Talking to a City

The story of a flaneur who has been walking around central Delhi for over 30 years, observing the homeless, the destitute, and the migrant underclass who are redefining urban’

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THE road is wide and the traffic fast. If 'city' has come to be associated with a certain kind of energy, productivity and glamour, these relentless cars, purposeful people and vivid signboards do an effective job of maintaining the image. But the winter sun brings languor too, and at a slower pace-the biped's comfortable amble-you can discern the bodies at the paan shop reluctant to return to office, and the children tasked with selling balloons at the traffic island, ignoring their job for some good-humoured squabbling.

She steps onto the road with practiced ease, a jumble of wet clothes in hand. If I look to my left, I can see the construction site hosepipe where she has washed the clothes. If I look to the right, she has already skipped through the cars and reached the traffic divider, which is basking in the sunlight. She spreads the garments on the iron fence, the spiked ends of the fence keeping the tiny clothes from being blown away by the wind. Then she lopes back to the pavement thataugmented by makeshift tarpaulin, plastic sheets, some blankets and some utensils-is home.

I have caught her in the act of redefining 'city'.

Over 30 years of walking in central Delhi-for the pleasure of its old trees, or because there is history and energy here, often because it is my history that is here -I have increasingly come to hear the music of the homeless, the destitute, the migrant underclass recreating the city and redefining 'urban'.