Posh Avenues-4

On a cold day in Delhi you could jump into some decent thick clothes and go for a walk, and at nights on the roofs you could lay in thick clothes over a sleeping bag counting stars. You may not like an early shower. It’s bearable and pleasant as it is never like those snow-covered winters which could generate avalanches anytime. But those pleasant days had recently come to an end and the temperature seemed to have abruptly shot up. You could feel the sun through your shirt, and when you had a bag the back of the shirt could easily stick to your back. When required to walk long you would consider it wise to wear a wide-brimmed hat to avoid heatstroke. If you are lucky enough to be a in a house with enough ventilations and the openings don’t face either east or west ,and, say, your flat happens to be on the ground floor or between two floors with the one above yours drinking and sucking the heat, then you would find your place pleasant, and if you didn’t have to venture out then you wouldn’t know the wrath of Delhi summer.

But, again, the talks of proper ventilation is applicable only for those houses along the manned roads of certain places in the city, others are virtual slums. An area where double-storeyed leaned on houses were built to accommodate the partition refugees now have been turned into four-storeyed houses. Sometimes you would see a tiny room hidden behind life-size water tanks on the roofs meant to be rented out as single room so that the landlord could make few thousands from these hidden oven-like rooms which promise nothing but the basic desperate needs of a wretched Indian; a roof and walls around.

Simple comfort is extremely expensive in such a city where the disparity is very distinct; a bricklayer would come to work in some patchy trousers and a thinned shirt with frayed collar, and you would pay him a few hundred for a day long work, a driver from Utter Pradesh could be paid few thousand a month and would sleep in your car seat, then a maid who can be stationed in some corner of the garage can be paid the same amount for cooking, doing the dishes and washing clothes. Quite outrageously contrary, an degreed man trained to thread foreign words in front of an audience and the know-how which he earned from repeated use of a computer to type fast and write e-mails in those threaded words would enjoy an annually rising income and a fraction of his income can afford services of the above-mentioned people.

There are no minimum wage standards for these people, so you could leash them at your gate for a lifetime for few thousand a month. Even an office peon with a round housewife can afford a maid. If this country gives you a freedom, then it is the freedom to manipulate and pay what you want to a people who belong to the lowest strata. Humans beings always have the tendency to compete with one another; it would be in physical fights or in wars that they would display such a tendency, but with due course of time the manners in which tendency is displayed have changed ,but the Indian way of defined dominion which has been in place for centuries and the ease they enjoy in it to these days explains why the worst form of indignation is allowed. But what is crafty is the fact that the accustomed victims hardly ever try to rise like others would do in other parts, for they easily accept something so demeaning and thus one doesn’t see heads rolling. The only mentionable development would be the appearance of a Dalit lady leader who ruled India’s largest state for quite sometimes and her achievements are seen in the statues she erected all over the state.

It was a short walk after a glass of milkshake prepared by a man with chipped front tooth, his ears plugged in with earphones. When I ordered he almost yelled at me and I pointed at the earphones, then he realized what he actually had done. The sides of the juice bar were decorated with fresh fruits of all kinds which will soon be baked in the harsh sun, the washed and polished carrots, the glistening pomegranates, the yellowish bananas with their stems slightly greenish suspended from the low ceiling, the sun will suck them dry in few hours, and I wondered the reason of such a waste in the name of natural beautification.

To be continued...........