Maximum Village

Most Indians think about Delhi as a place where women are never completelysafe, where the pollution is a large mattress over the city in the winter, andwhere crazed ministers’ sons pull out guns at the slightest provocation. Wherethe rest of the country’s ministers and industrialists have to ‘airdash’to get the simplest things done in their home states. Many Indians, especiallyin the Northeast, consider it the citadel of the new Indian imperialism. SomeIndians do grow fond of it, as slave of his dominatrix, or a mule its master.

Bombay and Delhi, in particular, have never quite adjusted to the fact thatthey share the same country. They are India’s New York and Washington,tolerating each other. Delhi governs India so Bombay doesn’t have to, and isfree to make movies and money. When people say nice things about Delhi, it isusually about North Delhi—a very Indian city, with Punjabi families living inramshackle houses with multiple new additions, sitting on cots under tubelightsthick with insects and the lizards feasting on them. It feels familiar, homey.

I have a soft spot for New Delhi. The endless bungalow colonies of thatmongrel suburb. I’ve spent many pleasant hours in barsaatis drinking cheap rumwith expensively educated friends. And I’ve gone to many a cocktail party atProblem Row, next to Lodi Gardens: the World Bank, the United Nations, the FordFoundation, the World Wildlife Fund, Save the Children, where everybodydiscusses what problem they specialise in. "I’m in malaria, what about you?"

When I was a boy I went with my parents to Delhi and stayed at the GujaratBhavan. Later I stayed at the YWCA, and then at a very beautiful private houseat Jorbagh. I’ve stayed at hotels and friends’ houses, and shopped atmarkets named after letters of the alphabet. Last September I drove out to mycousin’s house in Haryana, through expressways lined with shopping malls. Icould have been in Los Angeles. Delhi, unlike Bombay, is not an island; peoplecan live very far from their inferiors. At this rate, it’s going to spill overinto Himachal. So I came to think of Delhi as an Endless City. Endless in spaceand time. When it is very quiet you can hear the screams of the slaughter ofTimur the Lame, blending into the screams of the slaughter of the Sikhs just 21years ago. As long as there is an India—or parts thereof—there will have tobe a Delhi, a necessary evil. .

This piece appeared in the first sample issue of Delhi City Limits.