Gurgaon, Bad Gaon

It's been just over three months since I packed my bags and moved from the city of dreams and Bolly-culture to a city where the Kingdom of dreams is the closest thing anyone has seen to culture. I would have been glad to present an all-informed viewpoint on the perennial Mumbai vs. Delhi debate. However, in my three month stay in NCR, I have been to Delhi as much as I ventured north of Bandra in my two years in Mumbai. Once.

Still, Gurgaon was surely something I could and wanted to talk about. Gurgaon is a quaint, dusty town in most parts. It is a steel and glass laden metropolis in the rest of the pockets. My initial attempts at describing the city in verse had only shaped thus...

Not far from the heart of India,

Thrives a city rising on its feet.

Few verses ever tried to capture its colours,

Time for one such ’tis meet.

Towers of concrete mar its skyline,

Clouds of dust loom in the sky.

A rattling metro threads across it,

Its teeming millions it does tie.

... when I realised that the poetic form was way too romantic for what the city stood for.

Romance is music. Music in G-town (sounds cooler, innit?) is limited to the cacophony of blaring car horns and giant drillers. If you happen to be riding in the midst of the traffic, the roads will make sure you dance to the uncanny rhythm as well. This, however, is only till you meet the party pooper standing right ahead of you, complete with a peering gaze that forces you to stop in your tracks. That of the wandering cow. You might be alone but they rarely are, their tongues playfully running over the other's face, subjecting you to a PDA you never asked for.

Something like this is what I am talkin' bout

And this is during the day. It is hard to describe the Gurgaon roads in the night time. As per the holy texts, in the Beginning, God said, "Let there be light", and it does seem that the municipal council of Gurgaon are the most disobedient of atheists. What makes this situation even more ridiculous is the number of tree trunks that keep popping up from nowhere in the midst of crowded roads. 

And it is the contrasts that are discomforting. There are places where one can enjoy the most delicious of world food in the most luxurious of environs, yet the approach to them is a road indented with craters the size of Deepika Padukone's ... courage. 

Central Park(ing)

A lot of the above is the fault of each and every inhabitant. The utter disrespect for rules and apathy to the common good is mind numbing. I clicked this picture on the left on a bustling evening. The spate of cars one can see is actually a passage in-between the dividers which the car owners thought was fine to park in and block. Their car is parked is all they could care about.

A massive shift in scenario is difficult in a social milieu where the men climax by thrusting their car keys to the sound of whirring engines, and the women (those who get approval to come to being) either keep their mouths shut or blind themselves in a heady mist of rouge and talcum powder. 

However, all is not lost. Gurgaon is still more of a town eyeing the future of a city. The elements of transformation are at work, every single day. And change is slowly, and surely, brewing. Or rather, micro-brewing.