Dilli

It's only when you start to look beyond the dust and the might and potential of Delhi, that you begin to see the lives trapped in the debris of failed dreams and unending struggles.
On the margins of the wide roads, the daily laborers sweat profusely. Their emaciated hands shaking, they pull the cart loaded with stones. The pain is too evident in one man's gait. The creases on his face are deep, almost as if each has its own share of woes tucked in carefully. He was limping but he continued to pull the cart.
On the wide roads, cars whisk by you. You glance at the women in the back seat, and the men in the front seat. They are the rising middle class of India. They are ones who the city will accomodate. The poor will be pushed to the margins on the outskirts and in the urban villages where four or five share a small room and wait eternally for small things like a small loan so that the rickshaw puller I met today. It's hard negotiating. You sympathise, even try to empathise.
The slums rear their head and in all their ugliness, they overpower the city's elitist hubs, the choice neighborhoods and the designer boutiques. The city has changed so much.
I decided to come back to Delhi after six years because the city intrigued me. Bombay is ruthless, conniving and yet enchanting. People flock to it only to realize later the city will utlimately consume them. But like a long lost lover who keeps coming back to understand why the lover shunned him, denied him and belittled him, people remain. Then they die. And the city moves on, sharpens its claws for yet another bunch of dreamers and lovers.
But Delhi is different. Delhi makes you believe. Delhi doesn't crush your dreams. But Delhi is tough, too. The heat is oppressive, the dust blinding, and the people rude. They don't care. They have their won worries.