All in all, you're just a-nother...

(With due thanks to Pink Floyd)

The reigning Hindu deity for the month of November in Delhi must be Vishwakarma. Evidence of his influence is literally strewn all over the place.

In the U-turned iron rods and mounds of sand piled on the road (yes, halfway ON the road, not by the side, so you have to drive at least two wheels of your car over this stockpile), in the deep rumble of cement mixers and high pitched whines of marble saws…even in the well deserved post-prandial naps of construction workers in neighbourhood parks – November is clearly the time to build.

Construction, like all other undertakings in Delhi, is to be approached with a single underlying dictum: If you can save a rupee of your own by inconveniencing everyone else, that’s the way to go.

So most good Dilliwallahs think nothing of piling material (including debris from interiors being torn down) on street corners, working the labourers well into the dark (numerator = fixed daily construction wage, denominator = flexible number of hours you can drive the poor sods to work daily…you do the math,) and extending the new hanging balcony ten inches into the neighbours’ plot (remember how you used to taunt your sibling with “I can poke my finger into the air near your face, the air doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to everyone…,” when you were fighting?)

The fact that winter is just setting in means that everyone suddenly becomes Superman in the hearing department; distant sounds are magnified manifold, become immediate. When you’re still snuggled under the rajai and the industrious Nair aunty three houses away begins to grate coconuts in the morning, you’re pretty sure it’s all happening in your kitchen. You wake up salivating for soft idlis and chutney for Sunday breakfast, but tough luck. Your kitchen only has silence and bread to offer.

The other factor to bear in mind is that Dilli is the city of the refugee, where there is no concept of leaving any space between houses. In almost all of Delhi, people build side walls of homes with single-brick thickness, knowing that the owner of the neighbouring plot will stick his house to yours, with his own single-brick wall. So why spend money on a two-brick-thick wall of your own? Like the refugee fiercely guards what he has fought so hard to win, the Dilliwallah extends his boundaries, as far out on all sides as he dares, lest the neighbour encroach into his space.

So, in Delhi, the walls literally have ears…the neighbours’, to be precise. In Vishwakarma season, what this means is that you know exactly how far the neighbours have gotten in having the old plaster scraped off their walls. Judging by the extend of the din, you can tell whether the guys upstairs have gone in for wooden or marble floors. If you count the sloppity-slop of the broad paintbrush, you can even judge which coat their living room is currently on.

If you live in a DDA flat (built by the government owned Delhi Development Authority, for those unfamiliar), you know that this sort of thing will happen pretty much each year. Designed originally for middle (read lower middle) class families with just scooters, these poorly built apartments have gone up substantially in price over time (thereby proving that s**t really floats).

In this microcosm of Indian urbania, prosperity spreads in an inequal, sporadic fashion. This year, it’s the Kumars upstairs who’re extending their kitchen, re-laying their bathroom floors and covering their verandah in a hideous green acrylic sheet with printed orange flowers. Next year, it will be the Sachdevas – putting up an extra gate and iron fence outside their ground floor flat, to keep Mrs.Sachdeva’s plants in the 20-odd square feet of community space they will stake their predatory claim on. The year after that, the Banerjees will dig out their mosaic floors and replace them with marble…and so on.

Each of them contributes to the mongrel ugliness of the DDA apartment block in installments, as and when their pockets and whims turn favourable.

An agent of Vishwakarma hard at work. His mission: to make this DDA Apartment block uglier.

These ad hoc additions are of course, illegal. But each apartment resident is his neighbour’s keeper, the DDA turns a blind eye, the cops pick their prey as it suits them and life goes on.

So what’s my gripe? After all, Delhi is just behaving in character and I’ve known Delhi long enough. Ergo…I should shut up, right?

Well, I have, for many years now.

And that’s precisely the problem. I just thought it was time I had a rant…at least a realist, fishscreen sort or rant.

I can already feel another one coming up…about the city’s fascination with loudspeakers. I promise I’ll give you audio samples on that one – you can’t do justice to the winter Mata Ki Chowkis without it J

How does your city build itself? How do you take it? Do tell.