City of Blinding Lights

By Ananya Khaitan 

In eighteen years, my footsteps have become, steadily and consistently bigger on the roads I have grown up walking on. Those same footsteps have taken me to shops where I have haggled endlessly. They’ve stayed still while I have cursed the weather while other times, especially recently, have led me out the door in the middle of an earthquake.

Sadly and reluctantly, this year I am leaving Delhi.

I have been born and brought up in the city and like many others, I too can maneuver South Delhi in my sleep but need a little help in the North, East and the West. I know that India Gate bubbles aren’t exclusive to anyone’s childhood, but significant to all. I know that Bengali Sweets’ golgappas are as far from Bengali phuchkas as Delhi is from Kolkata and I know that Khan Market is both absurdly expensive and still irresistible. I know that Suroshree is probably the worst of the Hit 95 RJ’s, and that lack of connectivity with Gurgaon via the metro has made Noida seem so much nearer.

The vernacular is Hindi, English and Punjabi rolled into one. Terminal 3, for all its glamour, just serves to add half an hour to your pre-flight time. Depending on where you’re at, the coffee’s always better at Barista or Costa or C.C.D. The guards at the Hauz Khas fort perform a ‘security check’ to the extent of being able to ascertain whether or not you have a ‘kaanch ki botal’ on you. The B.R.T corridor is still very much a traffic jam on an empty road, while the C.W.G are now just a tiger. A tiger that sporadically pops up on signage and posters!

Delhi is a lot of things. For me it’s a childhood that started in cars, grew {along with me} onto public transport and the metro now and then. It’s a city that never really tries to make you feel at home, but you do anyway. You go away and you miss it, you come back, and its casual indifference to your existence is endearingly familiar. It’s a city that boasts of several tourist attractions, of several elements that are typically India – Chandni Chowk, India Gate, the Republic Day parade – but, all in all, a city which remains a product of its people. The population is as diverse as the soil sample, but is so very distinct from the rest of the nation. We rub shoulders with each other daily, pass-by each other at every red-light, but, save our little slice of this crore-strong pie, know not the first thing about each other.

So YouTube can try and condense Delhi-ities, or South-Delhi-ites, or South Delhi-ite Girls and the thousand subsets, into 3 minutes, and Vicky Donor could manage to be ‘so Delhi’ in its 125-minute-long running time, but I still feel the need to set out with an S.L.R and capture my city, as I leave after eighteen years of being cocooned in it. As I leave for college, I still can’t define the city that, for so long, defined me.  

I take some comfort in knowing that whenever I return, it’ll still be the same. The population explosion is never going to cease and the roads, more clogged than your nose in the Dilli ki sardi. Flyovers will be built and old stone malls discarded for shinier ones. But the same landmarks, the same penchant for overpricing, the same extreme weather shall await me.

It’s nineteen bucks for two kilometres by the meter, but forty bucks for two without it. Armed with that knowledge, even if I walk out of the airport to see a sea of strange placards and alien people, I know I’ll slide right back in.

Photo courtesy: bollywoodworld.com