I stopped at the light that I get stuck at every day for at least ten minutes, during rush hour on my way home. Every day, I see the same set of people at the lights- a Sardar-ji selling incense, a man selling little mechanical cars, a young woman with her baby. Yesterday, as I sat in my auto, exhausted and impatient, I watched as a group of young girls and the woman with her baby snuck up behind a drinking water tanker in the next lane. They opened the tap at the back of the tanker and began to drink, placing their little hands and mouths under the sudden gush of water. The young woman filled a two plastic bottles full and drank. I wasn’t sure when the last time she quenched her thirst was. The driver got out, and I thought, ‘He’s going to lose it.’ Instead, he gave them a stern look, but didn’t stop them. He let them drink, fill their bottles, laugh and run away. He understood— it didn’t matter.
Today, across town in Gurgaon, I stepped into the elevator of a colleague’s flat, with two young boys who lived on the twelfth and sixteenth floors; each accompanied by a young woman, carrying their respective school bags. As I went eighteen floors up, one of the boys asked his nanny, ‘Is mom home yet?’ She shook her head, pulled out the house keys, the elevator doors opened, and they stepped out.
I continue to struggle with trying to comprehend the multiple faces of this city. What did these two boys do for them to not be racing behind a water tanker on a Monday night? As someone with a certain amount of power and privilege, reflecting on these irreconcilable differences that I encounter every single day is so challenging. Where do I fit in this web of inequality, and what am I doing actively to challenge this? As I sit here in the mother ship of corporate offices in Gurgaon, called ‘Cybercity’, it’s hard to put things in perspective.
