Through Lanes and By Lanes

It would be very naïve on my part to make a statement like “every city is full of contrasts”, by now we all are familiar with such facts. What remains of importance is how we perceive and further the manner in which we analyze them. Like most of the metro cities Delhi too is an integration of heterogeneous elements coexisting in close proximity.

The distance between our guest house and the studio is approximately 5km. The main road acts like a meridian and a slight drift from it changes the picture drastically. We all get off the rickshaws just opposite the grand City Walk and MGF Metropolitan Mall to step into a lane which has a dirt road leveled with pebbles, where dilapidated houses, workshops and a few illegal buildings virtually balance out the hang-out spaces of the chic crowd – just across the road. On experiencing this, the road no longer seems to be a functional entity but - a line of separation. This difference stood out even more starkly with the walk through the Khirkee Village, with Andi, who has worked on some community arts projects with Khoj, guided us through the village. We walked through the lanes of the urban village, visited Old Khirkee Mosque and the Satpula Dam. There was no strict sense of demarcation - the local residents and the historical buildings share the same vicinity. Apart form the architecture there was no feel of incongruence as the mushrooming residential and commercial buildings have encircled the monuments uniformly.

With such newer constructions one thinks about the earlier residents and the thought of their displacement strikes in subsequently. Just to go on a lighter note, Andi told us an interesting fact, “When the foundation for the City Walk Mall was being dug, there was no major issue related to human dislodging but that of the mice. These residents too lost their homes and were forced to find new ones, and consequently the lanes in the nearby locality were infested with them in no time.”