Delhi continues to be an
all-accommodating city that imbibes and nourishes everyone who comes in and
makes it there home. The inauguration of the British Delhi brought in the
bureaucrats, partition saw the refugee influx and the Asian Games of 1982 gave
a chance for a large number of migrant laborers to come in and help with the
infrastructure projects and settle down here after the hullabaloo subsided. The
most recent of such turning points has been the Economic Reforms of 1991 which
partially liberalized the Indian economy, opening gates for many foreign
companies to come and open offices in the country. Delhi, too, benefitted from
it. Many companies chose to establish their corporate offices in the NCR or the
National Capital Region, which includes Delhi, flanked by its satellite cities
of Gurgaon, Faridabad, NOIDA and Ghaziabad. This brought many young
professionals, fresh out of college and loaded with degrees that the new
economy valued, to Delhi-NCR and they added another facet to Delhi’s
ever-evolving dynamics.
Mrs. Indira Ganesh lives in Sarita Vihar and is a senior educator. She
pursued an MBA in the early nineties and, then, came to Delhi to initiate a career.
But her association with Delhi goes back a long way. She grew up in Bhilai, in
a Tamil Brahmin family and frequented Delhi as a child during her summer
vacations to visit her relatives living here. Many members of her extended
family had moved to the city in the sixties in search of employment and were
readily hired because South Indians were valued in Delhi’s job market and considered
honest and hardworking. Her earliest memory of Delhi is of staying with her
relatives in their rented barsati – a
one-bedroom-kitchen quarter sitting atop a larger house –in Kailash Colony,
which was little better than a village then. She remembers getting impressed by
the city’s infrastructure which was non-existent in a town like Bhilai. Even
simple things like the Delhi Milk Scheme token amazed little Indira. She found
the people in Delhi to be very suave and was in awe of their mannerisms: how,
for instance, they wished each other ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’, though
she now understands that much of it used to be a sham. She enjoyed the street
food of Delhi – the chole-kulche – and it became a cherished part of her childhood
memories.
Her first job after she completed
MBA in 1994 was at PRIA or the Society for Participatory Research in Asia, an
NGO and think-tank working towards social inclusion. PRIA’s office was near the
Batra Hospital. At PRIA, she was involved in capacity building for the villages
in Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and other states. She lived in a working women’s
hostel which she remembers as a cheerless place, full of girls from
impoverished families with low educational qualification, who worked the
graveyard shift. She was part of the NGO, IT and Corporate brigade. They liked wearing
FabIndia, which was sold at its only store in Greater Kailash. The store used to
have only ten designs to choose from. It would close at five in the evening and
didn’t open on weekends. So, it used to be quite a task for Ms Indira to reach
there before five on the weekdays. Everybody in her circle wore the same stuff,
discussed politics and felt like serious intellectuals! It was the time when McDonald’s
had just arrived in India and cable TV was big. There were new outlets with big
brands all over the place. Being in Delhi also brought a lot of exposure from
all quarters, through the Trade Fairs and Auto expos at Pragati Maidan for
instance. They would attend Jagjit Singh’s concerts and enjoy D Paul’s coffee
at Janpath. Employees who agreed to stay back for work were rewarded with
Domino’s pizza.
She got married to Mr. R.
Sreenivasan, a few years later, who went on to cofound Career Launcher India. She
left Delhi to start a family and lived in Dubai and Hyderabad for a long time
before coming back in 2002. On returning to the city, she felt that safety had
improved and it was far better organized. She feels that the internet, FM Radio
and services like JustDial have made life very easy. Metro, too, has been a
revolutionizing force. She feels that the NGO sector has changed a lot as it
runs in a lot more professional manner. Earlier, people running NGOs thought of
themselves as the liberated lot, yet were full of insecurities and intolerant
of differences. That has changed as people have become more responsible about
how they function. The corporate sector, too, has become more transparent and
there is little place for crooks now.
She never faced any problem here
despite being a south Indian, probably because she had a good command over
Hindi. She never dated anyone but made many friends and their mothers kept
inviting her over for meals and this, she feels, is very nice about Delhi.
Neighbors are as warm as always and the city continues to be welcoming, even if
unsafe at times. She was never made to
feel like an outsider though she had to figure out certain limits for herself.
She recalls an incident. She went to Purani Dilli once when new to the city and
was exploring the space like an inquisitive youngster. She had a casual Kurta
on with a pair of jeans. She went to a mithai shop and started touching some
weights out of curiosity. The shopkeeper stopped her from doing that in a
rather terse manner, asking her to stand aside and talk from a distance. The
same fellow was warm and courteous to other men around him who seemed to be his
regular customers. That’s when she got conscious of the fact that she was the
only woman around and that she’d probably behaved in a way that wasn’t
considered gender-appropriate there. One thing that bothers her about Delhi is
that many a time people here wear a façade, being sweet to you when they don’t
mean it at all. Living in Delhi through the nineties and the two thousands exposed
her to a variety of social realities like single parenthood, live-in
relationships and the gay subculture and has helped her become more broad-minded
and flexible in outlook.
Delhi, she believes, is a city
for the courageous. If you can deliver you have a job! But Delhi is also the
city of networking. Who you know always matters here and yet accountability has
gone up in recent years. The infrastructure is improving and the police are
more responsive. But Delhi is also a city of freebies and it renders its
residents spoilt for choice. Delhi needs to think about the world beyond its
boundaries and learn to save. But at the end of the day, Delhi is a city which
teaches you a lot of things. One who has lived here can survive anywhere in the
world.
Delhi is many cities rolled into
one, each speaking of a different perspective, situation and aspirations. It
is, borrowing from popular metaphors, both a melting pot and mosaic floor. You
can either choose to become part of a hybrid, metropolitan culture or retain
your ethnicity. Delhi will always remain the outsider’s city, taking in and
giving back anything that is offered to it. There is no one kind of person who symbolizes
the essence of Delhi as it is essentially multi-hued. Its beauty, much like
India, lies in its diversity. Whoever lives here contributes a crucial share to
the larger picture which if removed will never add up to the whole. The reason
that attracts an outsider to the city may be political, academic, professional
or emotional, but Delhi always manages to fulfill its promise. The search for
the Dilliwallah can, thus, never culminate on a conclusive note. It’s because the
identity of the city and that of its citizens evolves incessantly and the fun
lies in the constant, ambiguous pursuit of the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment