We pride ourselves in Ahankaar (as also Hunkaar, till recently). Do-you-know-who-I-am is our calling card. We adore Big Beasts with tinted glass. We think lal-batti is our birthright. We covet Z-plus security. It’s a high when all traffic stops for us. We walk with a swagger, usually with a bottle in one hand and a gun in the other. We greet each other with gaalis. We rage on the roads. We don’t care for rules. We hate traffic lights, zebra crossings and parking lots. Bullets fly over parking brawls. We hate queues. We think it’s beneath us to stand quietly in a line. Our communities are gated. Our rwas are territorial as pit bulls. We don’t like our house-helps in the same elevator as us. We side with diplomats who underpay maids, because it’s the norm here. We usurp whatever we can. We extend our houses. We make personal gardens of public parks. We spread out our shops. We plunder, we purge. We take hafta, we give hafta. Black money runs in our veins. When we buy or sell houses, we carry sacks to stuff in the illegal moolah. When we sign MoUs, suitcases full of cash exchange hands. When we win contracts, we shower the babus with gold. We like our lucre filthy, our deals underhand, our capitalism crony.
We have bloated ghamand. We are snooty, we are class-conscious, status-minded. When we meet someone new, our first question is ‘where do you live?’. Golf Links, Civil Lines, West End? We have never been to, or even heard of, Seelampur, Shakur Basti or Geeta Colony. We may be mouthing paeans to the aam aadmi now, but we abhor the small guy. We squash the underdog. We trample, we stomp. We let nine-year-old boys clean our cars, adolescent girls sell roses at crossings. We curse rickshaw-pullers, we think slums are gangrene, we run over our homeless. We like our poor meek, servile and scrawny. We are suspicious of anybody with dark skin or slanted eyes. We torment and taunt the outsider. We ridicule men who like men. We take tourists for rides. We want to cull stray dogs. Our city is frightening for single women. Our girls have to be home by eight. We kill our girls if they marry for love. We stalk our women, we ogle, we touch, we pinch, we molest, we eve-tease, we throw acid, we abuse. And as everyone knows by now, we rape our women savagely.
We are not honest or austere. We are guttural, we are gluttonous. Our weddings, our addresses, our cars, our jewellery, our little titles are our identities. We want them all gargantuan, shiny and shrill. We gobble, we plunder, we maraud. We are dynastic. Nepotism is in our blood. We take favours, we do favours. We are pushy, we use pull. An Aggarwal (or Agrawal, or Agarwala) Sweets Corner owner—or if that caste is too touchy right now, a Bengal Sweet House—will want his son to take over after him. A motorcycle-maker will want his son to run the business after him. A Delhi Gymkhana or a Delhi Golf Club member will bequeath his membership to his son. A think-tanker will want his son to join the think-tank. We don’t care too much about our daughters. Our youth is not very brainy or talented. Most of them don’t want to crack any entrance test, they mostly want to crack the formula of an original to make duplicates. We make duplicates of everything, from immersible motor pumps to Imodium. We are the world’s capital for fakes. We don’t do start-ups, we are more smash-ups.
We are unruly, uncouth and uncaring. We have Vishaal Bhagwati Jagrans in the middle of the road. A baraat is not a baraat if it doesn’t block traffic for hours. We throw heaps of plastic plates of leftover puri-halwa on the sidewalk. We hate sidewalks. We set up taxi stands, security guard cabins, dhabas, paan kiosks, barber shops on them. We set up weekly haats on residential lanes. Our autorickshaws don’t want to go anywhere. Our taxis overcharge. We are louts, we are touts. We scramble for passes for everything, from classical concerts to Formula One races. We steal electricity, evade taxes, sell spurious goods. We don’t take receipts for our transactions. We like our leaders in palaces. We worship them. We don’t ask why our MPs must stay in sprawling bungalows. Our leaders like us to suck up. They like yesmen and we like to say yes. We bow in front of the mai-baaps. Our citizens don’t rebel, they loathe protests. Give us our maa ki daal, our butter chicken, a double peg and we are numb.
Abey, b*******d, why have you voted for the aam aadmi?
