guwahati. She writes about urban geography and what it takes to make cities feel like home.