Pardey ke Peechey

Parde ke peechey….    AI image generated on NightCafe

Conditioning, the social nature of our being, pride… something compels us humans to clean up before we have guests - cover the cracks, polish the silver, sweep the floor…. whatever. 

I shift my perch in the house several times a day, followed by a dust cloud of books, Kindle, lap-top, paper and pen, water bottle, snacks, half-eaten banana, more books. I quickly settle  into my new corner, but the dust cloud doesn’t; instead it spreads: a cushion is tried, and discarded by the side; the air conditioner is turned on, and the remote kept close at hand; coffee is consumed, and the mug awaits removal. 

When I’m expecting visitors, I’m forced to look at this mess afresh - stand up and survey the scene from a different perspective, that of an outsider. My organic state of being suddenly looks like a mess. Groan.. I spend a couple of minutes clearing up. Sometimes - not often - I visit the bathroom mirror to check if my face needs a shave, or my receding hair a quick brush. And if I’m really attentive, I’ll plump up the cushions, and restore them to their allocated spots.

Over the last few months, Delhi was surveyed from the perspective of an outsider, and found severely wanting. As an insider, I find it severely wanting too. Our service lane has been re-surfaced so many times over the last forty years that it now stands a good eight inches above our drive. When the rain comes down heavily, as it did this July, and the storm water drains are not desilted, as they rarely are, the water from the road streams into our drive, and more than once has entered our front door. Earlier this year, PWD engineers visited the lane, muttered something about the wrong slope, and promised to return. For the last four weeks, all representations to them have been answered with “G20”.

Not 10 meters from our gate, we can see how busy the PWD has been with G20, lining the Outer Ring Road with shrivelled palms in pots loudly stencilled “P.W.D.”, so that everyone knows how productive they are. Our section of the Ring Road is really quite verdant, especially in the monsoon, with two rows of Ashoka trees on each side of the busy carriageway; under this profusion of green, the potted, yellowing PWD palms look quite pathetic. Further down the Ring Road, opposite Delhi IIT, iron railings have been installed six feet outside the boundary wall of the Rose Garden. I can’t for the life of me figure out what purpose they serve, even if you believe public gardens need to be walled in, as the boundary wall is a solid brick structure.

What the fence has done is to cut off morning walkers from the coconut seller who has perched his wares on the pavement for decades. His space has been further crowded by a random collection of potted plants installed near the entrance to the rose garden, a completely pointless installation, on a service lane that is shaded by two rows of tall trees, which opens into acres of woodland and park.

Under the Munirka flyover, two hundred meters away. I had stopped my cycle a week ago,  to take a right turn towards Nehru Park. Two policemen addressed the pavement dwellers, “You have to go away, and stay away till the 11th. Nahin to maara-maari hogi (else there will be violence)”. Yesterday, as I ran along the deserted Outer Ring Road, I waved to little knots of policemen every few hundred meters, and the pavement dwellers under the flyover had been replaced by more potted plants.

Barely a kilometer away, the ‘Coolie Camp’ lies at the foot of the Nelson Mandela Marg, which rises past the western flank of JNU, then sweeps past the ONGC building, and Delhi’s  premium-est mall, Emporio, where designer labels strut their glitziest stuff. Nelson Mandela Marg was recently gentrified, the raw aesthetic of red rocks and kikar, the last vestiges of the Aravali, replaced by transplanted palms and garish lighting. The Coolie Camp, where I’ve often stopped to buy a banana during a break on a training ride, does not fit into the newly crafted Dubai aesthetic of a sandstone-paved boulevard of malls.

Sadly for the designers of this aesthetic, the camp could not be wished away. Apparently, the PWD budgets stop at palms and pavements, and do not extend to cleaning up the Camp, which is, I have to say, sordid. The solution - a vast green screen that hides the camp from view, and is now a background for one of the thousands of Delhi hoardings that welcome delegates to the G20. Asha Devi, who lives in the camp, told* The Wire, “We are concealed so that these outsiders cannot witness the poverty in our Coolie Camp.”

When I’m at my ragged worst, the dust cloud around me has been undisturbed for several days, and we’re expecting visitors, my wife will exclaim, “What a mess!”. 

“If you could have your way”, I once responded, “you’d sweep me away, along with the date pips, the energy bar wrapper, and the unpaid bills from our housing society.”

In truth, I’m like the Coolie Camp - too large and embedded to be swept away. But I hope the PWD hasn’t given my wife ideas - else, one day, you’ll find me and my dust cloud sequestered behind a green screen. On the outside, you’ll find framed photographs of the Himalayas, with which my wife loves to adorn our walls. Better than self-portraits, I guess.

*https://thewire.in/rights/in-photos-life-behind-the-curtain-or-how-delhis-poor-see-g20-city