Gurugram — a modern metropolis artificially grafted from arid fields and straggling villages stretched along the borders of what was once the city of Delhi — is a noisy city.
So much of India exists in the interstitial spaces between noise and silence. We are a country where some people are heard all the time, while others quietly slink along the margins of our consciousness. Social media, mainstream media, and every other media channel is forever flashing noisy India and its stories with unrelenting alacrity. The silent India is less noisy. But it is continually at work, shaping the possibilities of the future even as the noisy set goes about believing it is only the noisy set that matters. This contrast is nowhere more sharply brought into relief than during election time, when silence overcomes noise; when those working quietly actually get to determine what the noisy lot gets to walk away with.
In Gurugram, silence breaks out, come elections. The entire ecology of the quieter set, the lot that does not invade the world of the glass façade, is suddenly thrown into relief. Gurugram has four Vidhan Sabha constituencies. Ask around among people who might be reading this piece and my guess is not too many will know the names of the candidates in the fray from their respective constituencies. They would not know because the power differential takes a weird turn in this city; those who have money and privilege are not organically linked to the nerve system of the city; those who otherwise exist along its margins, on the other hand, roll the dice when it comes to planting feet on real estate and also running the systems around which the city is pivoted. This idea of two sound spheres, prompted by the exigencies brought into play by the impending elections, is the occasion for the present reflection.
Gurugram — a modern metropolis artificially grafted from arid fields and straggling villages stretched along the borders of what was once the city of Delhi — is a noisy city. It has the buzz of aspirational India, showcasing the markers of fine living. South Delhi has (had) old money and privilege; Gurugram seeks to stretch South Delhi somewhat and appropriate its social markers. This transmutative architecture of urban reassimilation throws up interesting markers. The aspirational talents, who’ve marched into the city from small town India and the grubby DDA colonies dotting the periphery of resettled Delhi, are bright and smart and sassy, trooping their kids to riding and piano classes. Not to mention buying books in bucketloads, and raiding lifestyle stores for domestic upgrades, like ceramic mandala trivets for their dining table while serving experimental cuisine (albeit vegetarian) to their equally ambitious guests.
These ambitious young men and women are the noisy set; in fact, they are the neo-noisy set. They can’t tell you the way to the Delhi Gymkhana or the India International Centre. Even if they knew the way, they wouldn’t bother making the drive. They don’t care if their vocabulary is not rich enough to enable them to make the connection between the word geriatric and these places of old privilege. They are the brash outcome of evolution, the endpoint of anthropology. They couldn’t be bothered to figure out the sociology of the world they have outpaced. In any case, they have their own fancy watering holes within Gurugram’s belly and they don’t care if these don’t offer subsidised fine-dining experiences.
But to only register the world of this segment is to forget another; one that is not entirely silent, but is not noisy either. Gurugram’s migrant workforce is not homogenous. Even as one set is trying each day to build up a discerning wine glass collection, there’s another that assimilates under the shadow of glass facades, not imbued with any remarkable access to opportunity, but fired nevertheless with ambition, decoupled artificially and somewhat sadly, from home and family back in the village. These are the people who belong and yet do not belong. They live in the villages that predated the city, and were never vanquished by it, shoring up the underbelly of Gurugram’s economy, doing this and that to steady the ship, seeking favours for this and that from the locally entrenched, and reaping a slice of the surplus wherever they can get to cut in.
When I moved into Gurugram some 14 plus years ago, there was a “lalaji” who ran a vegetable store in the colony market. He catered to the retired lot that primarily made up the demography of the area. For him worked a smart hand who went by the name of Dhoni (once you hear out the entire story, you’ll agree the name is quite apposite, given that the Indian captain showcased small town ambition while he captained India with a level of smarts that could only have come from a vigorously emergent post-liberalisation small India). With the market bustling thanks to neo-settlers from Delhi, the rentals went up exponentially. Lalaji bowed out and shifted from his big store to a cubby hole at the edge of the market. And who rented the empty store, ready to foot the enhanced rent? None other than our man Dhoni, whose mother tongue was (now hold yours), and continues to be, Telugu. Today, Dhoni owns that store, bought for an almost obscene price that’s (ballpark) half-a-dozen crore. He owns an independent house to boot. He still slaves it out, waking early to fetch vegetables fresh and direct from Delhi’s wholesale market, some 35 kilometres away. Dhoni would likely know who are the candidates lined up for the October elections. Dhoni’s world is not very noisy, and he, therefore, has an ear for the silence as well. He listens to the silent voices of those who are not loud; he is therefore in a sense more enmeshed with the interiority of Gurugram than are his better-educated peers. The hypothesis here is that those who have migrated to the city and live outside structures of privilege are integrated better, regardless of monetary status, than those who have reaped the rich harvest the Millenium City has had to offer.
Noise or silence, one thing is certain: Gurugram is that city where the ambition of the many swallows the privilege of the few. The skyscrapers swallow the bungalows of Lutyens’ Delhi, and yet, there are so many Dhonis in the making who are waiting to swallow the skyscrapers. All good I say, because this transition augurs well for the future of this country. Gurugram is in a sense India in prospect, shaping perhaps that special sphere where eventually, silence and noise can happily coexist.
The writer teaches at Ramjas college, University of Delhi
