This city is tough. This city will eat you alive if you are not up to the challenge of living here. This city breaks backs and it breaks hearts. It breaks legs and arms so it can earn a bit more on the street corner, and if you can’t make the rent, it might end up breaking your thumbs. This city chews people up and spits them out like a mouth full of betel nut. This city is rich, and this city is poor, and this city keeps the two separated by a big brick wall trimmed with razor wire. This city is a siren, luring poor rural folk with no work and spoiled crops into her grasp. This city greets them at the rail station with a grin and a handshake, and with that same grin still plastered on her face she forces them into debt peonage. This city runs on the back of the Dalit while giving credit to the Brahman. This city says modern and acts medieval. Here people sort through garbage to find something to eat. In this city it is steal or starve, stand up or fall, and sometimes kill or be killed. In this city the poor polish the cars of the rich and the rich withhold payment. In this city people push others down so that they can get ahead, and people steal others’ jobs so they can pay the rent, and people work a week so they can buy a single loaf of bread. This city is tough, and its people are tougher, and there’s no getting by without a fight.
Every day I see people up at the crack of dawn and working all day without a break. Maybe this day they can earn enough to buy chapatti for their family. Every day I see children on the street corner begging for money, only to give that money to their parents. Fifty rupees a day or go without food, and probably get a beating. Some have missing limbs or terrible scars. Every day I see people ride to work on a bicycle that they spent a year working for, only to polish their boss’ Mercedes and drive him around town. Every day I see people pushing huge loads on their three-wheeled bicycles up the long steep ramps of an overpass. Meanwhile the more fortunate pass by and don’t seem to notice the man struggling to push his bike another foot. Every day I look on and I feel sad. But just then, what is this? A man on a motorbike slows and approaches the rear of the load on the bicycle. A foot comes out and rests on the back of the load, and with a call to the weary labourer the motor revs and the bicycle is pushed up the hill by the man on the motorbike. The look on the man’s face says that he is not just doing this for a few more karma points. No, he shows some genuine concern for the life of another human. Could it be that not everyone is just out for their own gain? Could it be that instead of pushing others down to get ahead, some may actually push others up? In a city as dark as Delhi, it is refreshing to catch a glimpse of light from time to time.
