Ghetto Of Vijaynagar

The Ghetto Of Vijaynagar

 I lived for almost three and a half years in a ghetto, a truly urban, modern Indian ghetto in the capital of our country. My life in Stephens along with the Kafkaesque experience in the ghetto of Vijaynagar helped me shape my world view and become smarter, I mean street smart. I was in Double Storey which was the impoverished and the most marginalized part of the neighbourhood. And don’t get fooled by the name Double Storey, because it was not planned in an urban sense of the word where all the landscape was planned to have the buildings only two storeys high, instead it was one of the most horrible and absurd architectural failures. Anyone who has stepped into Vijaynagar will attest to this. The flats are designed like a railway coach and the buildings have no space between them, and the narrow passageways are home to the cows and buffaloes, which make passing through them an adventure of sorts.

 The area was inhabited and owned mainly by Sardars, who had migrated after the great Exodus of 1947. It is funny how such a caravan can affect one’s consciousness and ideas of morality. Because the men and women in Vijaynagar whom I met and engaged with, were one of the most corrupt as well as alienated souls in the world. Every second man in the ghetto is a broker, a pimp for flats. The locality boasts of many men who drink abundant and many families who fight frequent. The eateries and food joints are pathetic, serving you the shittiest food at almost unbelievably high prices. Moreover, it is only in Vijaynagar you will find a joint named Thapa Eating Corner, owned by a lisping and stammering Punjabi who probably does not know that Sikkim or Darjeeling are in India. There are numerous Nepalese young boys vending paneer momos and listening to Nepali songs, and cursing Indians in their native language.

  The flipside of the ghetto is the vibrant and noisy student and campus life. Owing to its proximity to the University, it houses a larger number of students who otherwise have not got hostels or cannot afford expensive localities. So, on any day in the ghetto one can see a large number of students who are studying graduation or post-graduation in colleges at the University or are simply, there after numerous attempts to even cross the FYear mark. The ethnography of the students are mainly from the North Eastern States, almost like a harlem or a China town in USA; a distinct flavour cut out from the common topography of the city. There are innumerable fights between different groups, colleges or ones with different preferences. I was also part of one GREAT fight which was dubbed by many as ASSAM Vs Darjeeling, which included quite a blood spilling and other things. Pretty Funny, Ain’t it?

  It is only in this ghetto where you will find girls dressed in their best clothes and vanity to buy vegetables. A tea stall near the toilet where young IAS aspirants and other highly educated men, talking about nation building schemes, over tea which tastes like cow piss. A park which is filled with young boys and girls in the middle of the night, to the haziness of the smoke of their joint in their hands. A shop which sells more cigarettes than rice in a day. A swine, disguised as a man to sell cigarettes and water in the night at prices, unimaginable. A drunk man as fat as three Old Adnan Samis to sell the only food available in the night. Cops who are more interested to get a girl through you than to check you for drugs. Flats designed in the worst way possible but rents to make you shit in your pants. A place where an evening walk would mean a visit to Outram Lines or Majnu Ka Tila, which could be compared to religious pilgrimages. An area where one can see the cows in a trance returning back to their cow sheds, without any assistance routinely every night. A place where visitors can be easily marked and ogled at. And Holi being the favourite festival, where everyone eats an ice cream. And a visit to buy liquor, is a test whether you can retain your cell phone.

This was my ghetto…The Vijaynagar…The Legend Lives On….Nostalgia, The Crack, Baby!

P.S. Patel Chest is the nearest tourist attraction.