DREAMDOGS OF SEEMAPURI

In this sub-human realm of decay, dying and decline, bloom a million dreams of a better and beautiful life. Will this ever be possible?

Akash Bisht Delhi, Hardnews

New Delhi symbolises the modern face of ‘superpower India' with its glitzy malls, expensive pubs, Page 3 parties, multiplexes and socialites dressed in the likes of Guccis and Armanis. Amidst the glamour lies the rapidly growing underbelly of this massive city that is routinely ignored and marginalised to avoid any confrontation with the ‘new New Delhi' of shining India. This underbelly constitutes a huge mass of Indian people who live in abysmally inhuman conditions fighting for survival and a little dignity that usually eludes them. These are the slum-dwellers and the homeless of this city who brave nature, government officials, police, traffickers, organ traders, rapists, extortionists, murderers, gangsters, real estate goons, et al with a dream that their children should not be condemned to live and die like them.

In the slums of the arid, dusty and backward suburb of New Seemapuri in east Delhi live such dreams, festering with rage and desire, dying and dead, to be re-born again. They are not deterred by the brutish forces that push them to surrender their hopes of a better future in a democracy, usurped by the rich and powerful. Life goes on relentlessly in pulsating rhythm, despite the subhuman realism of their lives. The nearest pucca road is brimming with children, women, locals, rickshaws, cycles, old scooters, cows, carts -- selling fruits, vegetables, patties, Amritsari kulche, very cheap ‘per plate' biryani, bangles, nail polish, synthetic sarees. However, unlike the ‘new New Delhi' there are hardly any cars or SUVs, the rare ones are the Maruti vans ferrying people and kids. The rickshaws make the most of the traffic that snake out through bylanes causing no traffic jams.

A Reliance Fresh outlet has a board that reads in English -- Onions Rs10/kg, Cauliflower etc -- in a colony that constitutes a large illiterate population. No wonder the retail chain is reportedly going through high losses. Doctors, real estate agents, lawyers, dhabas and biryaniwallahs, shops selling pre-paid cards and small tea joints make for most of the ‘business' on both sides of the road. Uncannily, there are hardly any buyers.

So where is the slum? A ‘gentleman' in white kurta-pyjama and white sports shoes, shows the way: "Keep walking straight and the moment the smell of shit and filth takes over, that's your destination." A few metres ahead, a small gully on the left has hoards of children playing naked on huge piles of accumulated garbage. An unbearable stink pervades the entire colony. Men dump the waste while women segregate the scrap out of these huge dunes of garbage. Numerous tiny by-lanes that allow only one person at a time cover the colony's geography like a labyrinth.

In one such gully, men and women are boiling huge quantities of freshly cut chicken in large vessels before selling them in the nearby market. The stench of dead chickens in synthesis with the smell of garbage, filth, shit and stagnant water chokes the air. For the people working here this is routine sense and sensibility. "Come here during summers and you won't dare to visit us again," smiled a slum-dweller, impishly, sitting on a heap of garbage, smoking ‘Red and White'.