Another Atlanta remains tucked away like a shameful secret.... Here, the American Dream is overshadowed by a dark nightmare…a plethora of pawn shops and shabby signboards. Even the 'kudzu' creeper won't go there for fear of wilting under the glare of stark reality

The very city that gave the world Martin Luther King, notoriously remains the most racially segregated city in America. A city dotted with church steeples, as also neon-lit strip clubs. Bible belt or Southern sex capital? Gitanjali Shahani investigates

As the plane precariously hovers above the city of Atlanta, I press my nose against the window to catch a glimpse of the much-eulogised Georgia blue sky. Below, a crazy zigzag of highways and houses are almost hidden by thick green foliage. I remember that pilots often call this the Green City…having read up what facts I need know about the flora and fauna of the land that will be my new home for the next five years. Through a blur of jet lag, I try running through these, if only to calm the nervous anticipation in my stomach as we hurtle to a landing. Out of nowhere, I recall reading about a leafy plant named 'kudzu', imported from Asia to the American South in the 19th century. Like something out of Jack and the Beanstalk, the creeper spread through Atlanta with wild alacrity, entwining itself around every pillar and pole, its roots clinging to the native Southern soil as though it had always belonged there. Like the ubiquitous peach tree symbol, the cluster of haphazard 'kudzu' leaves began to symbolically evoke the essence of Georgia. 'Close your windows at night, I'm instructed,' only half jokingly, by a tourist pamphlet ominously warning of 'kudzu' creepers making their way into one's home and tingeing the windows with a peculiar green hue.

Urban legend aside, I am armed with maps and brochures, offering fact and fiction, history and geography. I have learnt that Atlanta remained shrouded in relative anonymity till the 1996 Olympic Games coaxed its economy into finding a place on the world map of global capital. I know Atlanta is home to Coke, the corporate giant of fizz that symbolically evoked the American Dream in our pre-globalised Indian imaginations even more vividly than the Stars and Stripes or Lady Liberty. I am bombarded with an endless series of corporate logos that are strategically etched onto my guidebook. Both CNN and Delta loom large and I quickly learn that their world headquarters are based in this sprawling metropolis. Home Depot, the ultimate hardware haven, I am told, is yet another one of Atlanta's corporate giants, indispensable for its never-ending supply of do-it-yourself home improvement gizmos.

But sorting through this overwhelming bulk of research, I am struck by a series of baffling contradictions. Atlanta, I am told, is the liberal haven of the Deep South. Yet, apparently, it is also distinctly Redneck Country, home to gun shows and deer hunters. The very city that gave the world Martin Luther King, notoriously remains the most racially segregated city in America. The streets of Atlanta are dotted with church steeples: Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and other orders. But its streets seem also to be strewn with neon-lit strip clubs that stand alongside S&M stores, retailing in leather and feathers, wigs and whips, all packaged to capitalise on a range of fantasies and budgets. So, is this Bible belt or Southern sex capital?

Wandering through the serpentine streets of Atlanta, I soon find the city grapples with its many contradictions in unique ways, alternately ignoring them, embracing them, even confronting them on rare occasions. Like Janus, the mythical Roman god, Atlanta is a two-faced entity that negotiates its dual identities. One of these is manifested in Atlanta's desperate nostalgia for its antebellum past, most apparent in the foreboding mansions that house the rich and the famous. With names like 'The Plantation', these structures anachronistically cling to a past that only existed in epic romances like Gone With The Wind. But Atlanta's suburbia persistently recreates this imagined past, its affluent population banding together in neat rows of houses, with hedges and fences that keep out the undesirable present.

Meanwhile, another Atlanta remains tucked away like a shameful secret, only revealing itself when you accidentally lose your way in its maze of highways. Here, the American Dream is overshadowed by a dark nightmare. This Atlanta is a menacing concrete mass, lined with a plethora of pawn shops and shabby signboards for Wendy's and Wimpy's, doling out cheap one-dollar menus. Even the 'kudzu' creeper won't go there for fear of wilting under the glare of stark reality.

Determined not to be caught within the city's schism, I seek out the bohemian neighbourhoods that strive to be Atlanta's liberal enclaves. And the city doesn't let me down, readily revealing a quirky facet of its personality. Ambling through the Little Five Points district, I find thriving bookstores and music record shops. At Decatur Square, I discover quaint antique stores and strike up conversations with friendly erstwhile hippies who sell me scented candles and colourful soaps. On Friday nights, I make my way to Midtown's Après Diem Café, where a chic crowd collects for decadent desserts, after film screenings at the nearby independent cinema complex. Strolling through Candler Park, I stumble into the Flying Biscuit Café, famed for its fluffy eggs and puffed-up Southern breads, where the young and the restless go through Sunday morning rituals. Over a copy of The New York Times and vegan burgers, I overhear a heavily tattooed couple, with pierced body parts, despair at the Bush administration.

Starting to wonder if we're the New York City of the South, I have been given a quick reality check by close friend, Marsha Ford, who has often shared how she dislikes Atlanta because of its racial divisions and its residents' resistance to changing that. Impatient with this provincialism, Marsha packed her bags and moved to Washington DC, where she is now a successful businesswoman.

In sharp contrast, Sarah Thompson, the editor of an educational publication, tells me about her love affair with Atlanta. It is in this city that Sarah took "a long and meandering path into the lesbian community". As she forged her new identity in Atlanta, among several delightful surprises, she discovered was 'a little Sapphic outpost' called Charis Books & More, a community where women "mix and mingle and laugh and cry and sing together". For many others like her, Atlanta is an almost Utopian space - and one glimpse at Piedmont Park makes it clear why. Couples of every sexual preference walk hand in hand under the pink dogwood trees, their children and pets in tow. You could easily forget you're in the state that voted against gay marriage.

As four years go by, I have heard many more versions of love-hate relationships with Atlanta. I realise that I have to start inventing my very own. It strikes me that a city in the world's richest country is infested with a poverty of the strangest kind: a poverty of the imagination. In a city where a hotel is called 'Hotel', a diner is called 'Diner' and a grocery store is called 'Food', I really can't seem to find a sense of the sublime.

And then one day I finally have the Atlanta epiphany. The sublime, of course, is in the ridiculous. In the colourful graffiti at Little Five Points. In the exaggerated gestures of drag queens dancing through the night at Backstreet. In the crazy 'kudzu' story that is so much a part of Atlanta. So, like the determined 'kudzu' creeper, I strike roots in Southern soil… at least for the present.